Review policy

Criticism removed quietly would destroy the value of every review left standing. So nothing is removed quietly.

Who can review

Anyone with an account and a confirmed email address. One review per farm per person. You can edit your own review; you cannot post a second one to push the first down the page.

What a review is for

Your own experience of buying from, visiting, or dealing with a farm. The produce, the service, the visit, the delivery that did or did not arrive.

What it is not for:

• Allegations about someone’s certification. Send those to verify@organicmatters.nz and we will check the register — that is a matter of fact, not opinion, and we can settle it.
• Anything about a person’s race, religion, family or politics.
• A dispute you are having with a producer that they have not been given a chance to answer.

What gets removed

Four things, and no others:

• Abuse or harassment aimed at a person.
• Falsehoods stated as fact — not opinions you disagree with, and not a bad experience honestly described.
• Reviews from the farm itself, its family, or its competitors.
• Content that is unlawful, or that a court has ordered removed.

A negative review is not grounds for removal. Neither is a farm objecting to it, or asking nicely, or being a subscriber. If we removed criticism on request, every remaining review would be worthless — and so would this directory.

Every removal carries a public reason

When something is taken down, the reason is published in its place. Not “this review was removed” — the actual reason, written by the person who made the decision.

This is enforced by the database rather than by discipline: the moderation record will not accept a decision to remove without an explanation attached to it. It is not possible for anyone here, including the owner, to hide something silently.

A producer gets one reply

A farm can reply publicly to any review about it, once. It cannot edit, hide, downrank or remove the review — only answer it, underneath, where readers can weigh both.

One reply rather than a thread, because a comment war under a review helps nobody decide where to buy their vegetables.

Reporting and appealing

Anyone can report a review. Reports go into a queue that a person works through — there is no automatic removal, and no volume threshold that makes something disappear.

If your review was removed and you think it should not have been, write to appeals@organicmatters.nz. Say what was removed and why you disagree. If we got it wrong, it goes back up, and the correction is recorded the same way the removal was.

What we do about pressure

Producers pay for listings on this platform. If a paying farm asks for a genuine review to be removed, the answer is no, and the request changes nothing about their account.

We would rather lose a subscription than a reader’s reason to believe anything on this site. Anything less and the reviews are advertising — support@organicmatters.nz if you ever think we have failed that test.

Last updated 12 August 2026. When this page changes in a way that affects you, the change is described here rather than quietly applied.