Reviews and feedback — and the two meanings of "anonymous"

Bookodile has two ways for customers to tell you how it went, and they are not variations on one idea. They differ in the one place it matters most.

The difference in one table

A review marked anonymous still records the customer. It is displayed on your public page without their name, and you can still see who it was and reply to them. The promise to the customer is "hidden from the booking page, not from the shop".

Feedback marked anonymous stores no customer, no booking and no token. There is nothing to trace back, by anyone, ever. That is enforced in the database rather than by a setting someone could change. The promise is "we won't see who this is from — and won't be able to reply".

That second promise is the entire point of the feature. It is why the trade for honesty is that you cannot answer.

Reviews

Collecting and publishing are separate settings. Gathering reviews without showing them anywhere is a supported state, and it is the default. You can run the add-on for months and publish later.

Turning publishing on publishes everything you have. Every review collected so far becomes public at once, so the settings flow shows you the full list, worst first, before you confirm. Read it.

The rating badge needs at least three published reviews before it appears on your booking page. Below that there is not enough to be meaningful.

Turning publishing back off leaves the page in place with a short note rather than a dead link, because the URL may already be indexed and a missing page reads as "this business is gone".

Removing a review

There is no hide toggle and no approve-before-publishing, deliberately — hand-picking which reviews the world sees is advertising, and customers work it out.

What exists is removal, for spam, a competitor, or a review naming somebody else. It requires a written reason, which is kept and shown beside the review. The review disappears from your public page and stops counting toward your rating immediately, stays visible to you under Reviews → Removed with who removed it and why, and is permanently deleted after 30 days.

Two things removal does not do: nothing is reported to us — there is no abuse queue and no adjudication, and the dialog says so — and the customer is not emailed.

Feedback

Private by construction. There is no public feedback page, no rating badge and no publishing setting.

There is also no delete button on anonymous feedback, and that is not an oversight. Removal exists for reviews because the harm is "this is in front of my customers". Feedback has no public surface, so the equivalent is marking it done — and a delete button on the one channel promised to be safe would undo the promise.

When they are sent

Both are requested after a visit, and a customer who had one visit receives one email — not one per add-on. If reviews, feedback and Google reviews are all switched on, that single email carries a block for each.

Worked example

A customer finishes an appointment. That evening they get one follow-up email.

They leave a 5-star review, ticking "post anonymously". Your booking page shows the review without their name. In your dashboard you can see it was them, and you reply — the reply appears publicly under the review.

The same email also invites private feedback. They mention the waiting area was cold, and tick anonymous. You see the comment, the service and the team member it is about. You do not see who sent it, and there is no reply button.

Limits

• Anonymous feedback cannot be answered. No workaround exists, by design.
• No per-review hiding. Publishing is all or nothing; removal is deletion with a grace period.
• Removed reviews are gone after 30 days, along with any conversation on them.
• Bookodile does not post to Google for you. The Google review add-on asks the customer and links them there; the review lives on Google.