How Madclub verifies
Madclub sells trust. Here is exactly what that means in the code that runs this platform — not a marketing promise, a description of what the system actually does.
Your money is held until the trip has happened
When you pay, the money is held by Madclub — not sent to the operator. There is nothing for the operator to collect until the trip is over.
An operator can confirm attendance only once a trip's dates have ended, and only once per date batch. Confirming attendance is also the moment a payout obligation is created for that booking — before that, there is no payout to release, because none exists yet.
Once a payout obligation exists, it becomes releasable at the trip's start date and is paid out by a single automated process. A held payment that has already entered a refund can never be released as a payout.
Reviews come only from people who actually went
You can only write a review against a booking Madclub has marked completed, and only the adventurer who made that booking can write it. There is no path to review a trip you didn't book, or one that hasn't happened yet.
Each booking can carry at most one review — that limit is enforced at the database level, not just in the app.
There is no operator delete path anywhere in the platform. An operator can read reviews of their own trips, but nothing in their console can remove or alter one.
Two things can keep a review out of public view, and an operator controls neither. An automated check holds a review for a human decision when it contains a link, contact details, or certain flagged words. Madclub's moderation team then either publishes it or removes it, and both decisions are written to an audit log. Once a review is published it cannot be removed — and no operator can remove or alter any review at any point.
You can see when we verified a trip
Every trip we publish is stamped with the date its safety details were last verified, at the moment it goes live.
You can see that date on the verified-trip cards on the Madclub home page, and again on the trip's own page alongside the safety facts it applies to.
An operator is approved by a Madclub admin
An operator cannot publish a single trip until a Madclub admin has approved them. There is no way around that gate.
Approval requires the operator's verification documents to be on file — an admin can't approve an operator who hasn't submitted them.
When an admin approves an operator, we record which admin made the decision and when, as a permanent audit entry alongside the approval itself.