Community Guidelines and Reviews Policy

Part 1: Community Guidelines

These guidelines apply to homeowners and contractors alike, everywhere on OakTend: messages, reviews, profiles, job posts, and photos.

1. Treat people with respect

Be honest and be civil. Disagreements happen, especially about the price or quality of home repair work, but harassment, threats, and abuse are not allowed in any message, review, or profile.

2. No discrimination

OakTend does not tolerate discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, national origin, ancestry, disability, marital status, or any other characteristic protected under California's Unruh Civil Rights Act or the federal Fair Housing Act. This applies to how homeowners treat pros, how pros treat homeowners, and how anyone describes another person on the platform.

3. No scams or off-platform run-arounds

Do not use OakTend to run a scam, ask for money under false pretenses, or pressure someone to move a conversation off OakTend to avoid our safety and reporting tools. Do not scrape, harvest, or collect other users' contact information for outside use.

4. No fake accounts

Each account should represent a real person or a real business. Do not create duplicate accounts to get around a suspension, to leave more than one (1) review for the same job, or to inflate a business's presence on the platform.

5. Be honest about your license and work

Contractors may not claim to be licensed, insured, or bonded if they are not, and may not represent OakTend's license lookup or self-reported insurance information as more than what it is. See the Terms of Service for exactly what "License verified" and "Insurance (self-reported)" mean.

6. Respect other people's privacy and photos

Do not post someone else's private information, or photos of someone else's home, without their permission. A homeowner's photos of their own home belong to them. A contractor needs the homeowner's permission to post job or project photos publicly.

7. No spam or illegal content

Do not post advertising unrelated to a home services job, repeated unsolicited messages, or anything illegal.

8. Keep messaging professional

In-app messages should stay focused on the job. Harassment, hate speech, and unwanted sexual content are never allowed, in messages or anywhere else.

9. What we automatically moderate

Some of this is enforced by software before a human ever sees it:

• Slurs and hate speech in messages are masked and automatically flagged for review.
• Profanity in messages is masked automatically. It is not automatically flagged unless it is a slur.
• Contact information in reviews (a phone number or email address) is not allowed; a review containing one is rejected before it is posted, and the reviewer is asked to remove it and resubmit.
• Business names and profile "about" text are checked the same way: a name or bio containing a phone number, email address, or masked profanity is rejected before it can be saved.

This filtering is a first layer, not a replacement for human review. It can occasionally flag something that was not actually a problem, for example a business name containing a surname the filter does not recognize. If that happens to you, contact support@oaktend.com.

10. Block and report

Any user can block another user, which stops further messages between the two of you. Any signed-in user can report a review or a contractor profile for a specific reason (for example, harassment, a fake review, or discriminatory content). Reports go into a moderation inbox we review. To prevent abuse of the reporting tool itself, there is a limit on how many reports one account can file per hour.

11. Enforcement

Depending on the severity and history of a violation, we may:

1. Issue a warning.
2. Remove the specific content (a message, review, photo, or profile text).
3. Suspend the account temporarily.
4. Terminate the account permanently.

Serious violations (harassment, discrimination, fraud, repeated fake accounts) can skip straight to suspension or termination without a warning first.

12. Appeals

If you believe your content was removed, or your account was suspended or terminated, in error, email support@oaktend.com and explain what happened. We will look into it.

Part 2: Reviews Policy

This section explains our reviews policy in detail. It is written to comply with the FTC's Consumer Reviews and Testimonials Rule (16 C.F.R. Part 465) and California's Unfair Competition Law (Business and Professions Code section 17200).

13. Who may leave a review

Only a homeowner whose job a contractor was actually assigned to may review that contractor, and only for that job, one (1) review per job. This is enforced in the database, not just as a policy: the review-submission function checks that the reviewer owns the property and the job before accepting a review, and independently checks for signs the reviewer and contractor are linked accounts. We do not accept reviews from people who did not actually hire the contractor through OakTend for that job.

14. What a review may not contain

A review may not contain a phone number, email address, slur, or masked profanity; if it does, it is rejected before it is posted and the reviewer is shown a message asking them to edit it. A review should be about the reviewer's own experience with that contractor on that job.

15. We never pay for reviews or manipulate ratings

We do not pay for reviews, and we do not offer any incentive, discount, or benefit conditioned on a homeowner leaving a positive review, or any review at all. A contractor cannot buy or improve their star rating or their position in a review list by paying more, subscribing to Pro membership, or winning more jobs. The rating shown is the real average of real reviews, and the review list is always newest first, with no paid placement.

16. We never suppress or delay negative reviews

We do not hide, delay, or bury negative reviews. A contractor cannot make a negative review disappear by paying us, complaining to us, or disputing the rating. The only reason a review is removed is a guideline violation listed below, and we tell the reviewer why.

17. Contractors cannot remove reviews

A contractor cannot delete or edit a homeowner's review. We plan to let a contractor post one (1) public response to a review, visible under it, to give their side of the story. Until that is available, a contractor can ask us to look at a review by writing to support@oaktend.com.

18. When we do remove a review, and how we tell you

We remove a review only for one of these reasons: it contains contact information, profanity or a slur our filter catches, harassment, content unrelated to the job, or evidence the review is fake (for example, from an account with no real relationship to the job). When we remove a review for one of these reasons, we tell the reviewer why.

19. Reporting a review

Anyone signed in can report a specific review using the report tool on that review, choosing a reason and, optionally, adding a note. Reports go to our moderation inbox.

20. No review gating

We do not show a "how was your experience" prompt privately to unhappy customers while only inviting happy customers to post a public review. Every homeowner eligible to review a job (Section 13) gets the same invitation and the same public posting process, regardless of how they answer any preliminary question.

21. Verified job labeling

We may label a review as coming from a verified job, meaning our records show the reviewer actually had that job assigned to that contractor through OakTend. This label reflects platform records, not a statement about the contractor's work quality.

22. Insider reviews are prohibited and must be disclosed

A contractor, their employee, or a close family member may not review that contractor's own business. If a close personal or business connection between a reviewer and a contractor exists and was not caught by our ownership and job checks, it must be disclosed in the review itself. Violating this is grounds for review removal and account action under the enforcement ladder above.

23. No buying or selling reviews

Reviews, review placement, and star ratings are not for sale in any form, directly or through a bundled perk, membership tier, or side arrangement.

24. No fake testimonials in our own marketing

Any homeowner or contractor testimonial we use in OakTend's own marketing is a real quote from a real user, used with their permission. We do not write, edit the substance of, or fabricate testimonials.

25. Questions

Questions about these guidelines or the reviews policy, or reports that need a person's attention, can go to support@oaktend.com.