HomeKampung
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Community Guidelines — HomeKampung

v0.5.5 · Last revised 6 November 2026 · In force since 1 Nov 2026

1. Reviews Must Be Genuine

  • Reviews come from orders: you can review what you bought, through your order (below).
  • No fake, incentivised ("5 stars for a discount"), or retaliatory reviews.
  • No rating manipulation: no multiple accounts, bots, or coordinated campaigns — for or against any shop.
  • Sellers may not pressure buyers to change or remove a review, or offer anything in exchange for one.

How reviews work. A buyer reviews the products of an order through Leave a review in "Where is my order?" on the shop's page (order number and phone), once the shop marks the order completed - or after a refund, or after reporting it not received - for 30 days. The review is published at once, marked Verified order, and labelled "Order refunded" or "Not received" when that is how the order ended. The Seller cannot approve, reject or delete it; the buyer can edit it once within the 30 days. Reviewers are shown by first name and initial unless they choose to show their full name. A Seller may hide a review from their page; it still counts in the star rating, and it cannot be hidden while a report on it is open. Reviews written before 23 October 2026, when anyone could review without an order, stay on the shop page and in the shop's rating, but they are not marked Verified order and do not count toward a product's rating. An order the shop entered by hand (a DM or bazaar sale) can be reviewed too, once the shop has recorded the buyer's name and phone, a product from its catalogue and a payment receipt, and marked it paid, completed and delivered - from a week after the last of these, for 30 days. That review is marked Ordered by DM, not Verified order, because the shop recorded the order rather than the buyer placing it; it counts toward the shop's rating, not a product's. A short version for buyers is at How reviews work.

Reporting a review. Any reader can report a published review from the shop page, with an optional reason, and the Seller can report one from their console on one of the grounds below. A report goes to a HomeKampung moderation queue, and while it is open the Seller cannot hide that review — so reporting it cannot be answered by burying it. We rule on a report either by dismissing it (the review stands) or by removing the review.

What we remove, and what we don't. We remove a published review only when it is abusive (insults, threats, hate), exposes personal data (a phone number, an address, an IC number, someone named to expose them), is spam, is not about this shop or order, was a demand made in exchange for the review, was written by or for the Seller, carries an unsafe photo (another person's face, a child, a document), or when the reviewer asks us to delete their own review. We do not remove a review for being negative, harsh, or disputed by the Seller. Each removal is recorded with its reason and date, and can be reversed if we got it wrong.

Evidence hold. While a shop is under an evidence hold, none of its existing reviews can be changed - not hidden by the Seller, not edited by the buyer, and not removed by us - until the hold is lifted. New reviews can still be written.

Response time. We aim to rule on a report within 24 hours; the queue flags anything older so it cannot sit unseen. That is an aim, not a contractual guarantee — we are one small team.

2. No Impersonation

Do not impersonate another person, shop, or brand, or claim badges/certifications you don't hold. The software refuses a shop name that already exists and a shop address that would look like an existing one once hyphens and case are ignored.

3. Prohibited Content (Singapore-specific)

Content that is racially or religiously inflammatory is strictly prohibited — this maps to real legal exposure in Singapore (Penal Code §298/§298A, Maintenance of Religious Harmony Act), not just platform values. Also prohibited: harassment, obscene content, and anything promoting illegal goods (see ToS §6).

4. Enforcement Ladder

Graduated, proportionate to severity and history. What our tools can do today: remove a reported review; revoke a food-safety badge; edit or remove any listing or image through the shop's own console; pause a shop's checkout; place an evidence hold that keeps a shop's records from being purged; suspend a shop; add a closed shop's identifiers to a banned list that holds a matching future shop for review; delete a shop. Warnings and restrictions short of a pause or a suspension are messages from us, not software states.

Pre-orders. A pre-order that does not arrive and is not refunded is non-delivery, and the ladder below applies; we read the Seller's own refund record on the cancelled order before we act, and we can switch a shop's pre-orders off (stopping new ones) while we look.

Reporting an order or a shop. A buyer who can prove an order can report a problem with it from "Where is my order?"; anyone can report a shop from its footer. Reports reach our operators; for an order report the Seller is told the reason and asked to answer within 48 hours, never who reported. A shop report is read by us before anything happens — the shop is not told. We aim to reply to a reporter who left an email within 2 working days.

  1. Remove content (listing, review, image)
  2. Revoke a trust badge
  3. Suspend or remove a listing
  4. Pause checkout — the shop page stays up, new orders are refused, the shop leaves the marketplace, and buyers with an open order see "under review" on Where is my order?. Used while a credible report is unanswered or being checked; lifted the moment it is settled.
  5. Warn → restrict → suspend → terminate the account

Severe cases (forged documents, scams, inflammatory content) may skip steps.

5. Removing a Shop

Enforcement normally means suspension, which takes a shop's page offline and removes it from the marketplace, and which is fully reversible — that is the step we reach for, and nothing is erased by it.

A permanent deletion path does exist, in the operator console: it removes the shop and everything under it (products, orders, customers, reviews, uploaded images and documents) irreversibly, and requires the operator to type the shop's handle to confirm. Files are purged from live storage at once and leave our backups within the periods the Data Deletion & Retention Policy states. It is used for a shop that must genuinely be erased — a duplicate, a test shop, or a seller exercising their right to erasure — not as a routine enforcement step.

Committed work: a soft-removal grace period of 14 days — delisted but recoverable — before permanent deletion, so a malicious or mistaken removal can be undone. That grace period is not built yet: today the deletion is immediate.