Read The One-Star Reviews First

Last week someone asked on Facebook whether he should proceed with a particular installer.

“Has anyone dealt with this company? I can’t find out much about them.”

Someone did a quick Google. The company has 31 reviews on SolarQuotes, averaging 4.9 stars. Twenty-nine five-star reviews. One four-star. One one-star review.

The thread filled up with encouragement. Someone noted the installer’s ABN had been registered since 2021. The consensus was: great price, great reviews, looks legit, go for it.

Nobody Asked About The One-Star Review

Conventional thinking says: one bad review out of 31, basically irrelevant. The average is still 4.9. Move on.

I’d argue the opposite. That one review is the most informative data point in the entire profile. It showed how the installer behaves when things go wrong.

Here’s a paraphrased summary of the one-star review in this case:

Installer smashed all existing hot water tubes he was paid to remove, dumped the broken glass in the yard and drove away without a word. Customer asked for compensation for the property damage, the company threatened to rip out the whole system. When the customer pushed further, the sales team threatened to report them to the police for harassment. Photos of broken glass all over the yard were included with review.

I don’t think 29 five-star reviews can compensate for this.

And there’s a deeper problem with many five-star solar reviews.

A new solar owner can tell you whether the panels look straight and the installer was friendly. They cannot tell you whether the wiring is compliant, the isolators are water tight, the string design is optimal or the battery is configured properly. They have no idea or whether the install is likely to fail, excessively degrade or worse – become a fire risk in ten years.

An initial, five-star solar review usually means: nice installer, system turned on, looked tidy, panels generating, battery got through the night. It’s a review of the experience, not the install.

This is why – with SolarQuotes reviews – we ask for the initial review after 60 days and then follow up with customers 12 months after that.

On the SolarQuotes review platform you can apply a filter (as highlighted in yellow above) to show only one-star reviews – try it for yourself.

But Not All One-Stars Are Equal

There’s a fair counter-argument: plenty of one-star reviews come from unreasonable customers. If you treat every one-star as a dealbreaker you’ll rule out plenty of excellent installers.

So you have to read the one-star, not just find it. Ask: is this a character failure or a preference failure?

A preference failure: “they were late,” “took two days to return my call.” Annoying, but shallow.

A character failure: “smashed glass everywhere and refused to clean it up.” There’s no version of that story where the installer is the reasonable party.

Some one-star reviews are more of a red flag than others.

The Practical Upshot

Don’t average the reviews. Read the one-stars first and ask what they tell you about how this installer behaves when something goes wrong.

An installer with 200 reviews and a 4.7 including a few grumpy one-stars about communication? Probably fine.

An installer with 29 five-stars and one smashed-glass incident? You only get one roll of the dice.

Be tolerant of small negatives. Be very intolerant of any evidence of catastrophic ones. Solar is exactly the domain where that rule applies.

Read the one-stars first.

Phase Shift is a weekly opinion column by SolarQuotes founder Finn Peacock. Subscribe to SolarQuotes’ free newsletter to get it emailed to your inbox each week along with our other home electrification coverage.