Last updated: July 10, 2026

Review Guidelines

Annoyed.com exists so real customers can warn real people. That only works if every grievance here is genuine. These guidelines are the deal you make with every other fed-up person on the site: what you read here actually happened to the person who wrote it.

1. Write about what happened to you

• Every grievance must describe a firsthand experience — something you personally went through as a customer or would-be customer. An experience doesn’t require a purchase: a sales call, a support chat, a delivery that never came, or an abandoned checkout all count.
• Don’t file grievances on behalf of someone else. If it happened to your friend, let your friend vent — that’s what the site is for.
• One grievance per experience. If the same company wrongs you again, that’s a new grievance. Don’t file duplicates of the same incident to inflate a company’s numbers.
• Rate honestly on the Fume Scale. “Mildly irked” is a legitimate rating — not everything is Volcanic, and the scale only means something if it’s used truthfully.

2. Stick to the facts

• Facts land harder than adjectives, and they also keep you out of trouble. Dates, amounts, order numbers, what they said versus what they did.
• You are legally responsible for what you post. Don’t state as fact something you can’t back up. “My refund took 62 days” is a fact. “This company is running a criminal scam” is an accusation — unless you can prove it, keep it as your opinion or leave it out.
• Exaggeration for comic effect is part of venting; we get it. But the core of your story — what happened, when, and what it cost you — must be true.

3. Receipts make you credible

• Upload a receipt, invoice, or order confirmation and your grievance gets the Receipts verified badge, ranks higher, and gets read first. Proof files are stored privately and are never published — readers only ever see the badge.
• Photo and video evidence attached to your story is public. Before you upload, blur or crop anything you don’t want the internet to see: your address, card numbers, phone numbers, other people’s faces.
• Only upload evidence you took or own. Don’t post someone else’s photos, screenshots of private conversations with uninvolved people, or copyrighted material.

4. No fakes, no incentives, no conflicts

Fake reviews aren’t just against our rules — under the U.S. Federal Trade Commission’s Rule on Consumer Reviews and Testimonials (16 C.F.R. Part 465), writing, buying, or selling fake reviews can carry civil penalties of tens of thousands of dollars per violation. We enforce this without exceptions:

• No invented experiences. Never file a grievance about a company you haven’t dealt with — including AI-generated or templated stories.
• No paid or incentivized grievances. If anyone — including a competitor of the company you’re reviewing — offered you money, discounts, or anything else to write or slant a grievance, you can’t post it.
• No conflicts of interest. Don’t review your own employer, your former employer, your family’s business, or a competitor of a business you own or work for. Employment disputes belong on employment sites, not here.
• No vote manipulation. “Same happened to me” means it happened to you. Don’t coordinate, buy, or bot votes.

Fakes get deleted, fakers get banned, and where the law was broken we cooperate with regulators.

5. Go after companies, not people

• Name the company, the product, the policy. Don’t name front-line employees — the agent who read you the script didn’t write it. Referring to a role (“the store manager”, “their support chatbot”) is fine. Executives speaking publicly for the company may be named in that capacity.
• Never post anyone’s personal information: names of non-public individuals, phone numbers, home addresses, license plates, faces of bystanders.
• No threats, harassment, hate speech, or slurs — aimed at anyone, including the company. You can call a refund policy hostile; you can’t be hostile to humans.

6. Keep it relevant

• Grievances are about consumer experiences. Political commentary, boycott campaigns unrelated to your own experience, and disputes about a company’s views rather than its products belong elsewhere.
• No spam, ads, affiliate links, or self-promotion.

7. Anonymous grievances

You can publish anonymously, and sometimes that’s the right call. Be aware of the trade-off we show on every anonymous grievance: they’re labeled, readers trust them less, and they rank lower. Every rule on this page applies to anonymous grievances too — anonymity hides your name from readers, not from our moderation.

8. What companies can’t do here

• Companies can’t respond to grievances, can’t pay to remove or bury them, and can’t buy placement. That’s the founding design of the site, and it’s also what U.S. law expects: selectively suppressing negative reviews is prohibited under the FTC’s review rule.
• Under the Consumer Review Fairness Act, form-contract clauses that ban or penalize honest reviews (“gag clauses”) are void. If a company threatens you over an honest grievance or points to such a clause, tell us at legal@annoyed.com.
• Companies with a genuine legal concern about specific content (impersonation, disclosed trade secrets, court orders) can write to legal@annoyed.com. Disliking a truthful grievance is not a legal concern.

9. Moderation, reporting, and appeals

• We review reported content in good faith and remove what breaks these guidelines or the law. We don’t edit grievances — we publish them or we don’t.
• Anyone can report content by emailing support@annoyed.com with a link and the reason.
• If your grievance was removed and you think we got it wrong, reply to the removal notice or email support — a human will re-review it.
• Repeat or serious violations (fake reviews, doxxing, threats) end in a permanent ban.

These guidelines are part of our Terms & Conditions. How we handle your data — including proof-of-purchase files — is covered in the Privacy Policy.