This badge means the business gave something up
Anyone can put five stars on a website. A business showing the Verified Reviews badge has signed away the three things that would let them arrange those stars — and EagleHQ, not the business, is what holds them to it.
What the badge claims, word for word
“Every review on this site is published automatically and can't be edited or removed by the business.”
That's the whole claim. It is about how the reviews got there — not about whether they're good.
The trade
Three switches, all or nothing
Every EagleHQ business starts with the usual powers over its own reviews. The badge is what they get for switching all three off — and the moment any one of them comes back on, the badge comes off the site.
Reviews publish themselves
No approval queue. A customer's review is on the website the moment they submit it, and the business finds out the same way you do.
The words can't be changed
Not the text, not the star rating. What the customer wrote is what you're reading — a four-star can't quietly become a five.
Nothing can be taken down
Not hidden, not archived, not deleted. The bad week stays on the page next to the good ones, for as long as the badge is up.
See the difference
What a perfect score costs
Below is one business with five real customers. The left switch is what most review sections on the internet are; the right one is what the badge promises. Watch the number, and watch what happens to Dale and Owen.
The same five customers, under both policies
Flip the switch. Nothing about the service changed — only what you're allowed to see.
from 3 published reviews
A perfect score, assembled off-screen. This is what a great many review walls on the internet are, and none of them mention it.
Marcus T.
Furnace replacement
“Showed up inside the window and walked me through the fix before touching anything. No surprises on the invoice.”
Priya R.
Annual service
“Second year using them. Same tech, same standard, in and out in an hour.”
Dale W.'s 2-star review — taken down
A real visitor sees nothing here. Not a gap, not a note. As far as the page is concerned the review never existed.
Jenna K.
Ductwork repair
“Good work — would absolutely use again.”
Rewritten by the business
4 stars · “Good work in the end. Ran about forty minutes past the window and nobody rang ahead to say so.”
The rating is editable too, so a four becomes a five and Jenna is never told.
Owen B.'s 3-star review — taken down
A real visitor sees nothing here. Not a gap, not a note. As far as the page is concerned the review never existed.
In moderated mode the two removed reviews leave no trace whatsoever — the dashed cards are this page showing you what a visitor would never be shown.
What backs it
A review has to survive four checks before it exists
The badge would be worthless if the reviews under it could be manufactured as easily as they could be deleted. So a customer review isn't a form submission — it's tied to a specific finished job for a specific account.
All four are enforced on EagleHQ's servers and in the database's own access rules — the layer that doesn't care what the browser sends it.
There's a finished job behind it
Either the reviewer is signed into the business's customer portal holding a booking marked completed, or they're using a one-time link the business sent about a specific job. No job, no review.
The link is a credential, and it burns
A review link is unguessable, works once, and expires. It can't be passed around, reused to add a second review, or replayed against a different business's website — the job it belongs to is baked into it.
One review per job
A second attempt on the same booking is refused, and a business can only have one outstanding request per job. Nobody can stack five reviews off one visit, in either direction.
It publishes on the spot
Under this policy there is no queue for it to sit in and nobody to wave it through. It appears, and it stays — the business finds out what it says the same way you do.
Who enforces it
What happens when a badged business tries anyway
A promise a business can quietly break is not a promise. Pick something for them to attempt and see what comes back — including the three things they're still perfectly free to do.
A badged business tries to…
Take the two-star off the site until things calm down.
Your site runs on unfiltered reviews, so reviews can't be changed or removed. If this one is unlawful — defamatory, fake, or meant for another business — report it to hello@eaglehq.us and we'll rule on it. Otherwise you can switch unfiltered reviews off in Reviews → Settings, which retires your Verified badge.
Hiding and deleting are the same act in different tempers.
The moderation controls aren't hidden from a badged owner — they're answered. A button that is merely hidden is a button that comes back the moment someone opens the browser console, and a badge worth that little isn't worth printing.
The date on the badge
The clock resets, it doesn't pause
A business could otherwise moderate for an afternoon, bury one review, switch back and keep its long honest history. So leaving unfiltered mode doesn't pause the record — it erases it.
Unfiltered for
17 months
This is the date printed on the badge. It measures the length of the run, not the day the business signed up.
Which is why the badge prints a date. A business unfiltered since 2024 is telling you something a business unfiltered since last Tuesday isn't.
The part nobody else does
Every business keeps a record. Including the ones that moderate.
A badge tells you how a business handles reviews right now. It can't tell you they moderated hard for two years and switched over last week. So we keep a record for every site we host — and the business can never edit or delete a line of it.
When they changed the rules
Every switch between moderated and unfiltered, with the date and how long the previous run lasted.
When they edited a review
Including a rating moved from four stars to five — the change most worth knowing about, and the one you'd never otherwise see.
When they took one down
Hidden or deleted, with the star rating it carried. The review is gone; the fact that it existed is not.
What they say about it
A business can write an explanation next to any entry — and only next to it. There is no button anywhere that removes one.
You get to this from the badge. Click the Verified Reviews badge on any EagleHQ site and it opens that business's own record, here on eaglehq.us — not on their website, where they'd be marking their own homework.
The three tiers
Earned by arithmetic, never by asking
Verified Reviews is the promise. Top Rated and Award of Excellence sit on top of it and are pure counting — the number of published reviews and their average, nothing else. Move the sliders.
Verified Reviews
One published review
The promise itself. Nothing about it depends on the score being a good one.
Top Rated
10 reviews · 4.5 average
Enough reviews that one unusually good week can't carry the average on its own.
Award of Excellence
50 reviews · 4.7 average
Sustained over enough jobs that it describes the business rather than a run of luck.
At 12 reviews and a 4.6 average, this site displays Top Rated. Those two sliders are the entire input — there is no field anywhere in EagleHQ where a business types the tier it would like to have.
This is also the law
None of this is just our house rule
Faking reviews, paying for good ones and pressuring customers into deleting bad ones are federal violations in the United States, not merely bad manners. The badge doesn't create those rules — it makes one promise inside them checkable.
16 CFR Part 465
The FTC's review rule
Fake reviews, bought sentiment, undisclosed insider reviews and pressuring a customer to delete one all carry civil penalties.
15 U.S.C. § 45b
Consumer Review Fairness Act
A contract term that stops you reviewing a business, or fines you for it, is void the moment it's written.
16 CFR § 465.7
Showing everything
A business may not hide the bad reviews and let you believe you're seeing all of them.
A review can still come down — but not because it stung
Reviews can be defamatory, can publish a stranger's address, or can be meant for a different business entirely. Those come down on grounds the FTC itself sets out, and EagleHQ rules on them, not the business — otherwise the delete button would just have paperwork stapled to it. Nothing is hidden while we look.
This is a description, not legal advice, and penalty figures move with inflation. Businesses on EagleHQ get the full rules — every statute, and what they may and may not do about their own reviews — inside their admin.
Being straight with you
What the badge does not claim
A trust mark that only lists its own strengths is doing exactly what a five-star wall with the two-stars removed is doing. So here are its edges.
It says nothing about the score
A verified 3.4 is a 3.4. The badge means the number in front of you was arrived at honestly — it is not a recommendation, and a business with mediocre reviews can wear it proudly.
The business can still answer back
Public replies stay open under either policy, and pinning a favourite review to the top is allowed. Adding context isn't the same as withholding it — and everything else is still on the page underneath.
Testimonials taken by phone aren't job-linked
A business can type up a review a customer gave over the counter. Those aren't tied to a booking, they count towards the tier arithmetic like any other published review, and because the words are the owner's own transcription they can still be corrected. Only reviews a customer submitted themselves carry the full lock — so the four checks above describe how a review gets there, not a guarantee about every line on the page.
The business chooses who gets asked
Review links are sent by the business, job by job, so it can decline to ask a customer it expects a bad word from. Nothing stops that, and nothing here pretends otherwise. What a badged business can't do is un-ask — once a link is out, whatever comes back publishes and stays, whatever it says.
No badge is not an accusation
Most sites moderate, which is ordinary and often sensible. A site without the badge simply hasn't made this promise — and a site can also run unfiltered and choose not to advertise it.
If you run a business on EagleHQ
You can turn this on today. Think about it first.
It lives in your admin under Reviews → Settings & badge, and it is three switches and a save. What you should sit with is the day it costs you something: a customer has a genuinely bad afternoon, writes it up, and it publishes itself onto your home page while you're still driving back. You'll be able to reply. You won't be able to remove it.
That day is the entire product. It's the reason a stranger reading your reviews has any reason to believe them — and it's why the badge can't be bought, only kept.
The same screen has two more tabs worth ten minutes: Public record, which is what your customers see when they click your badge, and Rules & the law — every US statute that governs business reviews, and a plain list of what you may and may not do about your own.
Reviews your customers can actually trust
Every site we build ships with the review system on this page — the badge is there waiting the day you decide to earn it.
No badge without the tradeEnforced server-sideTiers are derived, never typed