The refusal file
Browse the live directory, try Stumble, or suggest a business. All submissions require editorial review. The reference material below describes the published standard; it is not evidence that an individual business has been checked. No public dataset export or automated check log is offered.
The patterns that fail the entry bar, described anonymously and tied to the criterion each one breaks. What a register turns away is more informative than what it lets in.
Current state
Observed patterns: none. Refusal rate: not measured.
This edition supplies no assessment log, so it makes no observed-pattern or refusal-rate claim. The examples below are criteria-derived scenarios, not reports about named or anonymised businesses.
What follows is the complete method a refusal file must use.
The anonymisation rule
We never name a refused business. Not in a pattern, not in an example, not in passing, and not in a way that a determined reader could reverse. Sector, location, size and backstory are stripped or altered in combination, because those four together identify a small business even when none of them does alone.
Every published pattern is a composite drawn from more than one case. If a pattern could only have come from a single submission, it does not publish.
Why publish refusals at all
Because an inclusion list is unfalsifiable on its own. Anyone can publish things they said yes to. The only way to show that a bar is real is to show what it stopped — and to publish the rate, including when the rate is embarrassingly high or awkwardly low.
It is also genuinely useful. Most refusals are ordinary, fixable problems, and an operator reading the patterns will often find their own site described. That is a better outcome than a rejection email.
How a pattern is written
- Name the pattern in plain language, as a reader would recognise it.
- State which criterion of the entry bar it fails, and why that criterion exists.
- Describe how we spot it, so an operator can spot it themselves.
- Give a composite illustration with every identifying detail removed.
- Say what would have to change for the same business to pass.
The last step matters. A refusal file that only catalogues failure is a list of complaints; one that says how to clear the bar is a service.
The kinds of pattern we expect to publish
Written from the criteria rather than from cases, since there are no cases. A pattern is described from real cases only when composites exist to support it.
The site that does not say what it sells
Fails criterion four: nobody here can describe it in our own words, because nobody can tell what it is. Almost certainly the most common refusal there will be.
The shop that is really an affiliate page
Fails criterion three: the product is the click, not the goods. Often entirely legal and disclosed — still not what this register is for.
The launch that has not launched
Fails criterion one: a waitlist is not a thing you can buy, use or visit today.
Independence we could not establish
Fails criterion two. Where the ownership question has no answer we can check, the answer is no rather than a guess.
No route to a human
Fails criterion four in practice: if nobody can be reached, nobody can confirm anything and nothing can be corrected.
A good business in an excluded category
Fails nothing about itself. The exclusions at the entry bar are about our exposure, not the operator's quality, and this is the pattern worth publishing most.
Getting a refusal reconsidered
A refusal is against a specific criterion of the entry bar, so reconsideration means showing that the criterion is now met — the business has changed, or the basis recorded was wrong. Use Contact to request reconsideration; the submission self-check shows what a fresh assessment would look at.
Questions about refusals
Will you tell me why I was refused?
Yes, against the specific criterion that failed. What we will not do is publish it — the pattern may appear here later, anonymised and combined with others, but your business will not be named anywhere.
Does a refusal mean my business is bad?
No, and the most important pattern in this file is the one where a good business is refused for reasons that have nothing to do with its quality. A bar with categorical exclusions turns away plenty of things that deserve to exist.
Can I pay to have a refusal reviewed again?
No. There is no paid route to anything here, including reconsideration. Fix the issue and repeat the self-check; it costs nothing and there is no limit.
Why not name and shame the obvious bad actors?
Because we would be publishing an accusation we cannot substantiate to a legal standard about a business that cannot answer back on our pages. Patterns are more useful and considerably more honest.
How do I know the refusal rate is real?
It comes from the assessment log rather than a description of it. Until that log has entries the rate is published as unavailable, which is the harder and duller thing to do than guessing at one.
Do you refuse businesses for being too small?
No. Small is the point. We refuse for the six criteria and the excluded categories, and size is not among them.
No pattern published here identifies a real business. See the entry bar for the criteria and the submission criteria to try again.