Review Policy

Who may write a review

You may review an agency or broker if you have had a genuine, first-hand interaction with them in a real estate context: buying, selling, renting, property management, or a serious enquiry that progressed to actual dealings. You may not review:

• your own business, your employer, or a business you have a financial stake in;
• a competitor of your business;
• a provider you have never dealt with, on the basis of reputation or hearsay;
• the same provider more than once for the same engagement (you may update your existing review instead).

Moderation before publication

Every review is moderated before it appears. Moderation checks for:

• Spam and fake patterns — duplicate text, review bursts, accounts created only to praise or attack one provider.
• Conflicts of interest — indications the reviewer is the business, a competitor, or an incentivised party.
• Defamation risk — unverifiable accusations of crime stated as fact. You may describe your experience ("the deposit was not returned"); we may decline wording that asserts criminal guilt no court has established.
• Off-topic content — content not about the reviewed provider's real estate services.
• Personal data — third parties' phone numbers, ID numbers, home addresses, and similar are removed.

Moderation is about eligibility and legality, not opinion. We do not reject reviews for being negative, and we do not edit substance. Where a small redaction (for example, removing a third party's phone number) lets an otherwise valid review publish, we redact rather than reject and mark the review as partially redacted.

Verified reviews

A review is marked verified when the reviewer has provided documentary evidence of the interaction — for example a contract, invoice, correspondence, or payment record naming the provider. Evidence is examined by us and stays private: it is never shown to the provider or the public. Verified reviews carry more weight in the provider's Trust Score (via the verified-review ratio component). Unverified reviews still publish, provided they pass moderation.

What businesses can and cannot do

• Respond. A business with a claimed profile may post one public response per review. Responses pass the same moderation rules. Businesses without a claimed profile cannot respond — claiming is free and requires proving you represent the business.
• Flag. Any business may flag a review it believes violates this policy, stating the specific ground. We re-examine flagged reviews and answer with a decision. Flagging a review because it is negative is not a ground.
• Not pay. Businesses cannot pay to remove, hide, reorder, or de-weight reviews. No advertising product affects reviews or scores in any way. We do not deal with "reputation management" intermediaries offering payment for removal, and we log such approaches.

Removal and amendment

We remove a published review only when:

• it is shown to violate this policy (fake, conflicted, off-topic, unlawful);
• the reviewer asks us to remove their own review;
• a court order with jurisdiction requires it.

A provider "disagreeing with the facts" is resolved by their public response and, where they submit evidence, by our re-examination — not by deletion. When we remove a review for a policy breach after a flag, the provider's Trust Score is recalculated; systematic fake-review activity attributed to a provider triggers a moderation penalty of up to −25 Trust Score points.

Incentivised reviews

Reviews written in exchange for payment, discounts, or other consideration from the provider are prohibited, whether positive or negative. Providers found soliciting incentivised reviews receive a moderation penalty and, in repeated cases, a visible warning on their profile.

Ratings

Star ratings feed the Bayesian weighted average described in how we rank agencies. A removed review's rating is removed from all calculations. Reviewer accounts used for fake reviews are closed and all their reviews withdrawn.

Appeals

Reviewers whose review was rejected, and businesses whose flag was declined, may appeal once to contact@panamarealestatereviews.com with any additional evidence. See the contact page for the escalation path and timelines.

Identity verification — why we ask, and what we publish

This platform does not accept anonymous reviews. Before a review can be published, the author must give us:

• their legal first name and last name;
• a verified email address;
• their country of residence;
• the agency and/or the individual broker they actually dealt with;
• the type of service or contract and the date it took place;
• optionally, a contract or invoice reference and supporting documentation.

The author must also accept a written declaration confirming that they were genuinely a client, that their account is truthful and based on their own direct experience, and that they understand that knowingly publishing false statements about a business can carry legal consequences. The exact wording accepted is stored, version-stamped, with the review.

What is published

Published with every review: the author's first name and last-name initial, their country, the agency and/or broker they dealt with, the type of service, the month of the engagement, and the verification level.

What is never published

Never published, under any circumstances: full surname, email address, telephone number, exact contract date, contract or invoice references, identity documents, and any transaction documents supplied as evidence. These are retained privately and are accessible only to our moderation team and, where legally compelled, to a competent authority.

Publishing a reviewer's email or identity documents would breach data-protection law and expose the author to harassment. We therefore do not do it, even on request from a reviewed business.

Why we retain the full identity

Retaining the complete identity and transaction record is what allows us to stand behind a published review. If a business asserts that a review is false or that the author was never a client, we can check the account against what we hold rather than guessing. Records are retained for five years and then purged.

If you are a business and you dispute a review

Reviewed businesses have a documented route that does not depend on goodwill:

1. Public reply. Any claimed profile may publish an official response alongside the review. This is always available and is never gated.
2. Formal dispute. You may formally dispute a review on the grounds that the author was not a client, that it contains false statements of fact, that it is defamatory, or that it exposes personal data. Every dispute is logged with a timestamp and an outcome.
3. Our check. We compare the disputed review against the identity and transaction record on file, and we may contact the author for further evidence.
4. Outcome. If the account cannot be substantiated, or the author does not respond to a substantiated challenge, the review is removed. If it is substantiated, it stays and you are told why.

We do not remove a review because it is negative, and we do not remove a review in exchange for payment. We remove reviews that are unverifiable, false, abusive, or that expose personal data.

What we will not publish

A review is refused or removed when it contains allegations of criminal conduct presented as established fact, statements about identifiable third parties who cannot reply, personal data of any individual, or content the author cannot tie to a genuine engagement with the business named.

Opinions clearly expressed as opinion — that a service felt slow, that communication was poor, that the author would not use the agency again — are protected and are not removed merely because the business objects.