How to read tradie reviews without being fooled

Star ratings are the most-used and least-understood signal in hiring a tradesperson. The median business here has 18 reviews — a number worth holding in your head, because it makes the arithmetic obvious.

Five stars from four people is not a rating

It is four opinions. Any business can collect four, and a business that has just started has no other option. It is not evidence of anything bad — it is simply not much evidence of anything at all.

This is why the ranking on this site weights review volume more heavily than review score, and why a business cannot improve its position by collecting a handful of glowing reviews.

Read the one-star reviews first

Not because they are more truthful — an angry customer is not automatically right — but because the pattern in them is informative in a way the five-star ones never are. Three unrelated people describing the same failure is a signal. One furious person describing something no one else mentions usually is not.

Read the replies, not just the reviews

• A business that replies to criticism specifically and without arguing is telling you how it behaves when something goes wrong.
• A business that replies to every negative review by disputing the customer's account is telling you the same thing, differently.
• No replies at all tells you nothing much either way.

The thing we cannot tell you, and neither can anyone else

We hold review counts and averages, not individual reviews with timestamps. That means we cannot see whether forty reviews arrived steadily over six years or all in one fortnight — and the second is far more likely to have been bought.

We would tell you if we could, and we say so on the method page rather than implying a check that does not run. If you are looking at a business yourself, open the reviews and check the dates. A cluster is worth a second look.