A bunch of reviews of an installer all being published at the same time can be a red flag.
Every fortnight, the SolarQuotes Vetting Council convenes to undertake a forensic analysis of the companies asking to join our list of approved installers of solar, batteries and EV chargers. The investigation pours over every clue available, including the most obvious: online reviews. But in this age of bot farms and customer incentives, how can you tell if a review is legitimate or not?
One particular installer at a recent Vetting Council meeting seemed to have a pretty glowing reputation with customers. On closer inspection, however, something didn’t quite look right. Why were so many of the reviews of this Australia-based installer, all written in Mandarin, published around the same time?
There’s plenty of legitimate reasons for an installer to have a lot of reviews in a particular language — maybe they are a popular business within a particular community — but it is always worth hitting that ‘translate’ button if you don’t know what the review actually says.
Doing just that revealed that according to those stellar five-star reviews, the company is either run by a modern-day Adonis, or by someone a little tricky with the truth:
Either Ryan Gosling secretly runs a solar install side hustle we don’t know about, or this company’s employees have all been ordered to leave positive reviews.
Review Farms And Enraged Customers
Employees leaving five-star reviews en masse for their boss is just one form of misleading review type to look out for. Notably, fake reviews can come in both positive and negative forms. Some of the main types are:
- Bribed reviews — customers are incentivised to give a business a positive rating through discounts and vouchers;
- Farmed reviews — shady ‘review farms’ are paid to generate large numbers of fake opinions by their staff or AI chatbots;
- Gated reviews — customers who say they had a good experience are encouraged to leave a review, while those who indicate they had a bad experience are told to leave feedback privately – or if they leave a public review, the business flags it as abuse to get it taken down;
- Vindicative customers and competitors — people who are angry at the business (or competing with them) create multiple profiles to leave multiple negative reviews, and invent wild claims about the business.
How To Spot A Fake
Gatekeeper to SolarQuotes’ review pages Ned Holland, who works to keep them fakery-free, says that the main red flag to spot false feedback is the language used:
If a company has close to all positive ratings but the language of every review mostly reads the same and constantly mentions the name of the installer/brand used, I would say they are likely be fake or at least heavily incentivised. We had a manufacturer try to leave a series of fake reviews on SQ a couple of years ago. I had processed a couple over a week not realising they were written in the same pattern but once I looked at them all together – it was clearly obvious something fishy was going on. I contacted the manufacturer asking them if they were genuine, they said yes. I asked them (and the authors of the reviews) if they could provide any kind of proof of purchase. They never replied. The authors of these reviews had [claimed] this brand was installed by specific installers in Australia. When I rang these installers up to inquire about the reviews they advised: ‘I have never heard of this brand or these customers’.
Low On Detail, High On Praise?
- Loads of extremely low-detail reviews — not everyone can be bothered going into detail, but if everyone is giving a one-word review, something is probably up;
- Ridiculously over-the-top praise — the fact the installer turned up on time shouldn’t cause the customer to burst into tears of joy;
- Vast numbers of reviews at the same time — exactly how did this team of three tradies do a hundred installs on the same day?
Where To Find Reviews You Can Trust
A review of an installer on the SolarQuotes review platform, with detailed feedback that isn’t over the top, accompanied by photos of the job.
Unfortunately, the reality is that the major review platforms are riddled with fakes. It is simply not feasible to apply a fine-tooth comb of scrutiny to the vast quantity of feedback left on all the products and services listed on Google and Facebook — although they do have processes in place and if you feel very confident a review is fake, it might be worth flagging with them.
“Google and Facebook both equally can have a fair share [of fakes] — you never know who is being coerced with incentives to leave a positive review and sometimes these sites can take a long time to look into a potentially disingenuous review,” says Ned.
The SolarQuotes team doesn’t just heavily scrutinise the Google and Facebook reviews of installers as part of our vetting process — we also apply the same treatment to reviews made on our own website, and delete any fakes we find. So we recommend browsing the SolarQuotes reviews of installers, solar panels, inverters, batteries and EV chargers as a first port of call — some are accompanied by photos of the install so you can see for yourself.
Of course, we would say that, so you might want to check out some Google reviews of SolarQuotes itself. When you do so, just make sure to look out for the red flags listed above. If you see hundreds of simultaneously published reviews written in Latin all raving about how attractive everyone on our team is … it might be best to take those with a grain of salt.
About Max Opray
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My general advice when it comes to reading past bot reviews is when you can ignore both 5 star and 1 star reviews as almost all bot/paid reviews get dumped in those 2 categories.
Sadly a lot of review sites don’t allow you to filter in any nuanced way leaving you to do it manually. Then just read whats left.
The problem with that logic is that if I’m really very happy with a particular item or service etc, then I’m more than happy to give it 5 stars.
However I don’t do reviews of just a few words. That’s completely pointless.
I have spent a lot of time looking at builder reviews on Product Review. Despite clear issues Product Review has no interest in doing anything despite the reviews consistently displaying the characteristics that make them reportable.
It is pleasing to hear you have a strategy to see through this sort of BS.
The one area you do have real problems with solar reviews is related to the use of subcontractors. ATM I have my panels being put back on by a experienced installer using best practice. He previously had to rewire the Fronius Smart meter.
Why were they removed. The subcontractor used initially by the solar quotes recommended company was inexperienced and lacking skills or knowledge. I have a better understanding of some of the equipment than he displayed.
Thanks for the input Matthew,
While everyone has to learn what they’re doing somewhere, we would really appreciate the feedback if you have had a bad experience. In some instances customers feel more comfortable complaining to us than they do the installer themselves. Though this channel we end up being the quality assurance organisation.
ie A good reliable installer has a rash of 3 complaints and when we report back it turns out they have a new sales recruit or subcontractor who’s out of their depth.
Usually the guilty party is sorted out by internal installer means but if the complaints continue and we have to use our good install guarantee, we’ll refuse to do further business with the installer.
Please let us know what you’ve found.
In 1981 I put my first panels and 12 volt batteries together with 12 volt wiring on my self built log cabin house,I now do not live there, Last year I contacted ; “Arkana energy” for them to install a solar system on my present house,It was agreed with their rep that I keep my on grid connected, but that I have a solar system installed so as to be self sufficient from the grid,every detail was extensively discussed, 20×440 watt panels solar inverter and 2 batteries storing 6.4 kw.we have since added two more batteries, now12.8 kw of storage.total cost of 25 thousand dollars,We were happy until, after some reading of your blog,We found that when we switched the grid off completely, only some of the house had power from the system,When I contacted “Arkana energy”And enquired as to why this is, I was told that my inverter is not sufficient, that it needs upgrading.It is so far a good system, but we have been lied to and conned by this bunch of unscrupulous mongrels at “Arkana energy” and after trying to come to an amicable deal, of where we buy another battery at our own cost of 2 thousand dollars, and they pay for and install an up graded inverter at 2 thousand dollars. “Arkana energy” flatly refused, Finally,I shall explore every avenue possible so as to make them pay, the deal is now off the table, legal shall probably ensue, So be aware that “Arkana energy” are definately NOT to be trusted
Hello Isobel & Ralph,
Sorry to hear you’ve had problems with your installation. If the expectation isn’t documented and the realities aren’t up to snuff it can become an ugly situation. Was it a system you sought via SolarQuotes? I believe Arkana have now been bought out by 1komma5 so it may be worth raising with them.
It’s a subject we’ve covered in part here but I should write a specific article.
I would suggest you put your complaint in writing on a review for Arkana and let them know about it. In this day and age companies live and die by their online reputation so if you sort for the one star ratings you’ll get an idea of how they deal with things when it goes pear shaped.
Click here for the SQ review page.
Or alternately you could try a google rewiew if this link works for you.