How reviews work on Utana
Only real rentals.
You can review a car only after a booking made on Utana has been completed and the car returned. Every review is linked to that booking, which is why each one is marked Verified rental and every list of reviews says Every review comes from a completed Utana rental. We do not accept reviews from anyone else. The company's own staff cannot review its cars, and nobody can buy, sponsor or be rewarded for a review.
What a review holds.
A score from 1 to 10 for the rental as a whole. If you like, a score for each of car condition, cleanliness, pick-up, drop-off, staff and value; a title; what you liked and what you disliked; whether the car was as shown, whether you paid what you were quoted and whether you would rent from the company again; who you travelled with; a few topics such as a quick pick-up or hidden fees; and up to 5 photos. If you score 6 or lower, we ask you to say what went wrong, so the next renter and the company know.
Every review is published.
Positive or negative, your review appears on the car's page as soon as you submit it, with your first name, the initial of your surname and the month of your rental. You have 30 days after the return to write it and 14 days after posting to edit or remove it.
Helpful votes.
Signed-in readers can mark a review as helpful, once per review and never their own. Reviews are listed by relevance unless you choose another order: reviews with words and photos, recent reviews and reviews others found helpful come first. You can also sort by date or score, filter by score, topic, who people travelled with or the month of the rental, and search the text.
Summaries written automatically.
Above the reviews of a car or a company you may see a short summary of what customers liked and disliked. It is generated automatically from the published reviews and says how many it is based on. It never uses private notes or customer ratings, and it is refreshed as new reviews arrive. It can miss detail, so the reviews themselves are always there to read.
Companies can reply, not remove.
The rental company can post one public reply under your review. It cannot edit or delete your review, and neither can we — except in the cases below.
What we remove.
We hide a review only if it is not about the rental (for example the booking never took place), contains threats or extortion, offensive language, personal data such as phone numbers or number plates, or is fake or incentivised. When we hide a review we tell both sides why. Hidden reviews do not count towards scores. We can also hide a single photo that breaks these rules and leave the rest of the review up. If a review breaks these rules, contact support; a rental company can also report a review from the booking's page.
Scores.
A car's score and a company's score are built from their published reviews of the last 36 months, and recent reviews count for more. We show the score to one decimal with a word for it, from Pleasant at 6 up to Exceptional at 9 and above, and always say how many reviews it is based on. Companies also rate customers privately at the return handover, on the same 1 to 10 scale; that rating is never public. How scores feed the order of search results is explained in How we rank.