Reviews and Endorsements Policy

1. Why this policy exists

On a marketplace of independent instructors, reviews are how a prospective learner judges a course they cannot preview in full. That makes review integrity a consumer-protection issue rather than a cosmetic one. The rules below exist to keep ratings meaningful, and they cut against instructors and learners alike.

This policy is part of the Terms of Service and applies to ratings, written reviews, comments, and any testimonial used to promote a course on this platform.

2. Who can post a review

Reviews may be posted by learners who have access to the course they are reviewing. One review per person per course; if your view changes, update your existing review rather than posting a second one. Reviews are attributed to your public profile name and avatar, so they are not anonymous to other users.

3. What a useful review looks like

There is no required format, but the reviews that help people are specific: what the course covers well, where it falls short, whether the level matched the description, the quality of audio and video, whether materials were current, and who the course would suit. Criticism is welcome and expected. A blunt, fair, negative review is more valuable to this marketplace than a vague positive one.

4. Prohibited reviews

• Fake or fabricated reviews, including reviews of courses you have not taken.
• Paid, traded, or exchanged reviews — buying reviews, selling them, or “review my course and I will review yours.”
• Self-reviews, including reviews posted by an instructor, their staff, family, or an account they control.
• Competitor attacks intended to damage another instructor rather than describe a real experience.
• Coordinated brigading, whether positive or negative.
• Abuse and harassment, including slurs, threats, and attacks on an instructor’s protected characteristics or personal life.
• Personal information about the instructor or anyone else.
• Spam, advertising, referral links, or promotion of other products.
• Course content leaks, including reproducing substantial material in a review.
• Off-topic content — reviews about pricing platform-wide, a payment problem, or a support issue belong in a support message where we can actually fix them.
• Knowingly false factual claims about the instructor or the course.

5. Incentives, free access, and disclosure

Instructors may not condition a discount, refund, bonus material, or any other benefit on leaving a review, on leaving a positive review, or on removing or changing a negative one. Asking learners generally to leave an honest review is fine; “leave five stars and I will send you the bonus module” is not.

If you received free or discounted access in exchange for reviewing a course, say so in the review. That disclosure requirement applies whatever the arrangement was — the point is that readers can weigh it.

6. Rules for instructors

• Do not review your own courses or those of accounts you coordinate with.
• Do not buy, trade, solicit, or generate reviews.
• Do not pressure, threaten, shame, or repeatedly contact a learner over a review.
• Do not offer a refund conditioned on removal of a review. If a refund is warranted, it is warranted regardless of what the learner wrote.
• Do not use enrollment data to contact reviewers off-platform about their review.
• Do not create duplicate course listings to escape an accumulated rating history.
• Do not report reviews as policy violations simply because they are negative.

Review manipulation is one of the clearer routes to losing marketplace access. Related obligations are in the Instructor Terms.

7. Instructor responses

Where the product allows it, responding publicly to a review is often the best answer to criticism — correcting a factual error, explaining context, or noting that a problem has been fixed. Keep responses professional. Do not disclose the learner’s personal information, their purchase details, or private correspondence, and do not use a response to argue with or belittle the reviewer. A calm reply to a harsh review tends to read well to prospective learners; an angry one does not.

8. When we remove or edit reviews

We may remove a review, or the account behind it, when it:

• Violates section 4.
• Is part of a manipulation pattern we identify.
• Contains personal information, illegal content, or infringing material.
• Is the subject of a valid legal demand.

We generally remove rather than edit, so that we are not putting words in a reviewer’s mouth; where a review is largely legitimate but contains personal information, we may redact that portion. We do not commit to a review timeframe or to reviewing every report, and moderation decisions are made on the information available to us.

9. We do not suppress negative reviews

This deserves its own section, because it is the commitment that makes the rest credible. We do not delete negative reviews because an instructor asked us to. We do not hide low ratings, filter them out of averages, bury them beneath positive ones, or offer instructors any paid or unpaid way to have criticism removed. There is no reputation-management arrangement available at any price.

A negative review is removed only if it independently breaks a rule in section 4 — and “it is unfair” or “it hurt my sales” is not one of those rules.

10. How ratings are displayed and ordered

Course ratings are calculated from the reviews submitted by learners. We do not weight ratings by whether an instructor pays us, and we do not adjust a course’s average for commercial reasons. Removed reviews are excluded from the average, as you would expect. Where we order reviews for display, the ordering is based on neutral factors and not on sentiment.

11. Editing and deleting your own review

You can update or delete your own review at any time — and if a course improves, updating is more useful to everyone than leaving a stale complaint. Deleting your account removes or anonymizes your reviews where our implementation supports it.

12. Reviews and refunds are separate

Leaving a negative review does not affect your refund eligibility, and we will never ask you to remove one as a condition of a refund. Equally, a review is not a refund request: if you want your money back, file a request within the 30-day window described in the Refund Policy, because we do not monitor reviews as a support queue.

13. Disputing a review about your course

Instructors who believe a review breaks this policy may report it to Contact form on this website (email address pending owner configuration) with a link and an explanation of which rule it violates. Tell us the specific problem — a claim that is factually false and verifiable, evidence the reviewer never had access, or abusive language. “This review is unfair” is not actionable, and we will say so rather than quietly do nothing.

Claims that a review is defamatory should go to Contact form on this website (email address pending owner configuration) with the specific statements at issue and why they are false. We review those seriously and are equally aware that defamation claims are sometimes used to silence honest criticism.

14. Testimonials and marketing claims

Testimonials used in a course listing must be genuine, must not be edited to change their meaning, and must not be attributed to people who did not give them. If a testimonial describes an unusually good result, do not imply it is typical. Never promise outcomes — earnings, employment, exam results, or accreditation — in a listing or in a quoted testimonial. Statistics about student numbers or results must be accurate and supportable.

15. Endorsements, affiliates, and sponsorship

SmartKourse does not currently operate an affiliate program, paid placement, sponsored listings, or promoted-course advertising. If a course appears prominently on this site, it is not because someone paid us for that position. Should we introduce any paid placement, we will label it clearly and update this policy before launching it.

Instructors who have a material connection to a product or service they recommend inside their course — affiliate commission, sponsorship, or ownership — must disclose it clearly to learners. Undisclosed paid endorsements are prohibited here and may also violate advertising law.

16. Legal context

Consumer-protection law in the United States and elsewhere prohibits fake reviews, undisclosed material connections in endorsements, and the suppression of honest negative reviews, and regulators have become notably more active on all three. Our rules are written to be consistent with that direction, but this page is an operational policy and not legal advice, and it is pending review by qualified counsel like the rest of our policies.

17. Enforcement

Depending on severity we may remove reviews, reset a manipulated rating, warn or suspend accounts, remove courses, withhold payouts pending investigation, or terminate marketplace access. Systematic review manipulation by an instructor is treated as fraud against learners, not as a minor infraction. Learners who post fake or abusive reviews may lose the ability to review.

18. Contact

Report a review or ask about this policy: Contact form on this website (email address pending owner configuration). Legal claims about review content: Contact form on this website (email address pending owner configuration). You can also use the contact form. See also the Acceptable Use Policy and Content Policy.