The four-star review is disappearing
We took 569 businesses that had at least ten written Google reviews in 2019 to 2021 and at least ten more since the start of 2025, and compared the same businesses then and now. Four-star reviews fell from 4.7% of their reviews to 1.8%. One-star reviews did not move at all: 3.3% then, 3.3% now.
It happened in every group of trades with enough data to measure.
Share of reviews that are four stars, same businesses, then and now
Hollow dot 2019 to 2021, filled dot 2025 to 2026.
Show the data
| Group | Businesses | 2019 to 2021 | 2025 to 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|
| All groups | 569 | 4.69% | 1.81% |
| Home maintenance | 81 | 6.16% | 2.06% |
| Automotive | 142 | 6.09% | 2.00% |
| Home improvement | 113 | 4.47% | 1.84% |
| Health | 90 | 4.16% | 1.64% |
| Business services | 46 | 2.63% | 1.35% |
| Property | 41 | 1.47% | 0.88% |
Source: Top5.nz analysis of written Google reviews. Legal and creative firms are left out of the chart because fewer than 40 businesses qualified; both fell too.
Our reading is that the middle of the scale has gone. Customers who were happy but not delighted used to leave four stars. Now they leave five. Customers who had a bad experience still leave one. So the star average has bunched at the top, while the bad experiences are as visible as they ever were.
"When almost every listing reads 4.8 or better, people stop looking at the number. Our data says that is a mistake."
Jan Dunlop, founder, Top5.nzThe decimals still tell you something
If ratings have bunched up, does a 4.8 mean anything different from a 5.0? We took the rating Google was showing for each business when we first recorded it, then counted the one-star reviews it received over the following months.
One-star share of later reviews, by the rating Google showed
Businesses with 150 or more Google reviews, March to October 2026.
Show the data
| Rating shown | Businesses | Later one-star share |
|---|---|---|
| 4.6 or less | 58 | 7.4% |
| 4.7 | 56 | 4.6% |
| 4.8 | 96 | 2.9% |
| 4.9 | 177 | 1.4% |
| 5.0 | 173 | 0.4% |
Source: Top5.nz. Later reviews are written reviews published after the first time we recorded the business.
For an established business, each tenth of a star near the top marked a real difference. A business showing 4.8 drew one-star reviews at about seven times the rate of one showing 5.0, and a business showing 4.7 at about eleven times. Put another way, out of every ten businesses:
Out of 10 businesses, how many got any one-star review afterwards
Gold: got at least one later one-star review. Outline: got none. All 1,148 businesses with 10 or more later reviews; the median business in each band received 18 to 23 later reviews, so this is not because 5.0 businesses simply had fewer.
There is a condition. Below about 50 Google reviews we found no pattern under 5.0. A 4.8 built on twenty reviews is mostly chance, so the decimal only means something when there are plenty of reviews behind it. We also cannot say the rating causes anything. A business with a perfect score may simply be one that keeps its customers happy, or one that asks only its happiest customers for reviews.
A 4.8 with hundreds of reviews is a different business from a 5.0 with hundreds of reviews. Most people read them as the same.
What actually goes wrong
To see what the one-star reviews describe, we sorted all 6,986 written one-star reviews for trades and professional services in our data by their main complaint. About one in seven came from people who were not customers, or did not say enough to tell. Of the rest:
What one-star reviews are about
6,013 one-star reviews from customers, by main complaint.
Show the data
| Main complaint | Share |
|---|---|
| The work itself | 29.1% |
| Never got served | 25.3% |
| How they were treated | 23.1% |
| The price | 13.4% |
| Aftercare | 9.0% |
Source: Top5.nz. Shares are accurate to a few points; see how we did this, below.
A quarter of one-star reviews come from people who never got the job done at all: no reply, no quote, a no-show, or turned away. And how people were treated is almost as common a complaint as the work itself.
"Never turned up or responded to follow ups for the visit which was arranged, wasted my time"
One-star review of a roofer, 2025Each trade fails in its own way
The overall picture hides big differences between trades. These are the trades where one kind of complaint stands well clear of the rest.
| Trade | Most common complaint | Share of its one-star reviews | Reviews |
|---|---|---|---|
| Roofers | Never turned up, replied or quoted | About 4 in 10 | 125 |
| Solar installers | What happened after the install | About 3 in 10 | 96 |
| Heat pump installers | What happened after the install | 27% | 245 |
| Plumbers | The price | 36% | 173 |
| Property managers | How people were treated | 55% | 351 |
| Family lawyers | How clients were treated | 33% | 276 |
| Moving companies | The result, usually damage | 50% | 237 |
| Building inspectors | The inspection itself | About 7 in 10 | 53 |
One-star reviews from customers, by trade. Where fewer than 120 reviews were coded the share is given as "about".
In their own words, a plumbing customer asked: "$630 to change a simple tap?" A heat pump customer wrote: "Installations may be going well but after sales care service certainly isn't working for me so far. Now into the second week of waiting for someone just to call back." One property management customer called the managers "Incredibly rude and bullying". And one moving customer listed it plainly: "Missing items, broken items, boxes stacked with no respect for boxes marked fragile."
The cowboy who takes your deposit is rarer than you'd think
Fewer than 1 in 100 one-star reviews (45 of 6,986) describe paying up front for work that never happened and not getting the money back. We read all 45. Many were about parts that never arrived, refunds after a cancellation, or one online booking platform. The tradie who takes a deposit and disappears exists, but in our data it is a handful of cases.
- Look at the number of reviews first. Under about 50, the decimal tells you little.
- Above that, treat 4.8 and 5.0 as different. In our data the gap was about seven times in one-star reviews.
- Then read the one-star reviews for what matters in this trade. For a roofer, whether they turned up. For a heat pump installer, what happened after the install. For a plumber, the bill.
"We rank businesses on review data, so we needed to know what the numbers actually tell you. We expected the star rating to have stopped meaning anything. It hasn't. It just means more per tenth than it used to."
Jan Dunlop, founder, Top5.nzEvery business here was listed on Top5.nz, which means it was rated 4.0 or higher when we found it, so businesses that closed or fell below that are not in the data. Star-only ratings without text are not counted. The rating follow-up covers March to October 2026, about seven months. Our groups of trades are broad, and legal and creative firms had too few businesses with long review histories to show on their own.
How we did this: The data is the written Google reviews Top5.nz collects for the businesses on its ranking pages: about 290,000 reviews of trades and professional services across 12 New Zealand locations, collected during 2026. We left out venues, caterers and other categories where reviews are often about a meal or a shop counter rather than the service. The four-star comparison uses 569 businesses with at least ten written reviews in both 2019 to 2021 and 2025 to 2026. The rating analysis uses the rating Google displayed when we first recorded each business (from March 2026) and the one-star share of written reviews published after that date, for 1,148 businesses with at least ten later reviews, 560 of them with 150 or more Google reviews. The complaint analysis sorted 6,986 one-star reviews by their main complaint using a language model working to fixed definitions. A blind hand reading agreed on 21 of 22 clear-cut reviews, and a second run over 350 reviews gave the same answer 83% of the time, so shares are quoted to a few points. No business is named. Full ranking methodology: How we rank.