Review Guidelines

What makes a review publishable

Reviews must describe a genuine first-hand experience with the florist: an order you placed, flowers you received, or a visit you made. We moderate every review before it publishes. No review can be bought, boosted, or suppressed by payment. A florist's paid features affect the visibility of its listing, never its ratings or the order its reviews appear in.

What we decline

What makes a review useful

Say what you ordered and when, what it cost, whether it arrived on time, and how it looked next to what was promised. If something went wrong, say how the shop responded when you told them. A four-star review with a specific complaint helps the next reader more than five stars and "great!".

Florists can respond

A claimed listing can reply publicly to any review once. Replies go through the same moderation. A reply that argues with the customer rarely helps a shop; one that says what changed usually does.

Editing and removing a review

Use the contact page and tell us the shop and the name you reviewed under. We will confirm with the email you gave when you wrote it, then edit or remove it. We do not remove honest negative reviews at a florist's request; we do remove reviews that break the rules above whoever asks.

Ratings

A listing's star rating is the plain average of its published reviews. There is no weighting, no recency boost, and no minimum before it shows. New shops show "no reviews yet" rather than an invented score.

Two example reviews, side by side

The rules above are easier to follow with a picture of what they produce. Both reviews below are made up for illustration; neither is about a real shop, and neither has ever been published on the site.

A useful review, four stars. "Ordered a birthday arrangement by phone on a Tuesday for Thursday delivery across town, about $75 with delivery. The shop suggested seasonal stems instead of the peonies I asked for, since they were out of season, and the arrangement that arrived matched the description: mostly garden roses and ranunculus in a low glass vase. It arrived at 4:30, later than the 'by early afternoon' I was told, which mattered because my mother had left for an appointment. I called and the owner apologized and offered a discount on my next order. Would order again, would ask for a firm window next time."

A useless review, one star. "Terrible. Never again. Don't waste your money."

The first tells the next reader what was ordered, what it cost, what was promised, what arrived, what went wrong and how the shop handled it. A reader can decide whether a late afternoon delivery would bother them. The second tells the reader nothing except that someone was angry, and a moderator has no way to tell it apart from a competitor's spite. We would publish the first as written. We would send the second back with a request to say what actually happened.

How to choose a star rating

Stars are a summary, not a mood. Pick the number that matches the whole experience, then let the text explain it.

Do not rate a shop on price alone. Flowers cost what they cost in a given town in a given season; rate whether you got what you paid for.

Reviewing sympathy and wedding orders

These are the orders where a florist's work matters most and where a reviewer's feelings run highest, so please write with extra care. For a sympathy arrangement, say whether it reached the funeral home or the family's house by the time of the service, whether the card was attached and legible, and whether the piece matched what the shop described over the phone. Leave out the name of the deceased and the family; "arrived at the funeral home before the 10 a.m. service" is enough.

For a wedding, the helpful details are how far ahead you booked, whether the shop held a consultation, whether the flowers delivered matched the proposal in variety and quantity, whether setup happened on time, and how the shop handled a change in the plan. Wedding flowers are usually a large order, so a review that names the approximate budget helps the next couple more than one that does not. Because wedding disputes can involve a lot of money, write your review after the shop has had a fair chance to respond to any complaint, and say in the review whether it did.

Good flowers, late delivery

This is the most common mixed experience we see, and it deserves its own paragraph. Rate it honestly as a mixed experience, usually three or four stars, and separate the two things in the text: the arrangement was as described, and it arrived after the window you were given. Say what the window was and when it actually arrived, because "late" means different things to a birthday and a funeral. Say whether you called and what the shop said. A shop that answers the phone, tells you where the driver is and apologizes has done most of what a shop can do on a bad traffic day, and readers should know that. A shop that does not answer has not.

If the flowers were ordered for a specific hour and missed it entirely, that is not a late delivery, it is a failed one, and a lower rating is fair.

Visiting in person versus ordering from a distance

Both count, and both are worth reviewing, but say which it was. If you walked in, you saw the cooler, the staff and the shop itself, and you can describe how a wrapped bouquet was put together in front of you. If you ordered by phone or on the shop's own website from another state for delivery to someone local, you likely never saw the flowers; the recipient did. That is a fine basis for a review, as long as the review says what you actually know (what you ordered, what you were told, what the recipient reported and any photo they sent you) rather than describing an arrangement you never saw as if you had. "My aunt said it was beautiful" is a legitimate part of a remote order review; it is not the whole of one.

A reminder from the section above about the wrong business: if you ordered through a website that turned out not to be the shop itself, the review belongs to that website, not to the local florist that fulfilled or never saw the order. The guides explain how to tell the difference before you order.

Conflicts of interest

Do not review a shop you own, work at, used to work at, or are related to the owner of, even if the review is honest and even if you paid. Do not review a competitor, and do not ask friends or family to review either your shop or a rival's. A florist that reviews itself or a competitor loses its paid features when we find it, and we do look: reviews that arrive in clusters, from the same connection, or in language that matches a shop's own website are checked closely. If you received a discount or a free arrangement in exchange for a review, say so in the review, and expect it to be declined, because a purchased review is not a first-hand experience with the shop as a customer.

A florist who wants more reviews has one legitimate route: ask satisfied customers, after the order, to write one in their own words, and point them here. Asking is fine. Rewarding, scripting or filtering who gets asked is not.

How moderation decisions are made and how to appeal

Every review waits in a queue until a person reads it. The moderator checks it against the rules on this page, looks at whether it describes a first-hand experience with the right shop, and looks for signs of a conflict of interest or automation. Then it is published, sent back with a note asking for a change, or declined. The decision is about the rules, never about whether the review is positive or negative; a scathing review that describes a real order will publish, and a glowing one that reads like the shop's own copy will not.

If your review was declined and you think the moderator got it wrong, use the contact page, name the shop and the display name you used, and tell us what you think we missed. A different person reviews the appeal. If a florist believes a published review breaks these rules, the same route applies, with the same standard: we remove reviews that break the rules, and we keep honest ones however uncomfortable. We will not tell a florist who wrote a review beyond what is already published. Answers to the questions we hear most are in the FAQ.

How florists should respond

A claimed listing can reply publicly to each review once, and that single reply is often the most-read text on the page, so use it well. Thank the customer for a good review in a sentence, and add one specific detail that shows you remember the order. For a critical review, the pattern that works is short: acknowledge what went wrong in plain words, say what you did or offered to fix it, and say what changed so it does not happen again. Then stop.

What does not work: arguing about the facts, calling the customer a liar, posting details of their order or their identity, blaming the driver, the weather or the recipient, or writing three paragraphs. A reply is read by future customers, not by the reviewer, and future customers are judging how you handle problems, not who was right. Replies go through the same moderation as reviews, and a reply that attacks a customer will be declined. If you think the review is fake or breaks the rules, do not reply to it; report it through the contact page instead. Signing up to reply is free at /portal/signup.

Photos are not supported, so describe instead

Reviews on RateAFlorist are text only. We do not accept photo uploads with reviews, partly to keep the site fast and partly because a photo of an arrangement with a stranger's kitchen behind it raises privacy questions we would rather avoid. Describe what you saw instead: the flower varieties if you know them, the colors, the size in relation to the vase or a familiar object, whether stems were fresh or already drooping, and how it compared to what the shop showed or told you. "A dozen red roses, tightly budded, in a clear cylinder vase about a foot tall, with eucalyptus" tells the next reader more than most photos would.

A review is not a listing correction

A review describes an experience. A listing correction fixes a fact: the shop moved, the phone number changed, it closed on Sundays, it closed for good, or the listing is actually a call center rather than a shop. Corrections do not belong in the review box, because they would be published as an opinion and averaged into a rating, which helps nobody. Send them through the contact page, or, if you are the florist, fix them yourself in the portal. We check corrections and apply them to the listing itself, and we remove listings that turn out not to be real shops. If your review contains both an experience and a correction, we will publish the experience and route the correction separately.