Community rules

Seven things are not allowed on Surrounders: harassment or abuse, discrimination, spam, fake reviews or review manipulation, illegal services, off-platform payment scams, and sharing someone else's personal data. The rules apply equally to customers and professionals, and they cover everything you do on the platform: listings, chat, reviews, and booking requests.

In slightly more detail:

• Harassment and abuse. Threats, insults, or unwanted contact that continues after someone has made it clear it is unwelcome.
• Discrimination. Discriminatory requirements in listings or requests, in either direction.
• Spam. Mass messages, unsolicited promotion, or using chat as an advertising channel.
• Fake reviews and manipulation. Reviews are tied to completed bookings for a reason; gaming them in any way breaks the platform for everyone.
• Illegal services. Nothing illegal may be offered or requested.
• Off-platform payment scams. Deposits demanded and vanished, bait-and-switch pricing, redirecting people to fraudulent payment links.
• Sharing personal data. Publishing anyone's address, phone number, or other personal details, in reviews, chat, or anywhere else.

Breaking these rules leads to content removal, a warning, or suspension, depending on what our team finds when a report is reviewed. If you see any of it, report from the three-dot menu or at [email protected].

Three rules govern reviews on Surrounders: describe your honest, real experience, keep offensive content out, and never include personal data such as addresses or phone numbers. The structural rules matter too: a review requires a completed booking, must be posted within 90 days of completion, and cannot be edited or deleted afterward, so write it carefully.

The details:

• One review per booking per author, a rating from 1 to 5 plus up to 2000 characters of text.
• Reviews go both directions; pros review customers as well.
• Reviews are not anonymous. Your name is shown, which is part of why they are worth trusting.
• The reviewed pro can post one public reply, visible to everyone. There is no back-and-forth thread.
• The no-editing rule is a feature, not a limitation: nobody can pressure you into softening a review after the fact, because softening it is impossible.

Fake reviews and review manipulation of any kind are against the rules, full stop, and they are among the behaviors that can get an account suspended.

If you see a review that breaks these rules, report it (anyone except its author can). Our team reviews reports, and rule-breaking reviews can be hidden. Disagreeing with an opinion is not grounds for removal; honest negative reviews stay.

Yes. Once you have connected with someone, exchanging numbers and moving to phone or WhatsApp is allowed, and for established customer-pro relationships it is completely normal. The trade-off is that Surrounders' safety features, meaning chat history, booking-tied reviews, blocking, and reports, only cover what happens inside the platform, which is why we discourage moving off early.

For the first bookings with someone new, the in-app chat earns its keep: it records what was agreed about price, time, and scope, and system messages log booking events automatically, in your language. If anything is later disputed, the record exists.

A few points worth keeping in mind:

• Surrounders never shows your phone number to anyone. If a number changes hands, it is because one of you chose to share it.
• Someone pushing hard to move off-platform in the very first conversation, especially toward payment links, is displaying a known scam pattern. No rush is a good sign.
• Even when the chatting moves to WhatsApp, booking through the platform keeps your calendar, reminders, and the ability to review working.

So: allowed, normal eventually, unwise immediately. Let the platform do its job while you are still deciding whether you trust the person, then do whatever suits you both.

Yes. Any account, customer or pro, can be suspended for the behavior our rules prohibit: harassment or abuse, discrimination, spam, fake reviews or review manipulation, offering illegal services, off-platform payment scams, and sharing other people's personal data. Suspension follows a review by our team, usually prompted by reports, and it removes the account's access to the platform.

Suspension is the heaviest of the three responses; content removal and warnings handle lighter cases, and the team picks whichever fits what the review actually found. There is no public list of thresholds, and there will not be one, since exact limits are most useful to the people probing them.

If your account is suspended, you can appeal: reply to the notice you received, or email [email protected] from your account email, explaining why you believe the decision is wrong.

The realistic reassurance, since a page like this can read as scary: ordinary use of the platform is not suspension territory. Negative reviews, cancellations, declined bookings, and firm but civil disagreements in chat are all normal. Honest negative feedback is explicitly protected here; it is the entire point of the review system. Suspension exists for the behaviors in the first paragraph, not for being an imperfect customer or an unlucky pro.

No. Discriminatory requirements are not allowed on Surrounders, in either direction. A professional cannot filter out customers by ethnicity, nationality, religion, or similar traits, and a customer cannot demand a professional of a particular background in a request. Equal treatment is a platform rule for both sides, and it applies in listings, booking requests, chat, and reviews alike.

One distinction matters, because Cyprus is multilingual: language is about the service, not the person. Wanting a tutor who teaches in Russian or a trainer who explains things in English is a practical need, and the search filter "speaks my language" exists exactly for it. Pros list 1 to 3 languages on their profiles for the same reason. Matching on language is fine; excluding people over who they are is not. The line runs between what the service actually requires and preferences about background dressed up as requirements.

If you encounter a discriminatory listing, request, or message, report it from the three-dot menu or at [email protected]. Every report is reviewed by our team, and discrimination is one of the behaviors that can lead to content removal, a warning, or suspension of the account.

Reply to the notice you received, or email [email protected] from your account email. Those are the 2 ways to appeal a suspension or a piece of removed content on Surrounders. State which decision you are appealing, explain why you believe it is wrong, and attach anything that supports your side, such as screenshots or a booking ID.

A useful appeal is specific. Rather than "this is unfair", walk through what actually happened: what you wrote or did, the context around it, and why it does not break the rule cited in the notice. If the decision rests on a misunderstanding, the fastest way out is showing exactly where the misunderstanding is.

What to include:

• The email address of your account.
• Which content was removed, or when the suspension notice arrived.
• Your account of events, with screenshots if they help.
• The booking ID, if a specific booking is involved (it is on the booking detail page).

Appeals are reviewed by our team. We will not promise a response time here, but an appeal is judged on what it contains, so make it factual and complete rather than fast and angry. If new information surfaces after you send it, follow up on the same thread instead of starting a new one.

Two rules cover listings and photos on Surrounders: show your real work, and make no misleading claims. Photos, up to 10 per listing, must be safe for a general audience and actually yours. Descriptions, prices, and durations must describe what you genuinely offer. That is the whole policy, and listings are reviewed against it.

What misleading means in practice:

• The listed price is the whole price. If you cannot commit to a number, use the "price on request" pricing type and quote in chat, rather than listing a teaser price that grows later.
• Do not claim qualifications, experience, or results you cannot back up.
• Stock photos presented as your own work count as misleading.

Reported listings go to our team like any other report, and rule-breaking content can be removed; repeated problems bring warnings or suspension.

There is also a purely practical reason to keep listings honest: complete profiles, real photos, real descriptions, and listed languages are exactly the quality signals that help a listing rank in search, alongside reviews and response speed. A padded listing that produces disappointed customers produces honest negative reviews, which cannot be edited or removed by their authors. Accurate listings attract the customers who actually want what you offer, which is better business anyway.

Chat on Surrounders has two rules: keep it about the business between you, and keep normal courtesy. No harassment, no spam, no unsolicited promotion. The test is simple: if you would not say it to a customer or a professional standing in front of you, it does not belong in chat either.

Plenty is explicitly fine and encouraged: questions before booking (you can message any pro without a booking), agreeing the price and payment method, sending photos of the job, sharing a location, and following up after a completed session. That is what chat is for.

What crosses the line:

• Harassment or abuse in any form, including persisting after someone has stopped responding.
• Spam and unsolicited promotion: mass messages, advertising unrelated services, recruiting people to other platforms.
• Scam behavior, such as pushing someone toward unfamiliar payment links.

There are fair-use limits on sending speed, so genuinely mass messaging does not work well here anyway.

If a conversation turns bad, the tools are in the chat itself: the three-dot menu lets you block (silent, mutual, instant) and report. Every report is reviewed by our team, and chat behavior that breaks the rules can bring warnings or suspension like anything else.

Reports and listings are what Surrounders moderates. Every report, whether it comes through a three-dot menu in the app or by email to [email protected], is reviewed by a person on our team, and reports can concern anything: profiles, listings, chat behavior, reviews, or bookings. Listings are reviewed as well. Beyond that, the exact mechanics stay private on purpose.

What moderation can do when a rule is broken: hide a rule-breaking review, remove listing content, warn an account, or suspend it. What it does not do is police opinions; an honest negative review or a firm disagreement in chat is not a moderation matter.

Your part in the system matters, because moderation is largely report-driven: things surface when users flag them. Reporting takes seconds from any three-dot menu, and a report that turns out to be a misunderstanding costs nobody anything.

Two honest expectations to set. First, you will not always see the outcome of a report you made, because action against another account stays between that account and us. Second, we will not publish thresholds, queues, or review criteria, since those details help rule-breakers far more than they help you. What we commit to is the part that matters: every report is read.

Three outcomes are possible when someone breaks the rules on Surrounders: the offending content is removed, the account receives a warning, or the account is suspended. Our team reviews every report and chooses the response that fits what actually happened. We do not publish thresholds, strike counts, or automatic triggers, because a public rulebook of exact limits mostly helps the people abusing them.

How a violation surfaces: usually through a report, from the three-dot menus on profiles, chats, and reviews, or by email to [email protected]. A report is read by a person, and the outcome depends on what the review finds, not on how many people clicked report.

What the outcomes mean:

• Content removal: the rule-breaking review, listing content, or message is taken down; the account continues.
• Warning: the account is told what crossed the line.
• Suspension: the account loses access to the platform.

If you are on the receiving end of a decision and believe it is wrong, appeals exist: reply to the notice you received or write to [email protected].

And if you are the one who reported: you will not always see the outcome, since action against another account stays between that account and us. A quiet result does not mean no result.