Consumer Reviews Policy

Blue Puffin Stays Ltd · Version 1.0 · In force from 7 October 2026 · Next review due 1 January 2027

In short

• After every paid stay we ask for an honest review, good or bad. We never ask Owners, our team or their families.
• We never pay or reward anyone for a review.
• Nobody connected with us may review us or the homes we manage. That includes our team, our subcontractors and suppliers, the owners of the homes, and their family and friends.
• We show reviews with written comments at every star rating, newest first. Each review says which platform it came from. Airbnb, Booking.com and Vrbo reviews also say which home they are about.
• We only remove a review for a clear reason set out below. We never remove a review because it is negative.
• If you think a review is fake, tell us at info@bluepuffinstays.co.uk.

1. Definitions

1.1 These words have these meanings in this policy:

2. Who can leave a review

2.1 We welcome reviews of your stay in a Property and of our Service, good or bad.

2.2 We ask for a review after every paid stay, however it was booked. Section 4 explains how.

2.3 You can also review us on a Third Party Review Platform at any time. You don’t need an invitation from us.

2.4 You can review our Service even if you didn’t stay with us. For example, you can review how we handled your enquiry on Google or Trustpilot.

2.5 Each Third Party Review Platform sets its own rules on who can leave a review (see Schedule 1).

3. We do not reward reviews

3.1 We do not offer anything in return for a review, whether positive or negative. That means no money, discounts, vouchers, free or cheaper nights, upgrades, late check-outs, gifts or prize draws.

3.2 Our direct-booking prices, long-stay discounts, repeat-guest offer and mailing-list offers never depend on leaving, changing or removing a review. We never put a request for a review and a discount offer in the same message. Our repeat-guest offer is sent at least 15 days after check-out, never on the same day as a review request.

3.3 We never make a refund, compensation or the outcome of a complaint depend on whether you leave a review, what it says, or whether you change or remove it.

3.4 Free stays. From time to time we give someone a free stay. We never ask for a review in return, and we don’t send our review request after a free stay. If a guest who had a free stay, or a special discount not open to other guests, leaves a review, we label it as such wherever we show it. If our review display tool can’t show the label, we don’t show that review on our Website. Our standard offers, such as long-stay, direct-booking and repeat-guest discounts, are not special discounts.

3.5 If we ever decide to offer something in return for a review (for example, a free stay for a travel writer), we will update this policy first. Any review that follows must say clearly what was given, and we will label it wherever we show it.

4. How to leave a review

4.1 We ask after every paid stay. After each stay we send one request for a review the day after check-out and one reminder 3 days after check-out. Every guest gets the same messages, whatever their stay was like. We never ask only guests we think were happy. For long stays we ask at the end of the stay. We don’t send review requests to Owners, our team or their families, even after a stay, or after a free stay.

4.2 If you booked through an OTA (such as Airbnb, Booking.com or Vrbo), our request is sent through that OTA’s messages. It asks you to review your stay on that OTA only. The OTA may also ask you for a review itself. The OTA’s own review process and rules apply. Links to them are in Schedule 1.

4.3 If you made a Direct Booking, our request invites you to review us on Google or Trustpilot. It includes a link to this policy.

4.4 You can also leave a review on social media, or on Google or Trustpilot, whenever you like.

4.5 A review is not the same as a complaint.

• A review is for other people to read. It is published.
• A complaint is private. It is how you ask us to put something right.
• You can do either, or both. If something is wrong during your stay, please tell us straight away so we can fix it.
• Sorting out a complaint never stops you leaving a review. We will never ask you to complain instead of reviewing, or to tell us before you post a review. We will never treat a negative review as a complaint and hold it back.
• To make a complaint, email info@bluepuffinstays.co.uk or use the form on our Contact page (https://www.bluepuffinstays.co.uk/contact-us/). Our Booking Terms (Guests) (https://www.bluepuffinstays.co.uk/terms-and-conditions/) explain how we handle complaints.

5. Review Standards

5.1 Your review must:

(a) reflect your own genuine experience, both the good and the bad;

(b) not be rewarded or paid for in any way (unless the reward is clearly stated, as in clauses 3.4 and 3.5);

(c) not be about a Property or Service you are connected with (see clause 5.2);

(d) not manipulate ratings. For example, you must not leave more than one review for the same stay, or review us under more than one name or account;

(e) be about a real stay, or real dealings with us;

(f) not include another person’s full name, phone number, email address, door codes or home address (naming a host or team member by their first name is fine);

(g) not be offensive, discriminatory, threatening or unlawful;

(h) not be spam, advertising, or about something unrelated to the stay or our Service; and

(i) not be written by, or for, a competitor of ours or of an Owner.

5.2 Connected People must not review us. Except as set out in clause 5.3, the people listed below must not review Blue Puffin Stays or any Property we manage, on any platform, even after a genuine stay. They must not ask anyone else to do so either:

(a) our directors and shareholders;

(b) anyone who works for us or with us, whether as an employee, a self-employed subcontractor or a contractor, and our suppliers (for example our laundry, software and marketing providers). This includes our guest communications team, cleaners and maintenance contractors;

(c) the Owners of the Properties we manage, and anyone with a financial interest in a Property; and

(d) the family members, partners and close friends of anyone in (a) to (c).

5.3 Owner testimonials. Owners may give us a testimonial about our management service for our owner-facing marketing, such as our information for property owners. We label it clearly as coming from a property owner, and we never show it as a guest review. Owners must not post reviews of us or the Properties on Google, Trustpilot or any booking site.

5.4 How we check. We are asking everyone who works with us, and every Owner, to agree in writing not to review us or the Properties, and we will ask them to confirm this every year. Every month we look at the new reviews on our Google and Trustpilot pages and the reviews shown on our Website. We check them against our booking records and against the people connected with us. We look for warning signs, such as a burst of reviews in a short time, reviews with no matching stay, and reviewer names that match people connected with us. Section 9 explains what we do next.

6. Where and how we display reviews

6.1 We show every review with written comments that meets our Review Standards, positive or negative, from the sources in clause 6.2. We never choose reviews to show because they are positive. We never hide, remove or report a review because it is negative, or because we or an Owner disagree with it.

6.2 Where our reviews come from. On our Website we show reviews from:

(a) Airbnb, Booking.com and Vrbo: reviews of a stay in a particular Property, left by guests who booked through that OTA; and

(b) Google: reviews of Blue Puffin Stays left on our Google Business Profile (see clause 6.3(a)).

(c) Which homes are included. We include every Property we currently manage that has reviews on Airbnb, Booking.com or Vrbo. We never choose which Properties to include because of their ratings. We add a new Property within 30 days of its first review.

We also have a Trustpilot page (https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/bluepuffinstays.co.uk). You can read its reviews there. We don’t copy them onto our Website.

We show reviews using a review display tool (currently Elfsight). Each review links to the platform page where it was left.

6.3 Reviews of our Service and reviews of Properties are kept separate.

(a) Google reviews are about Blue Puffin Stays. Many describe a stay in one of the homes we manage, but Google doesn’t record which home, so we can’t label them by Property. We show them separately, labelled as reviews of Blue Puffin Stays.

(b) Airbnb, Booking.com and Vrbo reviews are about a stay in a particular Property. Each Property is provided by its Owner and managed by us as agent, so these reviews cover the Property and our Service during that stay. We show them under a separate tab for each Property on each platform, named after the Property (for example “Railway View – Airbnb”).

(c) We do not publish reviews of individual Owners. We do not merge reviews of different Properties to make one Property look better.

6.4 How reviews are shown.

(a) We show every rating from 1 to 5 stars. Booking.com scores out of 10 are shown as stars out of 5 (for example, 9 out of 10 shows as 4.5 stars).

(b) Reviews are shown newest first.

(c) Each review shows the platform it came from, the date it was left, and the reviewer’s name as that platform shows it. We don’t show reviewers’ photos.

(d) Our list shows reviews that include written comments. Reviews with a star rating only are not shown in the list, but the platform still counts them in its own rating.

(e) We never pin, feature or highlight chosen reviews, and we never change the words or rating of a review. Long reviews may be shortened on screen. You can read the full review on the platform.

6.5 Ratings.

(a) Each review shows its own star rating.

(b) We don’t show overall ratings in our review list. We never work out a combined rating across different homes or platforms, and we never add ratings of our own.

(c) Each platform works out its own overall rating, in its own way and over its own period. Its rules explain how (see Schedule 1). Follow the link on any review to see it.

(d) If we quote a platform’s overall rating anywhere else, section 11 applies.

6.6 Dates, and Properties we no longer manage.

(a) Each review shows its date, and the newest are shown first.

(b) When we stop managing a Property, we remove its reviews from our Website within 30 days.

(c) If a Property changes a lot (for example, after a major refurbishment), or its reviews on a platform include stays from before we managed it, we say so next to that Property’s reviews.

6.7 If we stop showing reviews. We may stop showing reviews on our Website altogether. If we do, it will apply to all reviews alike, good and bad. We will not start and stop asking for reviews in order to affect our ratings.

6.8 Summaries. We do not use automated (AI) summaries of reviews. If we ever do, the summary will reflect both the good and the bad in the reviews it covers.

7. We may use your review in our marketing

7.1 We may quote all of your review, or a fair part of it, in our marketing. That includes our Website, social media, emails, brochures and information for property owners. When we do:

(a) we say where it came from: the platform, the Property (if it is a review of a Property) and the month and year;

(b) we show your first name and the first letter of your surname only. We never show your full surname or your photo;

(c) we never change your words or their meaning. If we shorten a quote, we show where words are missing with “…”;

(d) we never choose quotes that give a better picture than our reviews as a whole;

(e) we do not quote reviews of Properties we no longer manage; and

(f) we follow the platform’s own rules on using its reviews.

7.2 If you would rather we did not show or quote your review, tell us. We will remove it from our Website and marketing. It will stay on the platform unless you remove it there.

7.3 Our Privacy Notice explains how we use personal data, including the names shown with reviews: https://www.bluepuffinstays.co.uk/privacy-policy-2/

8. Please report suspicious reviews

8.1 All reviews must meet the Review Standards in section 5.

8.2 If you think a review on our Website, or on one of our pages on a platform, is fake, was written by a Connected Person, was rewarded without saying so, or otherwise breaks section 5, please tell us:

• email info@bluepuffinstays.co.uk with “Review report” in the subject line; or
• use the form on our Contact page (https://www.bluepuffinstays.co.uk/contact-us/) and start your message with “Review report”.

Please tell us which review it is (the platform, the reviewer’s name and the date) and why you think it breaks the rules. Anyone can report a review: guests, Owners, other businesses and regulators.

8.3 You can also report a review to the platform it was left on. Only the platform can remove a review from its own site. Links are in Schedule 1.

8.4 We will acknowledge your report within 2 working days.

8.5 Please don’t use this process to try to remove an honest review you disagree with.

9. How we investigate and deal with suspicious reviews

9.1 If our own checks (clause 5.4), or a report from you or anyone else, suggest that a review does not meet the Review Standards, we will investigate promptly.

9.2 Our investigation starts within 2 working days of the report, or of our own check finding the problem. We aim to finish it within 10 working days. Investigations are carried out by Andrew Telling, Director. If a case involves one of our directors, their family, or a Property owned by a director, their family or a company they control, the other director decides. We record every decision and the reasons. If you reported the review, we will tell you the outcome.

9.3 We may:

(a) remove the review from our Website straight away (or not publish it, if we find the problem first). We do this where we are sure it breaks the Review Standards;

(b) investigate further. This may include checking our booking records, and asking the reviewer, or the person connected with us, for evidence. While we investigate we may hide the review from our Website. That does not mean we have decided it is fake. We only do this where there is clear evidence of a problem, never just because someone disagrees with a review. If we then decide the review breaks the Review Standards, we remove it permanently; and

(c) for a review on a Third Party Review Platform, report it to the platform with our evidence, and ask the reviewer to remove it if they are connected with us. We will hide it from our Website if we decide it breaks our Review Standards, whatever the platform decides.

9.4 If we find that one review from a reviewer breaks the Review Standards, we may remove all reviews from that reviewer from our Website.

9.5 We don’t work out any rating ourselves (clause 6.5), so we can’t take a single review out of a platform’s rating. If we decide a review breaks our Review Standards and the platform hasn’t removed it, we hide it from our Website and report it to the platform with our evidence. Until the platform decides, we don’t quote that platform’s overall rating anywhere.

9.6 If you disagree with our decision about a review, you can complain (see clause 4.5). If you are still unhappy after our final response, or 8 weeks after you first complained, you can ask the Property Redress Scheme (www.theprs.co.uk) to look at it, where its rules allow.

9.7 Owners and other traders. If we find that an Owner, or anyone acting for them, has written, asked for, rewarded or paid for reviews of their Property, we may:

(a) remove those reviews;

(b) put a clear notice on our Website that the Property has benefited from banned reviews;

(c) end our agreement with the Owner, in line with its terms; and/or

(d) tell the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA).

We may also end our arrangement with any subcontractor, contractor or supplier who does this, in line with its terms.

9.8 For how each Third Party Review Platform deals with people who post fake reviews, please see its website (links in Schedule 1).

9.9 If a review is removed from a Third Party Review Platform, or does not meet our Review Standards, we remove it from our Website. We check for this every month.

9.10 We will never threaten anyone with legal action over an honest review.

10. How we reply to reviews

10.1 We aim to reply to reviews on the platforms that allow replies within 7 days, whether the review is good or bad.

10.2 When we reply, we:

(a) are polite and stick to the facts;

(b) thank you for your review, and, if you raised a problem, say what we have done about it;

(c) don’t share personal details about you or your Booking beyond what is already in your review;

(d) never argue, threaten, or press you to change or remove your review; and

(e) never offer anything in return for changing or removing a review.

10.3 Replies are written by our team and signed with their first name and “Blue Puffin Stays”. Owners do not reply on our behalf.

10.4 If you would like to talk about your stay privately, contact us using the details in section 12.

11. Awards, badges and ratings we quote

11.1 Some awards and badges are based on reviews. When we show one, we say exactly what it is and who it was given to:

(a) Booking.com Traveller Review Awards are given to individual Properties. We name the Property and the year.

(b) Airbnb Superhost status is given to our Airbnb host account, not to a Property. We show the month and year it applies to.

(c) When we quote a platform’s overall rating for us, we show it live using that platform’s own tool, or we give the date we checked it.

11.2 For other awards (for example industry awards), we give the exact title, who gave it and the year.

11.3 We stop showing an award won by a Property within 30 days of it leaving our management.

12. Contact us, and changes to this policy

12.1 Contact. Blue Puffin Stays Ltd, Norcote Farmhouse, London Road, Cirencester, Gloucestershire GL7 5RH. Email info@bluepuffinstays.co.uk. Phone or WhatsApp 01242 420010 (+44 1242 420010). Our team is available 08:00 to 20:00, seven days a week. During a stay you can reach us 24 hours a day for a genuine emergency. We are members of PASC UK and the Property Redress Scheme.

12.2 Changes. We review this policy every three months during its first year and then once a year, and whenever we change how we collect or show reviews. Each version is dated, and we keep copies of earlier versions.

12.3 Version control.

Next review due: 1 January 2027.

Schedule 1 — Third Party Review Platforms

Other booking sites we list on (for example Holidu) may collect their own reviews. We do not currently show those reviews on our Website.