GTC Online Platform

These General Terms and Conditions govern the use of the Trusted Shops Review Platform (services) as well as the rights and obligations between Trusted Shops SE (hereinafter: us/we) and the recipients of our services, including reviewed companies, reviewers, and persons who otherwise use our services and/or consume content (hereinafter: you/your).

The use of our services is only permitted under these terms and conditions. By using our services, you agree to comply with these terms and conditions.

We reserve the right to change these terms and conditions or extend or reduce our services. The use of our services is subject to a respective valid version of these terms and conditions that can be accessed here.

Platform: The online platform made available by Trusted Shops (Trusted Shops review platform) on which reviewers can share their feedback.

The Trusted Shops Review Platform (also the eTrusted Platform) has a modular structure and enables certain registered Recipients of the service to automatically record, analyse and manage transactional and non-transactional Feedback using the interfaces offered by Trusted Shops at defined touchpoints as well as interfaces with existing IT systems. The Platform can also serve as a means to use other services offered within the Community of Trust.

Recipient: Any natural or legal person who uses our services. This includes the reviewed companies (paying / non-paying Members, Other Reviewed Companies) and persons using our services in any other way, whether by submitting their reviews (reviewer) or by simply consuming (reading) the Content.

Members: Companies that have a paid or free Trusted Shops membership.

Other Reviewed Companies: Companies that have a profile with us but are not our Members.

Content: All Recipient-generated content or information, such as Feedback (see below), regardless of form, be it text, audio, photo or video.

Feedback: Reviews, review comments, pictures, videos or comments in response to reviews.

Content Moderation: All activities that we carry out to check the admissibility of Content in order to identify and combat Content that is illegal or in breach of our Terms and Conditions of Use. This also includes measures relating to the availability, display and accessibility of Content.

General Terms and Conditions: All clauses, regardless of their designation, which regulate the contractual relationship between us and the Recipients. In addition to these General Terms and Conditions of Use for our Services, certain aspects are governed by further terms and conditions to which we refer in relevant places and which are agreed upon separately on a case-by-case basis. This includes in particular the Terms and Conditions of Use for the Trusted Shops Feedback Platform, the Terms of Use for Trusted Shops Services, the eTrusted Platform terms of use, the Additional Conditions for Claiming Profile, the Guidelines for the Use of the Review System, the Trusted Shops Membership Terms, the Trusted Shops License Conditions as well as the Policy on the Trusted Shops Review System and the use of reviews. With regard to these further terms and conditions, the version or any agreed amendments valid at the time of concluding the contract will apply.

Recipients may only use the Platform for lawful purposes and only in compliance with our GTC.

You can at first use our services by consuming (reading) the Content without creating a Recipient account or providing further data.

If, while reading the Content, you conclude that certain Content violates applicable law or our Terms and Conditions of Use, you can submit a relevant notice at any time using the function for submitting notices. In your notice, you must state the reason for the notice, confirm that your information is correct, as well as provide your name and e-mail address.

If you want to post Feedback on our Platform as a reviewer, you must accept the additional Terms and Conditions of Use for the Trusted Shops Feedback Platform aand may be required to provide additional data (e-mail address / reference number). Among other things, it is prohibited to publish Content that is illegal, offensive, defamatory, obscene, fraudulent or otherwise inappropriate.

You also have the option to create a Recipient account via the Trusted Shops Switch to manage your reviews and benefit from our buyer protection (Basic or Plus). The Terms of Use for Trusted Shops Services, apply here, which we refer to separately and which you must accept accordingly when creating the account.

Companies that have a profile on our Review Platform can be rated here without having to claim their profile (Other Reviewed Companies). This is indicated by the note “Unclaimed profile” on the respective profile.

Companies wishing to claim their profile on our Review Platform must take out a free membership with Trusted Shops. The eTrusted Platform terms of use, to which a link is provided in the profile claiming process, will apply in this respect. Claiming the profile enables companies to respond to (comment on) reviews and to edit and verify company-related information. In such a case, a note “claimed profile” is visible on the respective profile.

Companies can also take out a paid membership. This allows them to e.g. collect verified Feedback and use additional services. The profile shows a note “Paid Trusted Shops Member” in such a case.

1. Our Content admissibility guidelines

We have established rules that say what Feedback Content is allowed on our website. You can read the rules here:

• Terms and Conditions of Use for the TS Feedback Platform (in particular items C, D and F. 4)
• Policy on the Trusted Shops Review System and the use of reviews
• Measures for Reviews/Feedback Verification – eTrusted

2. Content Moderation procedure

a) Feedback check after receiving a notice

We provide a system for submitting notices of illegal Content or Content that violates the Terms and Conditions of Use.

aa) Notice submission

Affected persons, organisations and other third parties are entitled to submit a notice of feedback at any time if applicable law or our Terms and Conditions of Use are violated. The notice concerning every review can be submitted directly on the profile by using the notice button. Affected companies (who have claimed a profile or are Members) can also submit notices in the login area.

The individual or the entity submitting a notice will immediately receive a confirmation of receipt if we have the electronic contact details.

bb) Notice examination

All notices that we receive are examined promptly, carefully, in a non-arbitrary and objective manner by the experts from our Review Service Team and partly also by automated means:

• If the notice contains indications for the plausibility of the notified violation of law, we contact the reviewer and give them a deadline to respond.
• Content manifestly violating the law (e.g. insults, abusive criticism, personal data) is deleted immediately.
• If the reviewer claims that the notified Content does not violate the law and, consequently, there are justified doubts about whether any laws have been violated, the response will be forwarded to the notifying person along with the request to provide further information and, if necessary, evidence.
• If there is no response or if the response does not provide any further information about the violation of law or the Terms and Conditions of Use, the Content remains in place.
• If a further response or other evidence shows that there has been a violation, the Content is deleted.
• Content is only checked with regard to the notified violation or manifest legal offences (e.g. insults, abusive criticism, data protection breaches) and is only deleted if the check confirms the alleged or manifest violation.
• Once we have completed our examination, we immediately inform the individual or entity submitting the notice of our decision and of possible legal remedies against refusal decisions. We also provide information if the decision-making process used automated methods.

cc) Statement of reasons for the decision, Article 17 DSA

If, after completing our examination, we conclude that the provided Content is illegal Content or incompatible with our Terms and Conditions of Use, we inform the affected Recipient about

• any restrictions of visibility (e.g. by hiding or deleting the review)
• suspension, termination of the provision of our service
• suspension or termination of the Recipient’s service’s account.

b) Complaint-handling procedure (internal complaint-handling, Article 20 DSA)

For a period of six months following the decision

• whether or not to remove or disable access to or restrict visibility of the Information;
• whether or not to suspend or terminate the provision of the service, in whole or in part, to the Recipients;
• whether or not to suspend or terminate the Recipient’s account;

the affected Recipient can lodge a complaint by e-mail in response to the decision sent by e-mail.

The complaints we receive are processed swiftly, thoroughly and in a non-discriminatory and non-arbitrary manner by the experts from our Review Service Team and not solely by automated means.

Where a complaint contains sufficient grounds to consider that our decision

• not to act upon the notice is unfounded or
• that the information is not illegal and is not incompatible with the General Terms and Conditions,

or contains information indicating

• that the complainant’s conduct does not justify suspension or termination of the service or termination of the account,

we will reverse our decision without undue delay.

After examining the complaint, we inform the complainant without undue delay of our reasoned decision and of the possibility of out-of-court dispute settlement provided for in Article 21 DSA and other available possibilities for redress.

c) Feedback examination before publication in exceptional cases

In certain individual cases and only if Members have earlier booked the “Active Review Management” service, we check reviews for certain specified unauthorised Content before publication. If Active Review Management is used, this is indicated on the review profile. The reviews are only filtered for certain specified unauthorised Content, which may include, among other things, personal data, unauthorised statements about products regulated by special legislation (such as health claims, comments on the consumption of certain goods).

d) Measures to check the authenticity of reviews

We have taken various measures to classify reviews as authentic reviews. These reviews are labelled as “verified reviews”. In addition, there are reviews that are labelled as ”imported” or are not labelled at all. Those reviews have not been posted in compliance with our measures for verifying authenticity. All the measures that we take to verify reviews can be found here: Measures for Reviews/Feedback Verification – eTrusted

e) Fake Review Detection

We have also taken measures to identify fake reviews. These measures are based on an analysis of data, such as e- mail or IP address, when reviews are submitted. If any anomalies are identified during these analyses, the reviews will either be deleted automatically or checked manually by the Review Service Team and they decide whether to delete them.

f) Automated decision-making

We use partially automated procedures to identify illegal Content:

• When posting reviews, Recipients have the option to upload photos. The photos are checked for certain inadmissible Content, such as weapons/violence/images of people, before publication. Trusted Shops has not taken any further measures to filter illegal Content. If any anomalous photos are noticed during the automated process, they are not authorised for publication. Moreover, photos are only displayed publicly if the Member has activated the “images in widgets” function.
• Also some review notices are checked automatically. This includes notices of reviews that are untrue or offensive, although no comment is included, or notices of product reviews that provide no product reference in the reason for the notice.

g) Information on access to out-of-court dispute settlement, Article 21 DSA

Recipients addressed by the decision on Content Moderation or notice submission refusal are entitled to engage any certified out-of-court dispute settlement body. We are obliged to participate in such proceedings and to co-operate with the competent dispute settlement bodies.

We reserve the right to suspend the provision of our services, after prior warning, to Recipients who frequently and manifestly post illegal Content or Content that violates our Terms and Conditions of Use. We may also suspend the processing of notices and complaints after prior warning if the individuals or entities that have submitted notices frequently submit manifestly unfounded notices or complaints.

When searching for specific goods, services or companies in our shop search functionality and when displaying further companies on the review profiles, the displayed companies are selected based on certain criteria, which can be viewed here.

1. Point of contact for national authorities, Article 11 DSA

The following single point of contact for electronic communication has been designated for Member States’ authorities, the Commission and the Board referred to in Article 61 DSA: reviewservice@trustedshops.com.

An automated confirmation of receipt is sent upon receiving an enquiry.

Member States’ authorities, the Commission and the Board referred to in Article 61 DSA can contact us in the following languages:

• Grman
• English

2. Point of contact for Recipients, Article 12 DSA

Recipients of our service can contact us quickly and directly by e-mail at reviewservice@trustedshops.com. We do our best to answer all enquiries as quickly as possible.