Comment by daft_pink

I agree, but I’ve found that if I ignore 5 star reviews and use the ratio of 1 star reviews to 4 star reviews and look for an overall stair case of reviews, when trying to find the best provider. My theory is that no one pays for 4 and 3 star reviews and 1-2 star reviews are probably genuine bad experiences. Places I go to that are awesome that I know are awesome generally have a staircase effect, where there are more 5 stars than 4 stars, 3 stars than 2 stars, 2 stars than 1 stars. Places where the reviews are clearly games are polarising and have a ton of 5 stars, second place is one stars, and very few in between. If 1 star reviews are in first or second place, the place is generally terrible even if it has a ton of 5 star reviews. Histograms on review platforms are incedibly useful to compare contractors.