Responding to negative reviews as a tradesperson

Who your reply is really for

A one-star review feels personal, especially when you spent a wet Saturday fixing someone's leak. But the person who left it has usually made up their mind. The people you can still persuade are the dozens who will read the review and your reply over the next year while deciding who to ring.

Those readers are not looking for a flawless record. They are looking for evidence of how you behave when something goes wrong. A calm, specific reply that offers to put things right often does more for your enquiry rate than a page of five-star ratings, because it answers the question a homeowner actually has: if this goes badly, will this firm deal with it?

They also read with some suspicion. Government research estimated that between 11% and 15% of reviews in common product categories on large e-commerce platforms were fake^[1]. Customers know reviews can be gamed, so a measured reply from a named owner reads as genuine.

What unhappy customers actually complain about

The English Housing Survey asks households who are unhappy with repairs and maintenance why. The answers are a useful guide to what sits behind most bad reviews of trades, even though the survey is about landlords arranging the work.

Slowness and a sense that nobody cared came well ahead of poor workmanship^[2][3]. That matches what many trades see in their own reviews: the complaint is rarely the joint or the cable run, it is the missed callback, the vague arrival time or the invoice that came as a surprise. Your reply should show that you respond quickly and own the problem, because that is usually what the reviewer felt was missing.

Triage before you type

Do not reply from the van five minutes after the notification. Give yourself a short, fixed process so every review gets the same treatment.

1. 01

   Find the job

   Match the name, date and address to your job sheet, photos, messages and invoice. If you cannot find any record, note that before you write anything.

2. 02

   Separate facts from feelings

   List what the reviewer says happened, then what your records show. Mark each point as agreed, disputed or unknown.

3. 03

   Sort the review into a type

   Use the table below. The type decides whether you apologise, explain, offer a return visit or report it.

4. 04

   Draft, then wait

   Write the reply, leave it for at least an hour, and if you can, ask someone who was not on the job to read it.

5. 05

   Reply within two working days

   Quick enough to show you care, slow enough to have checked the facts. Contact the customer privately first if a return visit might fix it.

Five types of negative review and how to handle each

Reply scripts you can adapt

Keep replies short: three to five sentences. Use your first name, refer to the job in general terms and never repeat the customer's address, phone number or any detail they did not include themselves.

What never to put in a reply

• Personal details the customer did not post, such as their street, the state of their home or their payment history.
• Sarcasm, blame or the words “as you well know”. Readers side with the customer when the business sounds defensive.
• Legal threats in public. If a review is defamatory, take advice privately; a threat in the reply usually spreads the review further.
• An offer of a refund, discount or gift in return for removing or softening the review. Fake reviews and concealed incentivised reviews are banned practices under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, with Competition and Markets Authority guidance on what that covers^[4]. Tying a payment to what someone writes is the wrong side of that line.
• Copy-and-paste replies. Identical text under every review tells readers nobody is really listening.

When the review describes poor work

If the review is right about the work, the reply is only half the job. Under the Consumer Rights Act 2015, a service must be performed with reasonable care and skill^[5], and where no completion time was agreed it must be done within a reasonable time^[6]. A customer whose work falls short can ask you to put it right, so offering a return visit early is both good service and sensible risk management. Our guide to customers' rights when workmanship is poor explains what you owe and how to document the fix.

Once the problem is resolved, you can add a short follow-up under your original reply saying it has been sorted. Do not ask the customer to change their rating; if they choose to update it, that is up to them. Where the complaint is still open, move it into your complaints process so it has a clear owner and deadline.

Example: a roofer's one-star review on a Sunday night

Example. A two-person roofing firm in Leicestershire gets a one-star review: “Turned up two hours late, left tiles on my drive, never answered my calls.” The owner wants to reply straight away that the customer's drive was blocked by her own car.

1. He checks the job: the arrival was 90 minutes late because of a previous job overrunning, the text warning went out after the planned start time, and two broken tiles were left in a bag by the gate.
2. He marks it a service failure. The roof repair itself was signed off and photographed.
3. On Monday morning he rings the customer, apologises for the late arrival and the tiles, and collects them that afternoon.
4. His public reply names the delay and the tiles, says late-running texts now go out an hour before the slot, and says the tiles have been collected. He does not mention the car.
5. Two weeks later he adds a one-line follow-up confirming the matter was resolved.

The rating stays at one star, but the next three enquiries mention the reply. The lasting fix is in the routine: running-late messages now go out early, and nobody leaves waste on site.

Fake reviews and reviews meant for another firm

Fake reviews cost consumers real money: government research estimated the harm from fake review text on products alone at £50 million to £312 million a year^[7]. Trades are hit too, by competitors, disgruntled former staff and people confusing you with a firm of a similar name.

• Screenshot the review, the reviewer's profile and the date before doing anything else.
• Check for patterns: several new accounts in a short period, no job match, or wording copied from elsewhere.
• Use the platform's report option and choose the most accurate reason, such as conflict of interest or not a genuine experience.
• Post one neutral line if the platform allows replies while a report is reviewed, so readers can see you have not ignored it.
• Keep your own house in order; see our guide to the fake review rules before asking anyone for a review.

Use reviews as a monthly fault log

Once a month, list every review below four stars and tag the cause: response time, arrival time, tidiness, price clarity, workmanship or attitude. After three months you will usually see one or two causes repeating. Fix those in your process, then make sure your next good customers are asked for feedback; our guide to asking for reviews after a job shows how to do that within the rules. If missed calls keep appearing as the complaint, cover the phone properly: Ava, an AI Employee, can answer calls and take booking details while you are up a ladder.