Reviews & ratings

Only the two people involved in a completed booking can leave a review, and each of them gets exactly one per booking. Once a booking reaches "completed", the customer can review the professional and the professional can review the customer. Nobody else can rate either of you, no matter how strongly they feel.

That single rule quietly excludes most of what makes reviews untrustworthy elsewhere:

• No reviews from people who only browsed a profile or chatted but never booked.
• No reviews on bookings that were declined, expired, or cancelled - the session has to actually happen and reach completed status.
• No second attempts. One booking, one review per author, and it cannot be edited or deleted afterwards.

The one-per-booking rule cuts both ways, in a good sense. A regular customer who has completed five separate bookings with the same pro can leave five reviews, because each booking earned one. That is real repeat business showing up on a profile, which tells you more than any single rating.

Reviews run in both directions for the same reason. Pros are choosing who to work with too, and a customer's track record matters to them just as much as a pro's rating matters to you.

No. Once posted, a review on Surrounders cannot be edited or deleted, not even by the person who wrote it. Each completed booking allows one review per author, and that one review is final. The rating and text you submit are what stays on the profile.

Permanence sounds harsh until you consider the alternative. On platforms where reviews can be quietly edited, an unhappy customer writes an honest three-star review, gets a phone call, and the review becomes five stars a week later. Nobody reading the profile ever knows. Making reviews permanent removes that pressure entirely: there is nothing a pro can do to make your words change, so your words can be trusted as written. The same protection covers you when a pro reviews a customer.

So write it once, and write it carefully:

• Use the time. You have 90 days after completion, so there is no need to post in the heat of the moment, good or bad.
• Stick to facts you are sure of. Specific and accurate beats emotional and vague, and it ages better on a permanent record.
• Say what happened, not who someone is. Describing the work holds up; name-calling does not.

If a review about you contains a genuine factual error, the review itself will not change, but a pro can post one public reply to set the record straight, and readers see both sides.

No. Professionals cannot remove reviews from their profile, and there is no paid option to make one disappear. Surrounders charges nobody for anything, and review removal is not for sale at any price. A pro who dislikes a review has exactly one tool: a single public reply posted underneath it.

The only way a review ever comes off a profile is by breaking the rules. Anyone except the review's author can report a review that contains abuse, someone's personal data, offensive content, or looks fabricated. Our team reviews every report, and admins can hide reviews that genuinely cross those lines. A one-star rating with a harsh but honest account of a bad session does not qualify. Critical is not the same as rule-breaking, and reports are not a voting button for reviews someone finds inconvenient.

Reviews cannot be edited or deleted by their authors either, which closes the quieter loophole: a pro cannot pressure a customer into softening a review after the fact, because there is nothing the customer could change even if they wanted to.

For you as a reader, this is what makes a Surrounders rating worth trusting. When you see a profile with a 4.7 average across 30 reviews, you are seeing everything those 30 customers wrote, including the reviews the pro wishes were not there. The uncomfortable ones stayed. That is the entire value of the number.

A pro's rating is the plain average of every rating they have received, shown together with the number of reviews behind it. Ratings run from 1 to 5 stars, one per completed booking. Four reviews of 5, 5, 4 and 4 make a 4.5 with a count of 4. That is the whole formula.

Nothing is weighted, boosted, or quietly adjusted. Recent reviews do not count extra, old ones do not fade out, and there is no way for a pro to influence the number except by earning better ratings. Since reviews can only be written after completed bookings, cannot be edited or deleted, and cannot be removed by the pro, the average reflects every customer who ever rated them, including the unhappy ones.

The count matters as much as the average, which is why the two are always shown together. A 4.8 built from 40 reviews and a 5.0 built from a single review are very different claims: the first is a pattern, the second is one good day. Neither number lies, but the count tells you how much weight the average can carry.

Two honest caveats. Averages hide texture, so read a few actual reviews, especially any critical ones and how the pro replied to them. And a low count is not a warning sign in itself; on a platform launched in 2026, plenty of good pros are still collecting their first ratings.

No. Zero reviews means unreviewed, not untrustworthy. Surrounders launched in 2026 and reviews only come from completed bookings, so every pro on the platform started at zero, including the ones now sitting on excellent ratings. A cleaner with ten years of experience who joined last week has the same empty review section as a genuine beginner.

Since ratings cannot help you here, use the signals that can:

• Response rate and typical response time, shown on the profile. They are computed from the pro's actual history and cannot be typed in. A pro who answers quickly will likely treat your booking the same way.
• Profile and listing quality. Real photos of real work, a specific description, clear prices, and listed languages take effort. Effort is a signal.
• Chat. You can message any pro before booking, for free, with no obligation. Two or three concrete questions about your situation will tell you more than a star rating ever could. Vague or pushy answers - move on.

You can also lower the stakes: book a single short session before committing to anything recurring, and pick a policy-friendly listing so changing your mind costs nothing but notice.

One more thing worth saying. Every pro with 40 glowing reviews got them because someone booked them at zero. New pros tend to know exactly how much that first review matters, and it often shows in how hard they work for it.

Yes. A professional can post one public reply to each review they receive. The reply appears under your review on their profile, visible to everyone, and that is the full extent of their power over it: they cannot edit your words, hide the review, or take it down. One reply, in public, next to what you wrote.

Nothing about your review changes when a pro replies. Your rating still counts toward their average exactly as before, and your text stays exactly as you posted it. The reply is simply their side of the story, attached where readers can compare both.

For people browsing profiles, replies are often the most informative part. Anyone can collect five-star praise; how a pro answers a critical review tells you who you would actually be dealing with when something goes wrong. A calm, specific reply that owns a mistake is one of the strongest trust signals a profile can carry. A defensive rant is a signal too, just not the one the pro intended.

If you left a critical review and got a fair reply, nothing further is required from you - the exchange stands and readers draw their own conclusions. If a reply crosses a line, such as abuse or sharing your personal data, report it and our team will review it. Honest disagreement, though, is allowed on both sides. That is what makes the whole system worth reading.

Yes. Every session in a recurring series is its own booking, and reviews work per completed booking. A weekly cleaning series with 20 completed sessions means up to 20 reviews, each rating one specific visit, each with its own 90-day window from that session's completion. You never have to compress six months of experience into a single score.

In practice, nobody reviews every session of a long series, and that is fine. A sensible rhythm:

• Review the first session. That is the one future customers most want to hear about, because it answers the question they are asking: what happens when this pro shows up for someone new?
• Review again when something is worth saying, a session that stood out, an improvement, or a decline. Skipped sessions simply carry no review; there is no penalty and no gap to explain.

Per-session reviews are more honest than one series-level verdict. Service quality over months is a pattern, not a single event, and a string of individual ratings shows that pattern to the next customer: consistent 5s tell one story, early 5s drifting to 3s tell another. A single averaged impression would bury exactly the information a long-term client needs.

The usual rules apply to each review: written after the session completes, permanent once posted, and running in both directions, so your pro can review individual sessions too. Sessions cancelled or skipped, for example when a pro blocks a date, are not completed and get no review.

Yes. Reviews on Surrounders run in both directions. After a booking is completed, the professional can leave one review of the customer, exactly as the customer can review them: a 1 to 5 star rating with text, written within 90 days, permanent once posted. Same rules, same weight, no special treatment for either side.

What do pros actually write about customers? The things that matter for working together: was the customer reachable and clear about what they needed, were they there at the agreed time, was payment settled as agreed, would the pro happily take their booking again. A cleaner or trainer reading your reviews before accepting a request is asking one question - is this someone I want as a regular client?

The symmetry is the point. A review system where only one side gets judged breeds one-sided behavior; when both sides know a permanent review follows the session, both sides show up on time, communicate clearly, and treat each other like people they will meet again. In a Limassol-sized market, you probably will.

The same protections apply to you as to pros. A review of you is permanent, so nobody can pressure you into changing it, and if one breaks the rules, abuse or personal data, you can report it and our team will review it. Reputation on Surrounders is an asset on both sides of the table, and both sides get to build one.

Anyone can report a review except the person who wrote it. Use the report option on the review itself, or email [email protected] with the pro's name and which review you mean. Every single report is reviewed by our team, and reviews that break the rules can be hidden by admins.

Reviews worth reporting are the ones that cross clear lines:

• Personal data: phone numbers, addresses, or other private details about anyone.
• Abuse: harassment, threats, or discriminatory language.
• Offensive content of any kind.
• Fakes and manipulation: a review describing a session that plainly never happened.

What reporting is not for: reviews you simply disagree with. A critical review of a pro, or of a customer, stays up if it is someone's honest account of a real booking. Pros cannot remove reviews and neither can reports do it for them; a pro's answer to unfair criticism is their one public reply, posted for everyone to read.

You do not need to be involved in the booking to report. A customer browsing profiles who spots a review exposing someone's address is exactly who the button is for. The author of a review is the only person who cannot report it, which prevents the obvious trick of authors flagging their own posts to game the process.

If the review is part of a bigger problem with a specific person, harassment in chat, for example, report the account too, and consider blocking them.

Google reviews can be written by anyone with a Google account, whether or not they ever hired the business. On Surrounders, a review can only be written after a completed booking, one per booking, and it cannot be edited or deleted afterwards. The trade-off is straightforward: Google gives you volume, Surrounders gives you certainty that every reviewer was a real customer.

Google's openness is a genuine strength and a genuine weakness at once. An established business may have hundreds of reviews spanning years, which is real information. But nothing stops a review from a competitor, an ex-employee, a friend of the owner, or someone who confused two businesses, and owners can ask happy customers to pile on while unhappy ones drift away. You have no way to tell, from the outside, which reviews came from actual paying customers.

Surrounders closes that gap structurally rather than by moderation heroics. No booking, no review form - so purchased ratings and supportive friends are simply impossible. Reviews are permanent, so nobody gets pressured into softening one. Pros cannot remove them, and each pro gets exactly one public reply per review. Ratings run both directions, so customers are accountable too.

The honest cost: counts here are smaller. Surrounders launched in 2026, and a good pro may show 8 reviews against a rival's 200 on Google. If a pro exists in both places, read both - Google for the long history, Surrounders for reviews you can be sure came from completed bookings. The two sources answer different questions, and together they answer most of yours.

You have 90 days from the moment your booking is marked completed to write your review. After that the window closes and the booking can no longer be reviewed by either side. The same 90-day rule applies to the professional reviewing you.

The window exists for one reason: reviews are most accurate while the experience is fresh. A rating written the same week reflects what actually happened. A rating written a year later reflects a vague memory, and vague memories drift toward whatever mood you are in that day.

Ninety days is deliberately generous. You do not need to review from the doorstep, and there is no prompt pressuring you to rate before you have had time to see the results - useful when the quality of the work only becomes clear later, like a repair holding up or a student's progress after tutoring.

Two practical tips:

• Sooner is better. The details that make a review useful to others, what was done, how it went, whether it started on time, fade fastest.
• Take the time you need to write it well, because reviews on Surrounders cannot be edited or deleted after posting. A few extra days of thought beat a rushed rating you are stuck with.

If a booking sits in "in progress" longer than expected, it is marked completed automatically some time after the scheduled end, and your 90 days count from then.

The helpful button lets you mark a review that genuinely helped you decide, with 1 tap and no account gymnastics. Reading through a pro's profile, some reviews tell you exactly what you needed to know and others just say "great!". The helpful vote is how readers separate the two for the people who come after them.

Use it when a review did real work for you:

• Described precisely what was done, so you knew whether the service fits your situation.
• Mentioned a detail you cared about, like punctuality, how a home visit went, or how the pro handled a problem.
• Answered the question you came with, saving you a message to the pro.

Voting costs nothing and signs you up for nothing. There is no downvote button, deliberately. Disagreeing with a review is what a pro's public reply is for, and a review that breaks the rules is what reporting is for. The helpful button only ever adds a positive signal: this one was worth reading.

For reviewers, those votes are the quiet reward for effort. Two thoughtful sentences about what the session was actually like will collect helpful votes for years, while a bare five-star rating helps nobody in particular. If you want to write the kind of review people vote for, the guide on what makes a useful review covers it in one short list.

Write what actually happened: which service you booked, what was done, how the session went, and whether you would book this pro again. You have up to 2000 characters, and even 3 specific sentences beat a paragraph of adjectives. The goal is simple - give the next customer the information you wish you had before booking.

Useful reviews tend to cover some of these:

• The concrete work. "Deep-cleaned a two-bedroom flat, including the oven" tells a reader everything; "amazing service" tells them nothing.
• Reliability. On time or late, easy to reach, matched what the listing promised.
• Anything surprising, in either direction. Finished early, brought their own equipment, handled a complication well, or did not.
• The verdict. "Already booked next month" is the strongest sentence a review can end with.

Useful beats glowing. A five-star review with no details helps nobody, and a fair three-star review that explains exactly what fell short helps everyone, including honest pros who want the feedback. Readers can mark reviews helpful, and the specific ones are the ones that earn it.

Two cautions before you post. Reviews are permanent, with no editing or deleting afterwards, so make sure everything you state is accurate; you have 90 days after completion, so there is no rush. And keep personal data out - no phone numbers, no addresses, yours or theirs. Describe the work, skip the private details, and your review will do its job for years.

Yes, the pro will know. Reviews on Surrounders carry your name, and there is no anonymous option. Since each review is tied to 1 specific completed booking, the pro would recognize the booking behind it anyway; the name simply makes honest what would otherwise be a thin disguise.

Names are what keep the whole system credible. Anonymous review sections everywhere on the internet fill up with things people would never say to a face: exaggerations, score-settling, and outright fabrications. When your name is attached, you write what you can stand behind, and everyone reading knows it. That standard cuts both ways - a pro reviewing you signs their name too, and their reply to your review is public under their own profile.

Accountability does not mean holding back. A critical review is completely legitimate, and named criticism is actually the strongest kind: a real person, from a real booking, willing to say it openly. Keep it factual, describe what happened rather than attacking who someone is, and your name makes the review more powerful, not more risky.

If a pro reacted to a review with harassment, that is a rule violation on their side, not yours. Report the behavior, and block them if you want no further contact - blocking is silent and immediate, and ends messages and bookings in both directions. In practice, though, the overwhelmingly common response to a fair critical review is the boring one: a public reply, or silence.