What the star rating column actually hides

Here is the finding that surprised this desk most, and the reason the site has two lists instead of one. Once you demand enough reviews for a star average to be trustworthy, the star average stops distinguishing between companies almost entirely. 49 of the 55 St. Louis roofing contractors holding a hundred or more reviews are rated 4.7 or better. The column everybody sorts on has had the information squeezed out of it.

Three companies. That is the entire warning list.

Across three counties, exactly 3 companies hold both a hundred or more reviews and a star average below 4.5. Below 4.0, with enough reviews to be sure of it, there is nobody at all. Whatever you were hoping the rating column would do for you, weeding out the dangerous end of the market is almost the only job it is doing, and it only has three names to offer.

This is not because St. Louis roofing is uniformly excellent. It is because a public star average on a business listing is a managed number. Companies that pay attention to it ask satisfied customers for reviews at the moment the job finishes and the cheque clears, which is the moment a customer is most pleased and furthest away from finding out whether the flashing was replaced. Companies that do not pay attention to it end up with a listing populated mostly by people angry enough to type without being asked. The gap between a 4.9 and a 4.6 in this market often has more to do with whether a company has a review request in its invoicing than with what happens on a roof.

So use the rating as a gate and the volume as a map

The practical reading, once you accept that neither column ranks quality, goes like this.

1. Use the review count to decide whose evidence is worth your timeAnything above a hundred reviews has enough public history that you can form a view by reading. Below twenty five, you are reading anecdotes, which is fine as long as you know that is what you are doing.
2. Use the star average only to excludeBelow 4.5 with a large review base is a signal worth taking seriously. Between 4.6 and 5.0 the number has told you everything it knows, which is not much.
3. Then stop using numbersEverything that separates the survivors is qualitative: what the recent reviews describe, what the written scope contains, who turns up, and what the company says about the decking before it has opened the roof.

What a rating cannot see

The photograph beside this paragraph is a porch roof stripped back to bare boards. Everything that matters about the job that follows happens in the next two hours: whether the soft boards get replaced or shingled over, whether the flashing gets renewed or bent back down, whether the ventilation gets corrected while the roof is open and free.

None of that reaches a star rating, because the homeowner standing in the driveway cannot see it, and by the time it matters the review has been written and the crew has moved on. That is the argument of sheet ten, and it is the reason this site keeps sending you away from its own tables.