Reviews Help Seniors Make Informed Decisions

Caring’s mission is to help as many seniors and their caregivers as possible through empathetic, expert guidance. This includes helping seniors and their family members find the services and resources that best fit their senior living and care needs. Choosing a living situation can be one of the most important decisions that an individual or family must make, and we know that the right fit is different for each family. The more information we can provide to help inform the selection process, the better it is for everyone, including the service provider. Consumer ratings and reviews are frequently requested, as they can be highly valuable to others with similar needs and preferences. Customer testimonials are helpful to service providers as well.

Neither is true. There are tens of thousands of negative reviews published on our website believed to meet the Review Guidelines. We don’t decline consumer reviews just because they’re negative, and we communicate directly with consumers to help them publish content within the guidelines. We seek to publish as many valid reviews as possible.

Additionally, senior living and senior care service providers are not involved in Caring.com’s processing of new reviews for publication (they are not given an opportunity to prescreen consumer reviews prior to publication on Caring.com). Advertisers don’t pay Caring to remove reviews; this is not a service we offer. The Review Guidelines are the same for all ratings, all reviews, and all business listings — businesses cannot suppress negative reviews by buying advertising or joining our senior living referral network, nor can they post reviews or testimonials on their business listings in our directory (consumers must submit their own reviews content directly to Caring.com).

We’ve run a high-integrity consumer reviews program for over 12 years, and invite you to contact reviews@caring.com if you have any additional questions about how we enforce the guidelines.

Our consumer reviews program is focused on feedback from seniors and their families, and does not include reviews from employees, professional experts, or anyone with a conflict of interest. The Caring.com Review Guidelines further specify the requirements for participation in our consumer reviews program.

Before submitting a review, please take a moment to read the Review Guidelines for Caring.com. For example:

• Reviews must not be published or duplicated on other websites (your review must be original content for Caring.com).
• Reviews may not contain offensive, profane or inappropriate language, such as hate speech and slurs.
• Reviews may not contain defamatory personal attacks and/or libelous comments (avoid making criminal allegations that are not on public record as legal fact).
• Reviews should include examples of firsthand experience to substantiate opinion(s) shared in the review, and be focused on senior care or senior living services (avoid posting reviews about the care of children or young adults).
• Avoid information that is irrelevant within the context of the Caring.com website or irrelevant to the services provided. Focus your firsthand experience content on the senior living or senior care services of the business you’re reviewing, rather than making gross generalizations about an entire industry or commenting about services from other businesses not owned or operated by the business being reviewed in our directory.
• Avoid promotional material or solicitation in your review content, including but not limiting to omission of website links, emails and phone numbers.
• Job inquiries or feedback about job interviews may not be posted as reviews. (Note: Caring.com does not own, operate or manage the senior living and senior care businesses listed in the directory, so you must contact the provider directly about employment opportunities.)

If a submission does not comply with Caring.com’s Review Guidelines, it will not be approved for publication and/or it may be removed. Note: We do not decline reviews simply for being negative; we accept and publish negative reviews that meet the guidelines.

While we carefully screen reviews before they are published on Caring.com, we cannot guarantee or verify the accuracy of the opinions shared by individual reviewers. We do not offer an offline investigation team to substantiate consumer allegations either.

Ratings and reviews can help you acquire new customers by serving as endorsements or referrals, and/or they can help you further improve your services by serving as a feedback mechanism. Great providers flourish with this feature, which can help them grow their businesses. In fact, in study after study, we’ve consistently seen that listings with a high volume of ratings and reviews see significantly more inquiries and conversions from prospective customers, than listings with only a few (or no) reviews.

As a service provider, you also have the option to publish responses to consumer reviews of your services on our website. This feature is not limited to advertisers; any business receiving reviews can respond to them. Your response to a consumer’s review can be another instrument of prospect persuasion and help your business demonstrate service excellence.

There are a variety of ways for you to encourage ratings and reviews of your senior living or senior care services. For example, you could:

• E-mail a review request to your customers and their families, including a direct link to the review submission form for your Caring.com listing.
• Post or distribute marketing materials encouraging consumers to rate and review your services on Caring.com.
• Share the review submission form for your Caring.com listing on your website or Facebook page, or circulate the Caring.com/reviews if you have multiple locations.

You may also contact one of our directory specialists to discuss our enhanced listing options for greater exposure for your listing page on Caring.com, as well as to gain access to enhanced listing services such as review solicitation campaigns via Partner Portal and Caring’s reviews-by-phone service.

When Caring.com publishes a consumer review in its directory, the review is public-facing and can be read by anyone on the Internet. We do not require website visitors to give their contact information or log into our website to read consumer reviews in the directory. Similarly, your business can visit your business profile page in the directory to read reviews from your customers; this is public information that is easily accessible. Contact reviews@caring.com if you have questions or need help finding your page.

Senior living and senior care service providers who are partnered with Caring.com and have enhanced listing(s) can also receive an automated alert via email notifying the business of a newly-published review on their listing page. The alerts include tools to publish a response or to contest the review for guidelines concerns. Contact partnersuccess@caring.com to adjust the emails on your account.

For each review we publish: we show the reviewer’s display name (reviewer screen name or public-facing identity) and their relationship to the business. Each consumer chooses their own display name and submits their relationship to the business with their review content.

We allow consumer reviewers to remain anonymous in the reviews program, and will release any reviewer real-identity information we have under court order, by law enforcement request, or according to a subpoena for the information.

Senior living or senior care service providers being reviewed are not involved in Caring.com’s processing of review submissions. We use our Review Guidelines to publish review content, and do not prescreen the content with the business being reviewed. Additionally, reviews that are declined are private transactions between Caring and the reviewer.

Reviews that are published can be seen by anyone publicly who visits the web page hosting the reviews. While a senior living or senior care service provider does not have the ability to delete consumers’ reviews from our website, we do have customer service staff who are available to help you publish a response to a review or contest a review for valid removal reasons (within the review guidelines).

If you feel a review of your services is factually inaccurate, libelous or otherwise not meeting the Caring.com review guidelines, please contact us with specific detail substantiating your perspective or counter: reviews@caring.com. We respond to these messages within 1-2 business days (or faster) typically. We also allow consumers to contest published reviews with substantive counter, and to retract their own published review content.