1. Principles pertaining to the collection process

The purpose of collection is to gather consumer reviews in an impartial and controlled manner, meaning that:

1. Only a physical person can write a review.
2. Any review must be associated with an author who can be contacted and identified (by e-mail, phone, address).
3. There cannot be any bias in the collection
   • There cannot be any selection of consumers based on the perception of their experience (positive or negative) or their characteristics.
   • Authors with an interest in the product/service in question cannot write a review.
   • Users have the option of allowing their potential customers to write reviews as long as their actual experience is verifiable. In such cases, their reviews must be identified on the posting page as being those of a potential customer (configured during survey creation).
   • A given customer may write a review twice, as long as seven days have elapsed since the last review.
4. Open circuit principle All consumers must be able to write reviews. This is done in several ways within Produced in Belgium:
   • The ‘Write a review’ button found on the posting page of each Produced in Belgium customer (configured in the review manager in the ‘Settings’ tab).
   • The automatic sending of consumer satisfaction questionnaires for user companies by a software partner of Produced in Belgium.
5. Prohibition on purchasing reviews

   Any user of Produced in Belgium is prohibited from collecting or publishing reviews resulting from review purchasing operations, whether conducted by the user or by a third party, with the objective of influencing the overall evaluation of the product/service in question. However, they can opt to use the contest function present in Produced in Belgium in order to encourage reviews.

6. Collection verification process and tools

   Produced in Belgium reserves the right, in case of certification or not, to impose verification processes on the collected content in order to ensure it is compliant with the principles and rules. These processes may combine automated tools with manual verification processes, including cooperation by the user company, if applicable.

   Analyses are based in particular on:

   • Attributes gathered during the consumer’s identification process
   • The user’s behaviour (frequency of review writing, history of contributions, location, etc.)
   • Comparing the score awarded by the consumer with the average score
   • Examining the language used in the review

2. Moderation principles

The purpose of moderation is to ensure the compliance of collected content with European and national standards, and with the General Terms and Conditions of the site as concerns publishing, rejecting or deleting this content.

Principle: All participants and actions related to moderation must be identified and traceable (‘History’ heading in the Produced in Belgium review manager).

1. Moderator responsibilities

   Moderation is conducted with IT tools and/or by humans designated as moderators. They are in charge of strictly applying moderation rules for consumer reviews in order to ensure the impartiality of moderation.

   The skills required and resources necessary for persons occupying the role of moderator are:

   • Native skills in the language in which the review was written
   • Access to all information pertaining to the submission history of the review
   • Being able to entrust the moderation of a consumer review to another moderator (moderator tab manageable by the administrator in the Produced in Belgium review manager) in a traceable way.
2. Prior human moderation

   Human (or manual) moderation is conducted by moderators who read the content of consumer reviews and decide on whether to approve or reject them. A consumer review may be published without prior human moderation: after seven or 30 days, Produced in Belgium automatically publishes non-moderated reviews after these have been automatically analysed for their content (analyses focus on the identification of insults and illegible/incoherent reviews). In case of analyses identifying insults or incoherency, the review will be placed in the ‘blocked review’ tab and can only be posted after human moderation by a moderator.

3. Consumer review moderation period

   A consumer review must be moderated within a defined period. This period must be reasonable to enable posting close to the submission date of the consumer review (non-moderated reviews are automatically published either seven days or one month after submission: go to the ‘Settings’ tab).

4. Retrospective human moderation

   Retrospective human moderation is conducted by moderators; they still have the possibility of responding to reviews as well as requesting their potential deletion.

5. Moderation following author request

   The author of the review may exercise their right of retraction, which stops the posting of their consumer review. It is also possible to request deletion from the posting page. An e-mail confirming the author’s identity will enable the deletion of the review after the fact. It is not possible for the author to edit their review once it has been posted. However, the author of a review may leave a second review as long as seven days have elapsed since the previous review.

6. Rejecting the consumer review

   The author of the consumer review must be informed systematically of the rejection of their review and the reason for it. During this deletion, the moderator is also responsible for informing Produced in Belgium about the legitimate reason for this deletion request. Following this request, the company must give the consumer the possibility to rectify their rejected review and submit it again for moderation.

7. Reasons for rejecting the consumer review

   Consumer reviews may be rejected for the following reasons (list available in the review manager):

   • If the company deems that its civil or criminal liability can be invoked
   • If the text includes slander or insults
   • If the information pertaining to the author’s identity includes slander or insults
   • If the text includes random characters or meaningless word sequences
   • If the text has no correlation with the product/service in question
   • If the review itself or its author shows concrete signs of conflicts of interest
   • If the text is poorly written to the point of being unintelligible
   • If a user makes an inappropriate comment about another text or its author
   • If the text meant to be published includes personal information, such as the last or first name of individuals who are not public figures, a phone number, a precise physical address or an e-mail address
   • If the text contains a credit card number, a social security number, a bank account number or any other information likely to lead to identity theft
   • If the text indicates that the user has not gone through the consumer experience
   • If the text includes a call for legal action
   • If the text mentions websites, hypertext links, URLs, e-mail addresses or phone numbers
   • If the review includes the account of a prospect with no contractual relationship with the company
   • If the text is clearly spam
   • If the information describing the consumer experience is not filled out
8. Moderation and deletion

   The moderation process is used to post or reject a consumer review. This process does not make it possible to edit or delete a review from the database.

3. Principles and requirements pertaining to the posting process

1. The posting of reviews must meet the following criteria and requirements:
   • Display of all reviews (except those rejected or deleted for one of the reasons mentioned in Section 2)
   • Chronological display by default, from most recent to oldest based on the submission date
   • Transparency of calculation principles for score aggregation
   • Quick posting of reviews, whether they are positive, negative or neutral. A review must be posted (or rejected) within one month from the submission date, moderation included
   • Display of information about the author next to the review
   • Possibility of flagging a review as inappropriate, either by the community or representative of the product or service being evaluated
   • Right to public response by the representative of the product or service being assessed for each review
   • Strict supervision of the deletion of reviews (via the Produced in Belgium account manager)
   • Reviews will be automatically removed after a configurable period in the review manager, not exceeding 36 month
2. Criteria for the deletion of reviews after publication

   Upon request by the author of the review, the company must offer them the possibility of removing their review, while maintaining traceability in order to verify the review at a later date.