Complaints & Content Reports

If you believe content on Flatchat breaches our Content Guidelines, Terms, or the law — or if you want to exercise your rights under the Privacy Act 2020 — this page tells you how to report it and what to expect.

All complaints go to legal@flatchat.co.nz. We aim to acknowledge every complaint within 24 hours during New Zealand business days.

1. Types of complaint we handle

We apply a different process to each type of complaint. Tell us which one applies in your email — if you’re not sure, describe the issue in plain English and we’ll route it correctly.

Defamation

If a review contains a false statement of fact about you that damages your reputation, email us with:

• Your full name and your relationship to the subject of the review (e.g. the landlord, a property manager, the agency).
• The URL of the page.
• The specific words you say are defamatory — quote them exactly.
• Why the statement is false, and what harm it has caused.

We decide complaints against NZ defamation law, including the defences of truth, honest opinion, and qualified privilege under the Defamation Act 1992.

Harmful Digital Communications Act 2015

If content on Flatchat has caused you serious emotional distress, or breaches one of the Act’s 10 communication principles (for example: false allegations, grossly offensive material, disclosing sensitive personal facts), email us and mention the HDCA. For your complaint to start the statutory clock under section 23 of the Act, it should include:

• Your full name.
• The URL of the page and the specific words or content you say are harmful.
• Which communication principle applies, or a plain-English reason the content has caused you serious emotional distress.

The HDCA sets out a specific procedure for hosts of online content in sections 23–25. When a valid notice of complaint arrives, we will forward it to the author within 48 hours; the author then has 48 hours to respond; and we act on their response (or on their silence) within 48 hours of our initial notification. The statute’s overall safe-harbour process typically completes within four days.

If you want more information before sending a complaint, Netsafe — the approved agency under the HDCA — can help: netsafe.org.nz.

Privacy Act 2020 — information we hold about you

You have two specific rights under the Privacy Act 2020:

• Access (IPP6): you can ask us what personal information we hold about you.
• Correction (IPP7): you can ask us to correct personal information that is inaccurate.
• Statement of correction (section 64): if we decline to correct information on request, you can ask us to attach a statement of the requested correction so that it is read alongside the disputed information.

Email legal@flatchat.co.nz with enough information for us to identify you (name, email address used on Flatchat, any usernames). We will respond within 20 working days as required by the Act.

Our Privacy Officer is Ryan Cole, contactable at the same address.

If you are not satisfied with our response, you can complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner: privacy.org.nz.

Copyright

If you own copyright in material used on Flatchat without permission, email us with:

• The work in question and your relationship to it.
• The URL where the material appears.
• A contact address so we can respond.
• A statement that you have a good-faith belief the use is unauthorised.

Other content-policy breaches

For anything that breaches our Content Guidelines but does not fall under one of the categories above, the fastest path is the Report button that appears on every review. You can also email legal@flatchat.co.nz if the issue is serious or sensitive.

2. Our service-level commitments

We publish our SLAs so you know what to expect — and so we can be held to them.

The HDCA 48-hour steps and the Privacy Act 2020 20-working-day response window are set by statute. The other timings are our own commitment.

3. What we do when a complaint arrives

Every complaint follows the same four-step process:

1. We log it. Each complaint gets a reference number (FC-YYYY-NNN). We record the complainant, the URL, the content complained of, the stated legal basis, and the time received.
2. We acknowledge it within 24 hours and, if the complaint meets our threshold for action, we temporarily hide the content while we investigate. Temporary hiding is not an admission of fault — it is our default precaution and it protects everyone involved.
3. We investigate. We re-read the content as a person hostile to you would read it. We apply the relevant law and our Content Guidelines. Where the answer is not clear, we err toward protecting people named in reviews.
4. We respond with our decision — remove, restore, or take partial action — and explain our reasoning in plain English. If you disagree, we tell you how to escalate (the courts for defamation and copyright, Netsafe then the District Court for HDCA, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner for privacy).

We preserve the original complaint, the content as it stood when the complaint arrived, and our decision record for at least seven years.

4. What we won’t do

So that you know where we stand:

• We will not remove honest negative reviews based on the reviewer’s first-hand tenancy experience just because the subject objects.
• We will not identify a reviewer — their name, email address, or IP — without valid legal process. Where the courts order disclosure, we will respond as the law requires.
• We will not act on anonymous complaints, or complaints that lack enough detail for us to investigate.
• We will not accept payment, advertising, or any other consideration in exchange for removing content, and we will not enter into arrangements that require us to suppress future reviews about a named person or property.

5. Privacy Officer

For all Privacy Act 2020 matters, including IPP6 access requests, IPP7 correction requests, and complaints about our handling of personal information:

Ryan Cole — Privacy Officer
legal@flatchat.co.nz

6. Escalating outside Flatchat

If you have worked through this process and are not satisfied, the appropriate external body depends on the complaint type:

• Defamation and copyright — District Court or High Court.
• Harmful Digital Communications Act — Netsafe, then the District Court.
• Privacy Act 2020 — Office of the Privacy Commissioner.