The plumbers below 4 stars, and what to do this week if your rating is slipping
Some plumbing companies sit under 4 stars, and callers skip them on the map. What the rating numbers mean and what to fix this week before winter calls.
A homeowner with water coming through the ceiling does not read your reviews. They look at the stars, pick the highest one with a phone number, and call. If your rating starts with a 3, you are often not even in the running.
Here is the number. Across 77,218 plumbing listings in our data, 9.6% are rated under 4 stars. The average rating is 4.6. 78% sit at 4.5 or higher, and 35.8% hold a perfect 5.0. So the field is crowded at the top, and a rating that slips under 4.5 already looks below average to a caller comparing three listings side by side.
What the numbers mean for a plumber
Plumbing gets harder reviews than most trades for a simple reason. Customers call you on the worst day of their month. A backed-up sewer, no hot water, a leak under the slab. The bill is often bigger than they expected, and some of them write the review while they are still angry about the price.
That is why a plumbing rating drifts down unless you do something about it. The happy customers, and there are far more of them, do not think to leave a review. The upset ones do it without being asked.
The fix is not to argue with the bad reviews. It is to make sure the happy majority shows up in the count too.
What to do this week
1. Find out where you really stand. Open your profile and write down your rating, your review count and your three most recent reviews. Then check the three plumbers that show up next to you on the map for "emergency plumber." That is your real comparison, not a national average.
2. Read your last ten low reviews and sort them. Put each one in a bucket: price surprise, slow response, mess left behind, tech attitude, or the job itself failed. One bucket usually holds most of them. That bucket is your operations problem, not a marketing problem. Fixing it is what stops the next one.
3. Reply to every review under 4 stars. Short, calm, specific. Here is a version that works:
"Thanks for the feedback, Dan. I'm sorry the drain backed up again two days after our visit. That should not happen. I'd like to make it right. Please call me directly at the office so I can send someone back at no charge."
Do not argue about the price in public. Do not list the customer's mistakes. The reply is for the next caller reading it, not for the reviewer.
4. Start asking on every ticket. This is the part that actually moves the rating. Every completed job, the tech says one sentence at the door and a text with your review link goes out before the van leaves the driveway. The Google reviews guide has scripts for emergency calls, water heater installs and drain jobs.
5. Put price expectations up front. A lot of low plumbing reviews start with "they charged me" or "the price was higher than." If your techs give a written price before work starts, the surprise disappears. The pricing and quoting guide covers flat-rate menus and how to present them on the doorstep.
How long the climb takes
Rating math is slow on purpose. Take a hypothetical company with 40 reviews and a 3.9 average. Every new 5-star review pulls the average up a little. Ten new 5-star reviews take it to roughly 4.1. Twenty get it close to 4.3. That is why steady asking matters more than a burst of effort.
A company running 30 calls a week that asks on every job will collect those twenty reviews much faster than one that asks when the tech remembers. The difference is not luck. It is whether the ask is on the checklist.
What not to do
- Do not buy reviews or swap them with other businesses. Google removes them and can flag the profile.
- Do not offer a discount for a review. That breaks Google's rules even if the review is honest.
- Do not filter. Sending a survey first and only asking happy customers to post is called review gating, and Google does not allow it. Ask everyone.
- Do not try to bury a bad review by flagging it. Google only removes reviews that break its policies, like spam or conflicts of interest. A harsh but real review stays.
Why do it now
Freeze season is close. Frozen and burst pipes, water heaters failing under load, holiday guests hitting drains that were fine all year. The busiest stretch of emergency calls is also when the most homeowners compare ratings in a hurry. Any review you collect in November is working for you by the first hard freeze.
While you are on your profile, check the other numbers in the benchmark report. Only 25.6% of plumbing profiles show as open 24 hours. If you take night calls, say so.
If you want review requests sent after every job without anyone having to remember, any service is available as a free 14-day trial, no card. Text or call (346) 436-6274.
Steven has spent the last several years running growth campaigns for local service businesses, plumbing companies among them, and builds the benchmark datasets on this site from public Google listings. About the editor