Product reviews

Product reviews on bol are intended for customers to share their findings on the website, with the aim of informing other customers about the item. When a customer writes a review, it needs to comply with the guidelines below. There are some exceptions, which we list on a case-by-case basis.

A product review refers to the customer’s experience with the item, regardless of whether it was obtained/given as a gift or if an item was made available (temporarily). The latter is subject to additional conditions, as explained below in rule 6, ‘a commercial purpose’.

Product reviews are written by customers

You are not allowed to write reviews about your own products, as a seller or bol employee. Purchases and subsequent product reviews performed in a personal capacity are not included.

A good review has the following characteristics:

1. Describe why you like or dislike the item and name any comments, positive or negative. Keep in mind that a review should be valuable for other customers, try to be concise yet complete.
2. Write the review in Dutch, in a way that’s understandable and correct.
3. Limit the review to your own experience with the item.

We’d rather not see this in a review:

1. Opinions or statements that do not relate to your experience in using the item, e.g. because you have never used the item.
2. Volatile information regarding the price, shipping of the item and/or the selling party on bol.
3. Curse words, racist statements, diseases or grammatical conjugations on this.
4. Links, by means of URLs or otherwise, to other websites.
5. Naming discounts, commercial actions, campaigns or price differences compared to other (bol) sellers or (online) shops.
6. Sponsored reviews (in the form of discounts, gift vouchers, cashback, ‘chance at’ etc. or otherwise with a commercial purpose and/or content, unless it is explicitly stated – by means of a separate paragraph – in the product review that this is the case. Some examples of non-permitted situations:
   1. You were given the item (temporarily) – by the selling party or through a third party – to write a product review in return. In the product review, you do not mention that you have received the item from a third party, with a request to write a product review.
   2. Omit from your review that you received financial compensation from a third party to write a review of their item in return.

Product review exceptions

Due to strict legislation, product reviews are disabled for selected product groups. For customers, this looks as follows:

• They do not see a review element on the product page for these items.
• They do not see a ‘schrijf een recensie’ button on the account page for these items.
• They do not receive an e-mail invitation to write a review for these items.
• They do not see reviews for these items on the product page.

For the selected product groups, no claims may be made about the use and effects of these items. Therefore, product reviews have been disabled for the product groups below.

When can bol remove a review:

Bol reserves the right to remove product review(s) from the website at any time, without further notice. Among others, but not limited to:

1. If there are sponsored reviews: The terms and conditions clearly state that if any compensation or product was obtained through a third party to write the review, this should be mentioned. If this is not the case, bol.com will remove the review upon discovery. All this is explained in our updated terms and conditions for reviews (in Dutch).
2. If one or more of the guidelines described above have not been complied with or bol has a reasonable suspicion of this.
3. If a product review is related to the product information included with the product that was incorrect at the time of purchase. To avoid confusion, bol may choose to remove product reviews that conflict with the correct product information.
4. If an abnormal pattern is detected by automatic detection tools, a review may be automatically rejected and/or subsequently removed from bol.

To conclude:

Bol has the right to change guidelines regarding product reviews. We will post a modified version of these guidelines on the website as soon as possible.