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Should I Trust a Plumber Near Me with Too Many Reviews?
How many reviews are too many reviews for a plumber?
It really depends on your geographic area. We calculate the number of reviews the average plumber in your area has, and compare that to the number of reviews for each plumber. If a plumber has 5 times the average number of reviews, then there's a good chance they have too many reviews for their average rating to be taken seriously.
If the average plumbing company in your area has 100 online reviews, and the plumber you're considering calling has 2000 reviews, it's unlikely that those reviews were added "naturally". Very few people go out of their way to leave a review, so having a large number of reviews is not natural. There was probably some trickery involved in getting all those reviews.
Be careful calling plumbers that have too many good reviews. Here's why: "Review Gating"
What is Review Gating?
Review Gating is a process where a plumber asks all their clients to take some sort of a survey. The survey will typically ask a question like "On a scale of 1 to 10 , how likely would you be to refer our plumbing services to a friend or colleague?" That's the "gate".
If you answer 9 or 10, they send you to Google or Facebook to leave a review. If you answer 1 to 8, then they send you to a non-review gathering website or page that only they see.
There are review gating software services that manage this process. These programs help a plumber get lots of 5 star reviews, while helping to prevent bad reviews. It's a violation of Google's policies and most other websites to filter the reviews like this.
Specifically, here is the policy that these plumbers might be violating if they are using a review gating software:
- Don’t discourage or prohibit negative reviews or selectively solicit positive reviews from customers.
- Don’t offer or accept money in exchange for reviews.
- Don’t solicit reviews from customers in bulk.
So review gating is basically a way to get lots of 5 star reviews and forces us to ask "Can I trust a plumber that has more reviews than all the other plumbers in the area?"
Why is this bad for me when I'm looking for a plumber?
For starters, if a plumber is unethical in their marketing practices, that's a sign that they may be unethical in all their business practices. As a smart consumer, you need to understand that thousands of reviews for a plumber is a warning sign. They might be the best plumber in the world, or they might be out to game the system - including how they treat their customers.
Also, a plumber that has zero bad reviews and hundreds of 5 star reviews is a unicorn - too good to be true. No plumber is that good. So you have to ask yourself - "Do I really think this is the best plumber for me"?
Said another way, by only encouraging customers that had a good experience to leave reviews, that over represents their true review rating. And that is basically false advertising.
Other ways a plumber gets too many reviews.
Paying for reviews. Either they'll give a discount to a customer for leaving a 5 star review, or they'll hire a spam company to write fake reviews for them. This also violates one of Google's policies - "Don’t offer or accept money in exchange for reviews."
Is this the plumber you want to hire, really?
They can't get real customers to leave good reviews, so they have to pay for good reviews. This can usually be easy to detect. All the reviews sound very similar - the same sentence structure, the same words, missing pictures and often the reviewers only left 1 or 2 reviews for other companies.
In the end, they are falsely leading you to believe they offer a good service when they may not.