1. Our Editorial Mission
Aisle Advisor™ exists to protect couples making $10,000 to $100,000 wedding vendor decisions. We are an independent consumer protection platform, not a vendor marketplace.
Our standards are built so reviews stay honest, verified, and useful. We do not accept payment from vendors to influence review visibility, placement, or removal.
2. Review Standards
What makes a publishable review
- It must come from a couple with documented vendor interaction (contract, booking confirmation, or invoice).
- It must describe the vendor's professional wedding services, not unrelated personal grievances.
- It must include category scores: Contract Clarity, Communication, Delivery, Crisis Handling, and Value (0 to 20 each).
- It may include a written narrative describing the experience.
- It may include incident classifications such as no-show, never delivered, bait-and-switch, hidden fees, or lawsuit threats.
What we do not publish
- Reviews containing personally identifiable information about other couples.
- Content with credible threats of violence.
- Content unrelated to a vendor's professional wedding services.
- Spam, duplicate submissions, or bot-generated content.
- Reviews that fail document verification with confidence below 40%.
3. Verification Process
- Every review requires document verification through a contract, booking confirmation, or invoice upload.
- We use documents only to verify the reviewer had a real vendor interaction.
- Verification documents are deleted within 24 hours of processing and are not retained.
- Vendor names are checked with fuzzy matching against our vendor database.
- Confidence model: 75%+ auto-verified, 40-75% admin review, below 40% auto-rejected.
- Reviewer anonymity is preserved end-to-end: no reviewer accounts and no stored personally identifying data.
4. The No-Suppression Promise
Vendors cannot pay to remove, hide, downrank, or suppress reviews. Period.
This is the platform's foundational principle. Reviews are permanent unless they are proven fabricated, defamatory through provably false factual claims, or generated by bot or spam systems.
A harsh negative review is not grounds for removal if it reflects a genuine experience. Our approach aligns with the Consumer Review Fairness Act (2016) and Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
The Certified Vendor program ($299/year) offers verified badges and expanded profiles only. It never provides review suppression or editorial influence.
5. Vendor Response Rights
- Verified vendors can post a public response to any review on their profile.
- Responses are moderated; threatening or intimidating language may be removed.
- Vendors cannot directly contact reviewers. Reviewer anonymity is absolute.
- Vendors may flag suspected fabricated reviews for investigation, but flagging does not hide the review during review.
- Repeated threatening language in vendor responses is tracked and may be reflected on a vendor profile.
6. Score Methodology
- Overall scores are calculated from the five category scores across all verified reviews.
- Score ranges: 85-100 Excellent, 70-84 Good, 50-69 Warning, and 0-49 Danger.
- Red flags are generated when multiple reviews report the same incident type (for example: multiple couples reporting never receiving photos).
- Scores update in real time as new verified reviews are submitted.
- We do not apply weighting, boosting, or editorial manipulation. Scores are direct mathematical aggregations of verified reviewer input.
7. AI Contract Scanner Disclosures
- The contract scanner uses automated pattern detection to flag potentially problematic clauses.
- Scanner output is informational only and does not constitute legal advice.
- Couples should consult a licensed attorney before making legal decisions based on scan results.
- The scanner checks for common issues, including potentially unlawful review clauses under the Consumer Review Fairness Act, hidden fees, one-sided liability terms, and unconscionable language.
- Scan results are not stored unless a couple explicitly opts to share findings on a vendor profile.
8. Content Moderation Process
- Reviews publish after verification. We do not pre-edit opinions or narratives before publication.
- Post-publication moderation may be triggered by vendor flags, automated detection, or administrator review.
- Moderation decisions are made by platform administrators, not vendors.
- We do not partially edit review text. Content is left as-is or removed in full.
- Removal decisions are logged and auditable.
9. Editorial Independence
- We maintain no financial arrangement with any vendor that influences editorial decisions.
- Certified Vendor status does not include review suppression, score manipulation, or moderation priority.
- No vendor, advertiser, or third party can purchase favorable placement in review content or score outcomes.
- Our revenue model is intentionally structured so payment does not grant editorial influence.
10. Corrections and Updates
- If we identify factual errors in our own editorial content, we correct them and note the update.
- User reviews are not edited by the platform and remain in the reviewer's own words.
- This Editorial Policy may evolve with the platform. Material changes are reflected by the updated date at the top of this page.