Negative Reviews

Rules for posting a negative review

When posting a review, BPN subscribers agree to follow the Negative Review Policy and they affirm that their review does meet the following requirements:

1. Must be replying to a current question: Negative reviews are accepted only in response to a relevant question in Parent Q&A.  Unsolicited negative reviews posted directly to the profile of a school or business are not accepted (more info).  In addition, when posting a question to Parent Q&A, you may not include criticisms or solicit negative feedback in the process of asking your question. Criticisms are accepted only in responses, not in questions.  
2. Must demonstrate first-hand experience: Negative reviews must describe the first-hand experience of the BPN subscriber who is posting, or their child's experience, without referring to negative reports heard from friends or other parents at the school.  (Why is first-hand experience required?)  BPN doesn't accept criticism based on a brief visit to a school or class.  In some cases, a negative experience during the application process will be accepted. BPN does not accept reviews from people who have worked at the school or business they are reviewing.
3. Must be a factual account of your experience: Please describe the events that caused you to have a bad experience. Simply saying "I had a bad experience here" without details is not helpful to other parents. Your review should be as objective as possible, without using emotional wording such as "I was shocked" or "worst experience ever!"   See Tips for writing a negative review for examples.  We require and assume that BPN subscribers who post negative reviews are posting a true and accurate account of their own first-hand experience. This is the case 99% of the time, but we do follow up with the subscriber who posted the review if there are any questions later about authenticity or accuracy.
4. Reviews of individuals: Negative reviews are not accepted of individuals who 1) work for you in your home, under your direction, on a regular basis, or 2) work under the direction of someone else. This means BPN does not accept negative reviews of nannies, housekeepers, teachers, playground supervisors, receptionists, waiters, etc. (Why are these not accepted?)
5. Reports of law-breaking or license violations: BPN does not accept negative reviews that seek to report unlawful situations such as license violations, abuse, or malpractice. Please instead report these to the appropriate authority. See "Why can't I post about license violations and illegal acts?" for more information.
6. Other BPN policies: Negative reviews must follow all the policies for "Parent Q&A."  Multiple reviews of the same school or business from the same family are not accepted, and negative reviews must address the original question that was asked -- if someone asked about a specific school, a negative review of a different school is not accepted. 

Tips for writing a negative review

BPN rejects more than half the negative reviews we receive because they do not follow the rules listed above. It takes time for you and for the moderator to revise and resubmit a negative review that meets BPN policy.  The most common reason for a post to be rejected is the wording you used in your review. 

Your review will be most effective, and most helpful for other parents, if it is balanced and objective and gives specific examples, without relying on a "just take my word for it" approach.

Here are some suggestions:

1. Provide some context. Write your review as though you are talking to another parent that you've never met, who is considering this school or business. They don't know anything about you and what you were expecting, so provide some context. For example, if you are reviewing a school, mention how old your child is, or how long they attended the school, or why you picked the school to begin with. If you're reviewing a business, say something about why you chose the business.
2. Be specific. Comments that are too vague are not helpful for other parents. Don't post a review that says only "This camp is not fun for kids."  Instead, specifically describe what the problem was. This can be hard to pin down sometimes, so here are a few suggestions:
   • Did you like the school or business at first?  Did something happen that caused you to change your mind? Describe what happened.
   • Were there small problems that built up over time? Give a few examples.
   • Did the owner ignore a concern you brought up? Say what your concern was and what happened when you raised it.
   • Did your child complain about a specific event at school, or did you observe something that bothered you? Describe it as objectively as you can.
3. No second-hand criticisms: Don't include complaints you've heard from other people, such as saying "many other parents had this problem too."  Please write only about your own or your child's experience. 
4. No loaded words. Don't describe your own emotional reactions, such as saying "we were shocked" or "it was a horrible experience."  This can be off-putting to many people so they may discount your advice as a result. Instead, describe what happened as objectively as you can.
5. No name-calling. Don't criticize anyone's personal qualities, such as calling someone "incompetent" or saying a school is "biased."   Words like this mean different things to different people. The person reading your review doesn't know you, so they don't know if your definition aligns with their own.  Instead, give specific examples of what happened that caused you to come to this conclusion, as objectively as possible. Other parents will then have a clear picture of what the problem is, and they can make up their own mind whether the school would be a good fit for their own child.
6. Don't ramble. Parents are busy, and they may not have time to read a long post, so be as concise as you can while still describing the events. Don't write a laundry list of complaints -- it can come across as venting, and can give the impression of a hard-to-please person who would be unhappy in any situation.  Briefly describe your observations, in neutral language, and leave it to readers to draw their own conclusions.

Feel free to contact us if you have questions about how to phrase your review so it meets these guidelines. We usually respond within a day or two.

Why we have this policy

BPN's main goal is to be helpful to parents. It is useful for parents to read about other parents' bad experiences as well as the good so they can make better decisions. However, we don't want BPN to be a platform for venting, for spreading rumors and gossip, or for threatening a school or business with posting bad reviews. This policy is intended to balance usefulness for parents with fairness to schools and businesses in the community. BPN moderators make every effort to make sure that all negative reviews meet this policy and that the policy is applied fairly.

About negative reviews on the BPN website

All posts are reviewed by a BPN moderator before being published to make sure they follow policy. Once we've determined that a negative review meets our policy, we do not remove the review from our website except in very specific cases.  However, please keep in mind that the BPN website has been online since 1995, and we are continually updating our policies. Therefore, it is possible that some older reviews may conflict with the current policy.  Also, being human,  we may occasionally overlook a review that does not meet BPN policy despite our best efforts. Please Contact Us to tell us about a review on our website that doesn't appear to meet the current policy.

If your school or business has a negative review

If your school or business is reviewed on our website, you can respond to the review or ask us to remove reviews as outlined below.

If there is a negative review of your business on BPN that contains factual errors or misinformation, or doesn't meet our policy in some other way, please Contact Us to notify us and we will investigate. We usually reply within 24 hours.

Your options if your business has a negative review on BPN:

1. Post a response. You can write a response to the review and we'll add it to the website directly following the negative review. Responding to a negative review can be a good opportunity not only to set the record straight, but also to let parents know more about your school or business. Contact Us if you would like us to post a response. If you are prohibited from responding to a negative review because of privacy laws such as HIPAA or some other professional regulation, let us know about this.
2. Older, non-compliant review.  Please Contact Us and we will edit or remove the review if it does not meet our current policy.
3. Remove all reviews. You can decline to be reviewed on BPN. We'll remove all posts about your business that are currently on the website, whether good or bad. We will replace each review with a note that says: "A review of [your company name] was removed because this business asked not to be reviewed on Berkeley Parents Network."  We will not accept further posts about your business. Please Contact Us to request this.

Why don't you accept negative "unsolicited" reviews?

Most reviews on BPN's website were posted in response to a question from another parent. BPN also accepts "unsolicited reviews" in a few specific situations. For example, parents can post unsolicited reviews directly to the profile page of a school, camp, class, pediatrician or other child-related business.  But these unsolicited reviews cannot contain criticism. We used to accept unsolicited negative reviews, but we stopped a few years ago after receiving too many heat-of the-moment rants. These aren't useful for other parents.  We also heard from schools and daycares about parents threatening to post a bad review on BPN if the school didn't do what the parent wanted. We didn't think that was fair.  So we decided to stop accepting negative reviews unless they were responding to a question.

Exceptions: 

1. If you posted a positive review in the past, and your opinion has now changed, you can post an update to your previous review. Please contact us for instructions about how to post your update. (Note: BPN does not remove reviews, so posting an update is the only remedy we can offer.) 
2. In very rare cases an unsolicited negative review will be accepted if BPN decides that the review's usefulness for other parents overrides our restrictions on negative reviews. For example, we may accept an unsolicited negative review that points out significant license violations for a childcare facility that currently has only positive reviews on BPN. The review must meet all the other provisions of the negative review policy. 

Why don't you accept negative reviews of individuals?

Teachers and employees typically do not have decision-making privileges at their school or business, so they may have little control over practices in their workplace. It isn't fair to publish negative reviews about them if they don't have the power to correct the bad situation described in the review. If you don't think they should be employed at the school or business in the first place, the right person to complain to is the person who can fire them - the director, principal, or boss.

As for people who work in your home, BPN does not wish to publicize the names of private individuals who have not chosen to be public. Furthermore, a negative review about someone who works in your home might say more about your own personal preferences and beliefs than about whether they'd be satisfactory for another parent, so this type of review is not helpful for other parents. 

See How BPN Defines a Business for the difference between "individual" and "business."

Why can't I post a review of a school my child didn't attend?

In its early years BPN accepted reviews of schools regardless of whether the person's child had attended the school. But we stopped doing that after learning a few things over the years by trial-and-error:

1. We found we were sometimes publishing gossip on our website. For example a poster would say they "heard" a school has a bullying problem, or post details about an upsetting event they heard about from a friend. BPN does not have the resources to investigate reports like this and make sure what people post is accurate. Because of the damage that could be caused by a negative comment about a school, we only accept posts from parents who describe actual first-hand experience.
2. We heard from parents whose kids attended and liked a school, who felt it was unfair for BPN to publish bad reviews from parents whose kids had never actually attended the school, but had visited for a short time or heard negative reports about it from friends. We agree this is not fair, especially in view of a negative review's disproportionate effect on the overall impression of a school, as discussed above. 
3. We occasionally inadvertently published a negative review of a school or summer camp that turned out to have been written by disgruntled former employee who wanted to retaliate. So we now require a description of a parent's first-hand experience.

Why can't I post about license violations or illegal acts?

BPN does not accept negative reviews that report license violations, abuse or neglect, illegal acts, malpractice, or any other activities that are regulated by law.  If you think someone has broken the law, violated the terms of their license, or engaged in any other activity that could result in legal action, please contact the proper authority such as the local police, Child Protective Services, or the provider's licensing agency. If you need help identifying the proper agency to report this to, you may post your question in Parent Q&A or ask the moderator.  

BPN has no way to investigate complaints to make sure they are true, nor can BPN take any action that will remedy the situation. Schools are overseen by school boards,  preschools and daycares are licensed by a state agency. These agencies have the authority to investigate problems and make changes.  BPN does not have this power. Therefore we ask parents to use these authorities to correct dangerous or illegal problems rather than post about them on BPN.  

BPN also does not accept posts that describe past or pending legal actions and violations. We do not have the resources to confirm or deny information like this, and we do not want to publicize unverified information that is potentially very damaging to a local business.

Childcare licensing violations: BPN only accepts posts about licensed childcare and preschool programs, whether the reviews are positive or negative. Each childcare facility that has a profile page on BPN has a link to its licensing record in the state's database, so parents looking for childcare can review the state's records for that facility and find out about any past complaints or citations. BPN accepts negative reviews that refer to past violations that are available online in the state's database, as long as the review otherwise meets our policies. However, we do not accept descriptions of new violations. If you believe your daycare has violated the terms of its license, such as safety problems, unauthorized care-givers, exceeding its capacity, or neglect or abuse, please contact the State's Community Care Licensing to file a complaint. This agency is equipped and authorized to investigate problems, take any needed actions, and record violations in a public database that all parents can view. See About Childcare Licensing for information about how to file a complaint.