General
• How can I participate in myCityscrewups?
• Is myCityscrewups free?
• Why use myCityscrewups?
• Who uses myCityscrewups?
• What should I be reviewing on myCityscrewups?
• Who can see me and my reviews?
• Is myCityscrewups in my hometown?
• How do I register?
• How do I verify my myCityscrewups account?
• How do I make changes to my account’s information?
Privacy
• What does myCityscrewups do with my personal information?
Writing gripes (reviews)
• What makes for a great gripe?
• What should I gripe about?
• Can I review a business I'm connected to? What do I mention about my bad experience?
• Does myCityscrewups ever remove reviews?
• How does the search work?
• How do I add a comment about a review?
• How do I rate a review?
• How do I take action?
• How do I flag a review?
• How do I upload reviews?
• What other functions are available on a review page
• What is the forum tab?
• What is the billboard tab?
General
How you I participate in myCityscrewups?
You can read and upload reviews. You can rate reviews, add personal comments about them, or flag them to warn myCityscrewups for inappropriateness. You can download media items, or share them with a friend. Refer the section on Mechanics for instructions. We are also asking our users to help us spread the word about our website to friends and relatives. In an effort to create a database of email addresses of officials in your local communities, we're soliciting your help in forwarding us any information regarding whom to contact for specific gripes using our “contact us” page, we welcome all of your suggestions.
Is myCityscrewups free?
Yes! Every feature and function you see is free for our members.
Who uses myCityscrewups?
There isn't a person out there who doesn't need myCityscrewups now and then, but MyCityscrewups's main users include:
• Locals who are always care about what's happening in their city, find value in sharing their knowledge and are looking for resources to be able to take action.
• Locals and visitors filed a complaint or used a service and felt cheated, dissatisfied or ignored - and want to share their real-life experiences and opinions with other myCityscrewups users.
• Visitors and newcomers who want to quickly get an insider's local perspective.
• Anyone who wants to find current and reliable information about something in a given neighborhood, city or area.
What should I be reviewing on myCityscrewups?
MyCityscrewups is meant for just about any sort of local experience, service or destination.
Who can see me and my gripes?
Anyone visitng MyCityscrewups can see your username and your reviews. Only registered MyCityscrewups users may rate your reviews add comments.
Is myCityscrewups in my hometown?
Our site is powered by members like you, wherever you are, so is myCityscrewups.
Click on the “sign up” link on the top right of any page, and follow instructions to register. You will need to come up with a user name of any length, and a password of at least 6 characters, and your zip code. For added security you will be asked to enter a verification code that will show on your screen. You also must check the “I agree to” next to the “terms of service” link before you can click “create account”. Next you will verify your account.
How do I verify my MyCityscrewups account?
When you've completed the registration process, you will receive an email with a special link. Click the link or copy and paste it into your browser. Your account will be verified at this point. Email us if you have any questions. You are now ready to upload content.
How do I make changes to my account’s information?
To edit your profile, log in and click on the My Account link that appears at the top of any page. You will be able to edit your account info here. You can edit your email address, change your password or your zip code. You can also view your previously uploaded reviews and delete them.
What does myCityscrewups do with my personal information?
We take privacy very seriously. We do not sell, rent, share, trade or give away any of your personal information, unless required to by law. We hate spam even more than you do. If any of our members are found to have violated our Terms of Service by sending unsolicited commercial messages to other myCityscrewups’ members, we will investigate and take action immediately.
Writing gripes (reviews)
What makes for a great gripe?
myCityscrewups gripes are useful because people like you take the time share to share thoughtful insights on local businesses and services. The best reviews are personal and experiential, and tend to offer helpful suggestions, perhaps even an insider tip or two. The most useful gripes inform the public and share information on how their issue has been resolved.
What should I review?
Any business, service, institution, organization or place is fair game for being griped on myCityscrewups.
Can I review a business I'm connected to?
If you are connected to a business, through either a personal or professional relationship, we encourage you to provide your gripe, so long as you are open about and explicitly disclose your relationship to the business in your review. Remember MyCityscrewups is about Real Reviews written by Real People. In order to keep myCityscrewups gripes trustworthy, we need to make sure that the readers always know whenever a reviewer's perspective may be influenced by their personal connections.
What do I mention about my bad experience?
Be sure to include all the relevant facts and details.
Does MyCityscrewups ever remove gripes?
In some cases, a member of the myCityscrewups team will remove a gripe (notifying the writer) when we are made aware of certain situations including:
• Disclosure problems. For example, if you claim that a business owner pays low wages, you need to explain how you know that.
• Second-hand experiences and hearsay. Your reviews must be about your personal experiences, not about what you may have heard.
• Personal issues with an employee.
• Personal attacks. Feel free to explain your bad experience with a salesman, hospital employee or teacher, but myCityscrewups's not the place for vicious attacks or name calling.
• Slurs and stereotypes. There's plenty of bigotry in the world, so we're not interested in ethnic, gender and other protected-class stereotypes on myCityscrewups. Your friends probably know when you're being tongue-in-cheek, but the millions of people who read gripes on myCityscrewups may not.
Additionally, to combat review "spam" and ensure the trustworthiness of myCityscrewups ratings, we have a system that automatically suppresses a very small number of reviews written by folks that aren't a part of our vibrant local community.
We all want myCityscrewups to be a vibrant and healthy local community, so this means living with some common sense social norms that we like to think of as myCityscrewups-worthy behavior. Unworthy behavior includes:
• Vicious/lewd name-calling
• Threatening myCityscrewupsers with emotional or bodily harm
• Incessant harassment of other myCityscrewupsers
• Racial slurs and/or hateful speech
• Posting personally identifiable information of other myCityscrewupsers (email addresses, phone numbers, addresses)
• Posting under multiple identities by the same person
When we are made aware of myCityscrewupsers engaging in these behaviors, we have no choice but to consider taking action including possible suspension of the offending myCityscrewupser's account. So please, let's all keep it civil and enjoy this open forum for local debate.
How does the search work?
You can search using a variety of input fields in the search area that’s on the top of each page. You can narrow your search by selecting any or all of the following: state, a state and city (or zip code), a category, a text string to lookup. Clicking a category on the left hand side will override a previous choice of category in the search area.
How do I add a comment about a review?
You must be a registered user to add a comment. Click on “add comment”, and a text box will appear. Enter your comment inside the text box and click “post”. You will see your comment has been added to the top of the comments’ list.
How do I rate a review?
Click on “rate for interest”. Rating should be considered by level of interest and importance of the content. Select your rating stars from the lowest recommendation (1 star), to the highest recommendation (5 stars) from the drop down list and click “post”.
How do I take action?
This function is not available on all pages. If you see a button captioned “take action”, you can click on it to see a list of institutions that might be interested in receiving an email notifying them of the content of this page. Select one such institution and hit “send”.
How do I flag a review?
You must be a registered user to add rate a review. Click on “flag”. Enter your text explaining why this review is inappropriate and click “send” or “cancel” to cancel this flagging. myCityscrewups management will then delete this review if indeed found to be inappropriate.
How do I upload reviews?
You must be a registered user to upload a review. You will find an "upload" link on the right hand side of each page. On the upload page you must enter the locale information including the state and city (or zip code). You must choose a category from the drop down list and enter a title for your review. You then need to select a type:
* Video: you must upload a video. You may enter a description.
* Image: you must upload an image. You may enter a description.
* Text only: you must enter a description.
What other functions are available on a review page?
You can download the video or image by clicking on “download media” button.
You can share the URL with a friend by clicking on the “share” button.
What is the forum tab?
By hitting the forum tab you will be taken to a forum site where you may search for existing forums in your locale or create a new one. We encourage you to start dialogue with people in your local community who share similar concerns.
What is the billboard tab?
Clicking the billboard tab will take you to your local community billboard where you can search, view and advertise your local events for free. To advertise your event, click the "upload event" link on the right hand side of each page within the billboard section.
