Our review policy
How ToothPicked Experience writes reviews
Short version: we write them ourselves, from a real visit we paid for, we disclose when a visit was booked as an audit, and we never sell or suppress a rating.
How a review gets written
- We are the reviewer, not a broker. One of our auditors visits your business as an ordinary paying customer — no announcement, no VIP treatment.
- The auditor writes the review from what they personally experienced, in their own words, with their own photos. Notes and receipts are captured on the spot.
- The rating is decided at the table, in the moment. It is not negotiated, requested or influenced by anything you pay us.
- The review is published on our own Google Local Guide profile — so you can always check who wrote it and read the rest of our work.
What we disclose
When a business books us, the visit is a commercial arrangement, so the published review says so. Our standard wording:
“Visited as a paying customer for a mystery audit on [date].”
We disclose it because it is the honest thing to do — and because an undisclosed paid review is exactly the kind of thing Google removes. A disclosed review survives scrutiny and keeps working for you.
Reviews we write about businesses that never booked us carry no disclosure, because there is no commercial relationship to disclose.
Most of our reviews are organic
We visit places as ordinary customers and review them honestly — whether or not the business has ever heard of us, and whether or not they hired us. Those reviews carry no disclosure, because there is no commercial relationship to disclose.
That is exactly why you can trust what we write: we are not an agency publishing reviews for whoever pays. If a business books an audit, that visit is disclosed. If it did not, the review stands on its own.
What we will never do
- Never sell, guarantee or negotiate a rating.
- Never edit, hide or delete a published review — for money or on request.
- Never offer a discount, gift or prize in exchange for a review.
- Never ask only happy customers — every guest gets asked equally, or we do not ask at all.
- Never publish about a business we were not asked to audit.
- Never write about anything we did not personally observe.
If you disagree with the review
- Reply publicly on Google Maps — customers read the owner’s response, and a calm, specific reply is worth more than silence.
- If a fact in the review is simply wrong, tell us and we will correct it. Google lets a reviewer edit their own review, and we will use that for factual errors.
- If you want the operation fixed rather than the wording argued about, book a Re-Verification Audit. A second visit produces a new, separate review showing the improvement — the original stays exactly as it is.