How Therapist Reviews Work on PairLume
Who can leave one, what we do with complaints, and why a five star average tells you less than three specific sentences.
Reviews in this field are strange. People rarely review the professional who told them something they needed to hear, and sometimes glow about the one who was pleasant and changed nothing.
## Who can leave a review
Only someone who booked and completed a session with that professional. Reviews are tied to real bookings, which removes the two worst problems in review systems: competitors and strangers.
## What professionals can and cannot do
They can see their reviews and respond within limits. They cannot delete a review because they dislike it, and they cannot make a good review a condition of anything.
They can flag a review for our team when they believe it breaks the rules: personal identifying details, abuse, or an account of something that clearly did not happen. A person reviews that flag. Disagreement with the opinion is not grounds for removal.
## Where reviews stop and disputes begin
A review is feedback. A dispute is a claim about the transaction: the session did not happen, the professional did not show, the work was outside their scope, or the conduct was inappropriate.
Those go through the dispute path on the booking, not the review box, because they can end in a refund or in removal. A human reviews each one and the professional payout for that booking is held while it is open.
## How to read reviews as a buyer
Look for behaviour, not adjectives. Warm and lovely tells you nothing predictive. She interrupted us when we started going in circles tells you how a session runs.
Look for repetition across different reviewers. One mention is a mood. Three mentions is a trait.
Read the moderate reviews before the extremes. The three and four star reviews are usually the most honest, because the writer is trying to be fair rather than to reward or punish.
## Why low volume is not a red flag
Many people do not review private work at all, for obvious reasons. A professional with four detailed reviews and a full calendar is not worse than one with forty short ones. Weight the content, not the count.
## Leaving one that helps somebody
Say what you brought, how the professional worked, and what changed or did not. Two or three sentences of specifics helps a stranger more than a paragraph of praise.
Do not include anything you would not want a future employer to read, and do not name other people involved.
## Where professionals see this
Professionals have a reviews area in their portal showing what clients wrote and the overall pattern, because feedback nobody can see does not improve anything. Client identity in reviews follows the same display rules as the rest of the platform.