Community Guidelines

1. Be accurate

Everything you publish about yourself and your business must be true: the company, its registration, what it makes, what it is licensed to do, and who you are.

• Do not misrepresent a company, its size, its capacity or its certifications.
• Do not submit a document that has been altered, borrowed, or does not belong to your company.
• Do not claim an accreditation, a standard or an audit you do not hold.
• Do not present another company’s photographs, facilities or work as your own.

2. Deal honestly

A quote should be one you intend to honour, and a requirement should be one you intend to buy. Wasting the other side’s time is not a technical breach, but a pattern of it is.

• Do not quote for goods you cannot supply to the specification you were given.
• Do not post a requirement to collect competitors’ pricing with no intention of buying.
• Do not use the platform to reach someone and then misrepresent who you are off it.

3. Respect the people you meet here

Business disagreements happen. Harassment, threats, abuse and discriminatory language are not disagreements and are not tolerated, in messages, in submissions, or in anything you publish.

4. Do not abuse the platform

These are the ones that damage everyone else’s experience, not only one counterparty’s.

• No spam, bulk unsolicited messaging, or automated messaging you were not given permission for.
• No scraping, bulk extraction, or automated collection of listings, profiles or contact details.
• No attempt to reach another account, to bypass a restriction, or to return after an account was closed.
• No malicious files, links or content designed to harm someone who opens it.
• No creating multiple accounts for one business to avoid a rule or a decision.

5. What may not be traded here

Anything unlawful in the market it is offered to, anything under sanction, counterfeit or stolen goods, and anything a licence is needed for that you do not hold.

Some goods are ordinary in one market and restricted in another. The platform checks that pairing, and a listing may be restricted for a market without being restricted everywhere.

6. Other people’s rights

Publish only what is yours to publish, and do not share anyone’s personal information. Identity documents, private contact details, or anything about a person that they gave you for one purpose and not this one.

Intellectual property is covered by its own policy, including how to report an infringement.

7. Reviews and ratings

There are no free-text reviews on Sooqban today. What is shown about a company is worked out from what the platform can observe: how often it replies, how fast, how complete its quotes are, how recent its audit is, and how complete its profile is. A review nobody can check, on a platform about checking, is worse than no review at all.

When reviews do exist, they will be tied to a completed transaction, and the rules against writing your own, paying for one, or threatening someone over one will apply from that day.

8. Reporting something

When profiles and listings are public, any of them can be reported, by buyers and by suppliers alike. You will choose a category rather than write free text, the same reason rejection reasons are chosen from a list, and you can attach evidence.

You will get a case reference and a first response within one business day, and be told what will be shared with the other party before it is.

A report does not remove a listing by itself, and that is deliberate: if it did, the report form would be a delisting button aimed at a competitor. Only a compliance block removes a listing, and only compliance can lift one.

Reporting in bad faith, to harass, or to damage a competitor, is itself a breach of these guidelines.

9. What happens when a rule is broken

Depending on what happened, we may remove content, restrict a feature, suspend an account, require additional verification, or close an account.

You are told the reason. Where a decision can be reviewed, you are told how to ask and a person looks at it. Where the law requires us to act without notice, we say so afterwards as soon as we are permitted to.

10. Changes

These guidelines carry a version and a date, and a change of wording is a new version rather than an edit to this one.