Terms of use

What this site is

Top Rated publishes editorial lists of the best products, services and places in Canada. Our lists are opinion, informed by research and by testing other people have published. They are a starting point for your own decision, not professional advice.

What our lists are not

Nothing here is financial, legal, medical or insurance advice. Where we cover credit cards, insurance or anything else regulated, we are describing publicly available products, not recommending one for your circumstances. Talk to a licensed professional before acting on anything that affects your money or your health.

For expensive or safety-critical work, confirm licensing, insurance and credentials yourself before you hire anyone. Our checks do not replace yours.

Accuracy, and its limits

We date everything and re-check on a schedule, but prices move, businesses close and products get discontinued. We cannot promise a page is correct at the moment you read it. If you spot something wrong, tell us and we will fix it.

Money

Placement is not for sale, and never will be. We may in future earn a commission when you buy through a link on this site. That would never change an order, and any page where it applies will say so on the page itself.

Editorial standards

We start wide rather than with the businesses we already knew about, using public listings, review platforms and trade associations. To make a list, a business has to clear a rating threshold on more than one platform, because bought reviews rarely hold up consistently across several sites. Before anything goes up we confirm what can be confirmed: that the business is still operating, that its contact details are right, and for licensed trades that its credentials have not lapsed. If we cannot confirm a claim, we leave it out rather than repeat it.

Ratings quoted on this site come from named third-party platforms on a specific date. We do not average them into a single invented score, because that hides more than it reveals. Monthly lists are re-checked at the start of each month and yearly lists are rebuilt annually. Every page shows when it was last updated.

Placement is never for sale. If a business we list has a commercial relationship with us, that is disclosed on the page it appears on. Corrections that change an order are noted on the page rather than made quietly; send them to our corrections address.

Links to other sites

We link out to retailers, manufacturers and publications. We do not control those sites and are not responsible for their content, their prices or what they do with your data.

Using our content

The writing, lists and design here belong to us. Quote us and link back, that is fine and welcome. Republishing whole pages, or scraping the site to reproduce it elsewhere, is not.

Photography is licensed from third parties and credited on our photo credits page. That licence covers our use of it, not yours.

Businesses we list

We list businesses and products on editorial judgement. Being listed is not an endorsement you can advertise as ours, and being left off is not a judgement that you are bad. We do not remove a business because it asked, though we always correct an inaccuracy.

Liability

This site is provided as is. To the extent the law allows, we are not liable for losses arising from decisions you make based on it. Nothing here limits rights you have under Canadian consumer protection law.

Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of the Province of Ontario and the federal laws of Canada that apply there.

Changes

We may update these terms. The date at the top tells you when they last changed.