Content policy

What counts as a scam report

A scam report is a first-hand account of money you paid, or were pressured to pay, where you did not get what was agreed. An operator who took a deposit and never delivered the trip. A guide who quoted one price and demanded another halfway through. An official who asked for a fee that does not exist. A rental that was not the vehicle in the photographs.

A bad experience is not automatically a scam. A tour that was disorganised, a room that was smaller than the pictures, a driver who was rude — those are worth writing about, and they belong here as ordinary reviews. Marking a post as a scam report is a stronger claim, and it is held to a stronger standard.

Firsthand only. Not what you heard.

Post what happened to you. Not what a friend told you, not what someone said in a Facebook group, not a story you read somewhere else. If it did not happen to you or to someone you were travelling with, it does not go here.

This is the rule we enforce most strictly, and it is not bureaucracy. Second-hand accusations are the ones that turn out to be wrong, and they are the ones that do damage to a business that did nothing. A report that begins "apparently they" will be declined.

Say what you agreed, what you paid, what you received, and when. "I paid $200 for a three-day trip and the vehicle never arrived" is worth a hundred posts saying an operator is bad.

What we ask for, and what we do with it

Every post is read by a person before it appears. Nothing publishes automatically. While it is in the queue we may ask you for anything that supports it: the booking confirmation, the itinerary you were sent, receipts, bank or mobile-money records, WhatsApp messages, photographs.

You are not required to hand over documents, and there is no upload form that decides this for you. What happens is simpler and more human: a moderator weighs what you have. A report naming a business, quoting a specific figure, with a booking confirmation attached is treated very differently from the same report with nothing behind it. The second one is more likely to be declined, and we will tell you why.

• ·Remove other people’s personal details before you send anything — names, phone numbers, account numbers, passport pages.
• ·We do not publish your documents. They inform a decision; they are not part of the post.
• ·We cannot independently confirm most of what we are shown. A published report means a person read it and found it credible and specific. It is not a finding of fact.

What we do not publish

• ·Second-hand accounts, rumours, and anything you did not experience yourself.
• ·Posts about private individuals. This site is about businesses and services.
• ·Personal information: phone numbers, home addresses, ID or passport numbers, or photographs of identifiable private people who did not consent.
• ·Accusations of a crime stated as established fact. Describe what happened to you and let the reader draw the conclusion.
• ·Posts written to settle a score, posts by competitors, and posts about a business you have never actually paid.

Editing a post after it is published

You can edit your own post at any time, but an edit does not go live by itself. It is queued as a proposed change and a moderator reviews it, the same way the original was reviewed. Until it is approved, everyone else keeps seeing the version that was published; you will see your pending edit marked as awaiting review.

The reason is specific to what this site publishes. A post can be approved as a fair account of a bad trip and then quietly edited into something far stronger. If edits went live unreviewed, "every post is reviewed" would be technically true and practically worthless.

Once an edit is approved the post shows that it was edited, and the previous versions are kept.

Withdrawing a post

You can withdraw your own post at any time. That takes effect immediately and needs nobody’s approval — they are your words, and taking them down is yours to do.

A withdrawn post disappears from the site’s listings, from search, and from the sitemap. If anyone had already replied to it, the page stays reachable with the body replaced by "Withdrawn by author" so the conversation underneath still makes sense. We do not erase the record entirely: moderators can still see what was withdrawn, which is what stops the site being used to post an allegation, collect the attention, and delete the evidence.

If a post names your business

You get a reply, and it sits with the post. Once your account is verified you can post one response to any post about you. It appears directly beneath the original, clearly labelled as your response, and it is not hidden behind a link. Your response goes through the same review as anything else, and edits to it are reviewed the same way.

You cannot edit, withdraw, or alter the original post. That is not an oversight — a site where the subject of a complaint can change it is not recording anything.

Disputing a post

If you believe a post is false, breaks these rules, or should not be here, you can dispute it. That sends it to a moderator with your reason attached.

A dispute does not take the post down while we look at it, and this is deliberate. If objecting were enough to hide a report, every report would stop working at exactly the moment it mattered. The post stays live and visible; a person reads your reason and decides.

If we find the post breaks these rules it is removed, and the decision is recorded. If we do not, it stays and we will tell you that too. Your right of reply is available either way, and it is usually the more useful remedy: a reader who sees an allegation and a specific, factual answer beneath it can judge for themselves.

Legal notices

For a formal complaint — defamation, intellectual property, a court order — write to legal@visittanzania.io rather than using the dispute form, and include enough detail to identify the post. Urgent safety matters go to abuse@visittanzania.io.