Homestars - the customer is sometimes wrong

As a prudent DIYer, I try to research contractors to find ones that are a good fit for me. Part of my research lately has been to use homestars, a Canadian contractor review website for homeowners. I've had luck finding great contractors through homestars. But after using homestars for some time now to research contractors, I have found that "buyer beware" is very important when looking at contractors on homestars.

One such company that I found on homestars is called "Furnace and AC Direct", based out of Mississauga. They have "87 reviews" at this time, and a perfect 10 / 10 record. WOW! They must be the gods of furnace and AC work! Have a look for yourself:

The business owner, Khuram Zaki, must be a fabulous person. But, take a look at some of Khuram's reviewers. Many are "flagged for verification". Flagged for verification?!? Look at the bottom of page 1 of Khuram's reviews as of today:

Page 2 has even more! Now, without being judgmental, I will say that this is suspicious. Maybe another contractor paid people to give bad reviews of Khuram's company. That would be sad if contractors try to cannibalize one another's business this way. However, maybe Khuram is abusing the homestars system by flagging all of his customers that didn't provide a 10 out of 10 feedback score. 

For this reason, it looks especially suspect that Khuram is abusing the homestars system, making it appear that homestars is a system very biased toward the contractor. Which makes sense, since contractors pay homestars to be listed on the homestars service. Which is also unfortunate, since homestars is meant to be a research tool for homeowners to find the next great contractor. 

Hopefully homestars is able to evolve into a system less biased towards its contractors over time. Until then, be mindful of all of those 10 out of 10 reviews!