Blocking & reporting

Open the person's profile or your chat with them, tap the three-dot menu, and choose Block. It takes about 2 seconds and works both ways immediately: a blocked person cannot message you, book you, or send you a friend request, and you cannot contact them either.

Blocking is silent - the other person gets no notification. From their side, things simply stop going through.

A few details worth knowing:

• Blocking works in both directions regardless of who blocked whom, so there is no loophole where they can still reach you through a booking request.
• If you were friends on the platform, the connection is removed automatically.
• You can review and unblock anyone later in Settings, under blocked users.
• Blocking someone does not delete your past chat or booking history - the record stays yours.

Blocking is for "I don't want contact with this person". For behavior that others should be protected from too - harassment, threats, anything serious - also report it to [email protected] so our team can act on the account itself.

Report any professional or customer from the three-dot menu on their profile, in your chat with them, or on a review, or email [email protected] directly. Every report is reviewed by our team, and accounts that break the rules can be suspended. Reporting works the same in both directions: pros report problem customers exactly the way customers report pros.

If you report by email, include enough for the team to act on: your account email, what happened, screenshots if you have them, and the booking ID if a booking was involved (it is on the booking detail page and copyable).

Two things reporting is not:

• Reporting is not blocking. A report tells our team; a block stops the person reaching you. For harassment or anything you want out of your life immediately, do both. Blocking is instant and silent.
• Reporting is not a public flag. Nothing appears on the person's profile because you reported them.

We keep how enforcement works private, deliberately, so we will not list thresholds or triggers here. What we can say plainly: a person reviews every report, outcomes range from nothing to content removal, warnings, and suspension, and reports about serious behavior are exactly what the system is for. If in doubt, report; a report that turns out to be a misunderstanding costs nobody anything.

No. Your phone number is never shown to professionals or any other user - it exists only in your own account settings. All communication on Surrounders happens through the built-in chat, which handles messages, photos, and booking coordination without anyone exchanging numbers.

What a professional does see once you have booked with them: your name, and your email address in their customer list, so they can recognize returning customers. Your exact address is shared only for a confirmed booking at your place, and your phone stays private throughout.

Plenty of people do eventually swap numbers with a pro they trust - a cleaner of two years is practically family. That is your call to make, in your own time, rather than a default the platform makes for you. Until then, chat covers everything: it is faster than calls for photos ("this is the sofa stain"), and the whole history stays in one place.

Your exact address is shared with a professional only after a booking is confirmed - and only for that booking. Before confirmation, a pro sees just your general area, enough to know whether you are within reach, never your street or building.

The same principle protects professionals who work from home: browsing customers see a pro's city and area with an approximate map location, and the exact address appears only once a booking at their place is confirmed.

Practical notes:

• You can save several addresses (home, office, a parent's flat) and choose which one a specific booking uses. Only that one is shared.
• Your address book itself is never public and never appears on your profile.
• Access details for a visit - floor, gate code, parking - are best shared in the private chat with your confirmed pro, where only the two of you can see them.

If a booking is cancelled before it was confirmed, the pro never saw your address at all.

Every report on Surrounders is reviewed by a person on our team, whether it came from a three-dot menu in the app or an email to [email protected]. The possible outcomes are: no action, removal of the reported content, a warning to the account, or suspension. Which one applies depends on what the review finds, not on how many reports arrive.

One honest thing to know upfront: you will not always see the outcome. Action taken against another account is between that account and us, so in many cases your report simply disappears into the process and the result is not announced to you. That does not mean nothing happened.

What you can do while a report is being handled:

• Block the person if you want no further contact. Blocking is instant, silent, and entirely under your control; it does not depend on the report's outcome.
• Follow up with [email protected] if the situation escalates or new things happen, quoting what you sent before.

What we will not do is publish thresholds, timelines, or enforcement mechanics; that information mostly helps people trying to game the rules. If your report described real harm, it was read, and the review system exists precisely for it.

No. A suspended account cannot use Surrounders, so no messages, booking requests, or friend requests can reach you from it while the suspension lasts. Suspension applies to the whole account, not to a single listing, so a suspended pro cannot get to you through some other corner of the platform either.

Two honest caveats are worth spelling out.

First, suspension controls the platform, not the world. Surrounders never shows phone numbers to other users, but if you shared your number or moved the conversation to another app yourself, a suspension cannot silence those channels. Handle contact there the way you would any unwanted contact: do not engage, and block the number on your phone.

Second, suspensions are decisions about an account, and decisions can change; appeals exist. If you personally want the silence to be permanent regardless of what happens with their account, block them. Blocking is yours to control: instant, mutual, and reversible only by you, in Settings.

If a suspended professional does reach you outside the platform about anything related to Surrounders, especially pressure about a booking, a review, or a payment, tell [email protected]. That is useful information for the team, and every report is reviewed.

For your first bookings with someone new, yes. Moving to phone or WhatsApp is allowed once you have connected, but Surrounders' safety features, meaning chat history, booking-gated reviews, blocking, and reports, only cover what happens inside the platform. Off-platform, none of them can help you, so it makes sense to stay inside until trust is established.

The practical value of in-app chat is the record. Price, time, scope, and payment method agreed in chat are written down where both sides can see them, and system messages log every booking event automatically. If a disagreement ever comes up, you are not reconstructing a phone call from memory.

There is also a scam-shaped reason. Being pushed off-platform quickly, especially toward unfamiliar payment links, is one of the classic patterns of service scams everywhere. Someone with honest intentions rarely minds keeping the first conversations where they are.

Once you have a regular pro you trust, exchanging numbers is completely normal, and plenty of long-standing customer-pro relationships run on WhatsApp. Even then, booking through the platform keeps your calendar, reminders, and reviews working, wherever the chatting happens.

Phone numbers are never shown by Surrounders itself; sharing yours is always your own choice, made when you decide the relationship has earned it.

Blocking on Surrounders is silent, mutual, and instant. From the moment you block someone, nothing gets through in either direction: no messages, no booking requests, no friend requests, whether they try to reach you or you try to reach them. The other person receives no notification, and if you were friends on the platform, that connection is removed automatically.

Silent means exactly that. Nothing announces the block; from the other side, things simply stop going through. There is no awkward confirmation moment.

Mutual means there is no loophole. You cannot contact them either, and they cannot route around the block through a booking request or a friend request instead of a message.

Your history stays yours. Past chats and past bookings are not deleted when you block someone; the record remains in your account, which matters if you ever need to show what was said or agreed.

Blocking is also reversible. Settings has a blocked users list where you can review and unblock anyone, at any time, with no waiting period.

What blocking does not do is tell our team anything. If the behavior was harassment, a scam attempt, or something other people should be protected from, report it as well, from the three-dot menu or at [email protected]. Every report is reviewed.