Reviews & User Content Policy

Policy: Reviews & User Content
Version: 1.0  |  Effective: 7 August 2026

Reviews are only useful if they are honest. This policy sets out the rules for reviews, ratings, questions, photographs and any other content submitted to Horeka, and how we keep them genuine.

It is aligned with IS 19000:2022, the Bureau of Indian Standards guideline on online consumer reviews, and with the Consumer Protection Act, 2019 provisions on unfair trade practice and misleading advertisement.

1. Who can write a review

Only a customer with a verified purchase of that product through Horeka may review it. Reviews are linked to the order and display a Verified Purchase marker. We do not accept reviews from users who have not bought the product.

2. What we do not allow

We remove content that:

• Is false, fabricated or misleading, including reviews of products the reviewer has not used;
• Is incentivised — written in exchange for payment, free product, a discount, or any other benefit, whether offered by a seller, a brand, or a third party. This includes reviews solicited through review-farm or “brushing” schemes;
• Is written by a seller about their own products, by their employees, relatives or agents, or by a seller about a competitor;
• Is defamatory, abusive, obscene, hateful, or targets an individual or group on the basis of religion, caste, gender, sexual orientation, disability or ethnicity;
• Contains personal data — anyone’s phone number, address, email, order ID or payment details, including the reviewer’s own;
• Is promotional — advertising, referral or affiliate links, or contact details soliciting off-platform trade;
• Infringes intellectual property, including copied text or images the reviewer does not own;
• Is off-topic — about delivery, packaging or support rather than the product, where posted as a product review. Please raise service issues through support instead, where we can actually fix them;
• Is spam or duplicated across listings;
• Makes medical, health or safety claims that could mislead other customers;
• Is unlawful under any applicable Indian law, or is prohibited content under Rule 3(1)(b) of the IT Rules, 2021.

3. Rules for sellers

Sellers must not, directly or through any third party:

• Write, commission, buy or trade reviews;
• Offer any inducement — refund, discount, gift, free product or cashback — in exchange for a review, for a positive review, or for the removal of a negative one;
• Contact a customer to pressure them into changing or deleting a review;
• Post negative reviews on a competitor’s listings;
• Divert a customer off-platform to prevent a review being posted;
• Misrepresent aggregate ratings in their own advertising.

Manipulating reviews is a material breach of the Seller Agreement and grounds for immediate suspension. It may also constitute an unfair trade practice under the Consumer Protection Act, 2019.

A seller may respond publicly to a review, once, professionally, and without disclosing the customer’s personal information.

4. How we moderate

• Reviews are screened automatically for prohibited content, and are subject to human review where flagged.
• We use fraud signals — account age, ordering pattern, device and network characteristics, and review velocity — to detect coordinated manipulation.
• We do not remove a review simply because it is negative, or because a seller has asked us to. A critical review that reflects genuine experience stays up.
• We do not edit the substance of a review. We may redact personal data or unlawful material and publish the remainder.
• We publish all genuine reviews, positive and negative, and do not filter aggregate ratings to favour any seller.

5. If your review is removed

We notify you and give the reason. You may appeal to [email protected] within 14 days, and we will review the decision and respond within 15 days.

6. Reporting a review

Use the Report control on any review, or email [email protected] with the subject line REPORT —

and the reason. We acknowledge within 24 hours and act within 15 days, and within 24 hours for content that is unlawful on its face.

7. Your rights in what you post

• You retain ownership of the content you submit.
• You grant Horeka a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual and sublicensable licence to use, reproduce, adapt, publish and display that content in connection with the platform and its promotion, including in marketing material and on the product pages of other sellers offering the same product.
• You confirm that the content is your own, that you have the right to post it, and that it does not infringe anyone’s rights.
• You may request deletion of your reviews at any time by contacting support. We will remove them, subject to any legal obligation to retain records.

8. How ratings are calculated

A product’s rating is the mean of all published verified-purchase ratings for that product, across all sellers offering it. Reviews identified as manipulated are excluded from the average and from the review count. Where a product has fewer than three reviews we display the count prominently so you can judge how much weight to give it.

Seller ratings are calculated separately and reflect fulfilment performance as well as customer ratings — see Seller Performance, Suspension & Appeals.

9. Questions and answers

Questions posted on product pages may be answered by the seller, by Horeka, or by other customers. Answers from sellers and from Horeka are labelled as such. The same content rules in Section 2 apply.

10. Contact

Content concerns: [email protected]. Escalation: Grievance Redressal.