Mislead people
Send spam, fake quote requests, fake reviews, copied profile content or misleading business information.
Loading page
Policy
Acceptable use keeps VereLocal useful for real customers and local businesses.
Send spam, fake quote requests, fake reviews, copied profile content or misleading business information.
Post hate speech, harassment, threats, vulgar abuse, sexual content, illegal content or discriminatory material.
Scrape data, test security without permission, bypass access controls or interfere with the platform.
VereLocal may block, remove, reject or review content that appears to break these rules. The priority is to keep the platform useful, fair and safe rather than to preserve every submission.
VereLocal is designed to help clients and local businesses find, contact and work with one another more confidently.
To make that possible, everyone using the platform needs to use it honestly, safely and for its intended purpose.
This Acceptable Use Policy applies to:
- client and business accounts;
- business profiles;
- quote requests and enquiries;
- direct messages;
- reviews and review responses;
- Business Updates;
- photographs, documents and other uploaded content;
- any other feature provided through VereLocal.
It applies whether you’re using a free or paid account.
This policy should be read alongside our Terms and Conditions, Privacy Notice, Review Policy and Conduct Rules.
Don’t use VereLocal to mislead, exploit, harass or harm another person.
VereLocal is intended to protect both sides of the marketplace.
Businesses must treat clients fairly, provide accurate information and deliver the services they’ve agreed to provide.
Clients must make genuine enquiries, provide accurate information, treat businesses fairly and pay agreed charges where the agreed service has been delivered.
We don’t assume that one person is automatically right because they’re the client or the business.
The information you provide when creating or managing an account should be accurate and kept reasonably up to date.
You mustn’t:
- impersonate another person;
- create an account using someone else’s identity;
- pretend to represent a business without permission;
- use false contact or business details;
- create accounts to avoid a previous restriction or suspension;
- allow someone else to use your account for dishonest or prohibited activity.
You’re responsible for activity carried out through your account, so keep your login details secure.
Don’t create multiple accounts to:
- manipulate reviews;
- send the same enquiry repeatedly;
- avoid messaging limits;
- appear to be several different clients or businesses;
- evade moderation or account restrictions;
- interfere with another person’s use of the platform.
Businesses should normally have one profile for each genuine business. Separate profiles may be appropriate for genuinely separate businesses, brands or locations, but they shouldn’t be used to dominate search results.
You may only claim or manage a business profile when you own the business or have permission to act for it.
Don’t claim a competitor’s profile, prevent the genuine owner from accessing it or deliberately change another business’s information.
Businesses mustn’t publish information that they know is false or seriously misleading.
This includes claims about:
- services;
- prices;
- service areas;
- availability;
- experience;
- qualifications;
- licences;
- insurance;
- professional memberships;
- verification;
- employees or contractors;
- previous work;
- awards;
- business ownership;
- values or profile tags.
Don’t describe your business as approved, endorsed, guaranteed or fully verified by VereLocal unless we’ve specifically authorised that wording.
Businesses shouldn’t advertise services they aren’t reasonably capable of completing.
Where a service requires a licence, registration, qualification, permission or insurance, the business is responsible for meeting those requirements.
VereLocal doesn’t authorise someone to carry out regulated or restricted work simply because a profile or service appears on the platform.
VereLocal doesn’t decide how much a business should charge.
Businesses can set their own rates and may charge different amounts depending on the job, location, timing, experience or other relevant factors.
However, businesses mustn’t:
- advertise a price they have no intention of honouring;
- use an unrealistically low price purely to attract enquiries;
- hide compulsory charges;
- charge for work, time or materials that weren’t provided;
- deliberately misrepresent what’s included in a quote;
- substantially change an agreed price without explaining why.
Estimates can change where the scope of work changes or unexpected issues arise. Significant changes should be explained and agreed wherever reasonably possible.
Quote requests and messages should relate to a real service need or a genuine attempt to compare suitable businesses.
Clients mustn’t use enquiries to:
- waste a business’s time;
- gather quotes for dishonest purposes;
- repeatedly contact businesses with no genuine interest;
- advertise unrelated products or services;
- recruit people into schemes or networks;
- collect private contact details;
- harass a person or business;
- send the same request excessively;
- obtain work or advice without intending to pay where payment would normally be expected.
Clients are free to compare businesses and decide not to proceed. You don’t have to accept a quote simply because you requested one.
Clients should provide enough information for a business to understand the request.
Don’t deliberately hide details that could materially affect:
- the price;
- the amount of work required;
- access to the property or location;
- safety;
- required skills or equipment;
- timescales;
- materials;
- the suitability of the business.
If the request changes, tell the business rather than expecting the original quote to cover substantially different work.
Messaging should be used for genuine communication about services, enquiries, bookings, quotes or work being discussed.
Don’t use messaging to:
- send spam;
- send automated bulk messages;
- harass or threaten someone;
- send hateful or discriminatory content;
- send unwanted sexual content;
- repeatedly contact someone after they’ve asked you to stop;
- distribute malware or harmful files;
- attempt fraud or phishing;
- pressure someone into providing private information;
- promote unrelated commercial services.
Businesses may contact clients about an enquiry the client has made. This doesn’t give them permission to add that person to unrelated marketing lists without the appropriate consent.
Reviews should reflect a real, first-hand experience with the business being reviewed.
You mustn’t:
- review a business you haven’t dealt with;
- create reviews for your own business;
- ask friends, family or employees to pose as clients;
- buy or sell reviews;
- arrange review swaps;
- use multiple accounts to review the same business;
- review a competitor to damage its reputation;
- copy a review from another platform and present it as your own experience;
- leave deliberately false or misleading information;
- use a review to blackmail or threaten someone.
Businesses may ask genuine clients to leave a review.
They mustn’t require a positive review, pressure someone to remove fair criticism or offer a reward only when the review is positive.
Reviews and responses may be critical, but they should remain relevant to the service or interaction.
Don’t include:
- discriminatory abuse;
- threats;
- private addresses or contact information;
- financial or payment details;
- unrelated personal allegations;
- medical or other highly private information;
- accusations of criminal activity presented as fact without a reasonable basis;
- content intended mainly to humiliate or intimidate someone.
A disagreement about quality, price or communication doesn’t automatically mean a review is false.
Clients mustn’t threaten a negative review solely to obtain:
- free work;
- an unrelated discount;
- additional services;
- a refund they know they aren’t entitled to;
- a payment or personal benefit.
Businesses mustn’t threaten clients, withhold property or retaliate against someone because they’ve left an honest review.
VereLocal may help clients and businesses find and communicate with one another, but we don’t require every arrangement to use a particular payment method.
Clients and businesses are responsible for agreeing:
- the price;
- what’s included;
- when payment is due;
- deposit arrangements;
- cancellation terms;
- payment methods;
- any written contract required for the work.
Don’t use VereLocal to commit payment fraud, avoid legitimate payment obligations or obtain services through deliberate deception.
Where there’s credible evidence that a client has deliberately refused to pay for agreed and completed work, VereLocal may restrict or remove their account.
This doesn’t mean every payment dispute will result in action. There may be a genuine disagreement about the work, price, damage, quality or whether the agreed service was completed.
VereLocal isn’t a debt collection service, court or formal dispute resolution provider. We may review whether someone’s continued use of the platform creates a risk to other users, but we may not be able to determine the outcome of a private contractual dispute.
Content shared through VereLocal mustn’t:
- promote hatred or discrimination;
- contain racist, homophobic, transphobic, sexist, ableist or similarly degrading material;
- threaten, harass or intimidate someone;
- encourage violence or serious harm;
- contain illegal sexual content;
- sexually exploit or endanger children;
- promote fraud, scams or deception;
- falsely impersonate another person or organisation;
- infringe another person’s intellectual property rights;
- reveal private information without permission;
- contain malware, malicious links or harmful code;
- make deliberately false or defamatory claims;
- promote illegal services or activity;
- be created mainly to disrupt or manipulate the platform.
These rules apply to business names, usernames, descriptions, updates, service listings, images, reviews, messages and uploaded documents.
Criticism, disagreement and negative experiences can be discussed. They mustn’t be turned into personal abuse, harassment or deliberately false allegations.
Only upload material you own, have permission to use or are otherwise legally allowed to share.
Businesses mustn’t:
- use another business’s work as their own;
- use stock photography in a way that falsely presents it as completed work;
- publish client photographs without appropriate permission;
- alter images to seriously misrepresent the outcome of a service;
- upload forged certificates, insurance documents or qualifications.
Don’t upload documents containing unnecessary personal or confidential information.
Where VereLocal asks for verification evidence, use the designated private upload process rather than publishing it on a public profile.
Information obtained through VereLocal should only be used for the reason it was provided.
You mustn’t:
- sell another user’s contact details;
- add someone to marketing lists without the appropriate permission;
- publish private messages without a reasonable and lawful basis;
- use client information to contact them about unrelated services;
- collect information through deception;
- attempt to access another user’s account;
- share identity or verification documents publicly;
- use platform information to harass someone elsewhere.
Businesses may keep information reasonably needed to manage an enquiry, provide a service or meet their legal and accounting responsibilities.
Everyone remains responsible for handling personal information appropriately.
Don’t use VereLocal mainly as an advertising channel for unrelated products, platforms or services.
This includes:
- unsolicited sales messages;
- mass promotional messaging;
- affiliate spam;
- recruitment schemes;
- pyramid or multi-level marketing promotion;
- fake quote requests used to sell to businesses;
- irrelevant links placed in reviews or profile content;
- repeatedly redirecting users to unrelated websites.
Businesses can link to their own legitimate website and social profiles where VereLocal allows it.
Don’t interfere with the normal operation, security or performance of VereLocal.
You mustn’t:
- attempt to access accounts or systems without permission;
- test for security vulnerabilities without written authorisation;
- introduce malware or harmful code;
- overwhelm the platform with automated requests;
- scrape or copy platform data without permission;
- use bots to send messages, create accounts or manipulate activity;
- bypass access controls or usage limits;
- reverse engineer protected parts of the service;
- manipulate rankings, analytics, reviews or engagement signals;
- copy substantial parts of VereLocal to build a competing database or service;
- use the platform in a way that places an unreasonable burden on its infrastructure.
Search engines and services authorised by VereLocal may access public pages in the normal way.
If you discover a security issue, report it privately rather than attempting to exploit it or publish details that could put users at risk.
VereLocal mustn’t be used to arrange, promote or support illegal activity.
We may restrict particular services or categories where they create significant safety, regulatory or legal risks.
You mustn’t use the platform to:
- commit fraud;
- handle stolen goods;
- arrange violence or exploitation;
- provide illegal services;
- evade licensing or regulatory requirements;
- sell prohibited goods;
- facilitate money laundering;
- distribute illegal content;
- recruit people into criminal activity;
- knowingly put another person, child or animal at serious risk.
The appearance of a service on VereLocal doesn’t mean we’ve confirmed that it’s legal, suitable or safe in every circumstance.
Businesses can explain why clients should choose them and can make fair comparisons about their own services.
They mustn’t:
- create fake profiles for competitors;
- submit fake enquiries to waste competitors’ time;
- leave dishonest reviews about competitors;
- falsely report competitors;
- copy another business’s identity, branding or work;
- use confidential information obtained through VereLocal to undermine another business;
- manipulate the platform to unfairly block other businesses from being discovered.
Being competitive is fine. Sabotaging another business isn’t.
You can report content, accounts, reviews, profiles or messages that appear to break this policy.
When making a report:
- explain what happened;
- provide relevant information or evidence where possible;
- don’t knowingly make a false or malicious report;
- don’t use reporting tools to settle unrelated personal or commercial disputes.
A report doesn’t automatically prove that someone has broken the policy.
We may ask the people involved for more information before deciding what action, if any, is appropriate.
Where we believe this policy has been broken, we may:
- ask for more information;
- request that content is corrected;
- remove or edit content;
- reject or remove a review;
- limit messaging, reviewing or quote features;
- add a warning or information notice;
- pause verification;
- temporarily suspend an account or profile;
- permanently remove an account or profile;
- prevent someone from creating another account;
- report serious illegal activity or immediate risks to an appropriate authority.
The action we take will depend on factors such as:
- the seriousness of the behaviour;
- the available evidence;
- whether someone acted deliberately;
- the potential harm to other users;
- whether the behaviour has happened before;
- whether the issue can reasonably be corrected.
Paid access doesn’t prevent VereLocal from restricting or removing an account that breaks these rules, it also doesn't entitle businesses or users to refunds, compensation or renumeration unless VereLocal is legally obligated to do so.
Not every complaint means this policy has been broken.
Clients and businesses may genuinely disagree about:
- what was agreed;
- the quality of the work;
- the final price;
- whether a delay was reasonable;
- whether a review is fair;
- whether a service was completed properly.
VereLocal may consider the information available through the platform and any evidence provided, but we may not be able to determine exactly what happened.
We’ll focus on whether someone appears to have misused VereLocal or presents an unreasonable risk to other users.
Where possible, people affected by a moderation decision will be able to ask us to review it.
We may update this policy as VereLocal introduces new features, services or safeguards.
The latest version will be published on this page.
Where a change is particularly important, we may also notify affected users through the platform or by email.
To report misuse, use the reporting option shown next to the relevant profile, review, message or content where available.
For other concerns, contact VereLocal through our Contact page and include enough information for us to understand what happened.