Find reviews of whether a company is legit
Who reviews whether a company is legit, and can you trust them?
Plumb does not review whether a company is legit itself. We tell you which sites do, and grade each on the one thing that decides whether to believe it: how independent and evidence-based the ranking is.
| Grade | Review site | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | C+ | Grades: its crowd star ratings of products and shops Australia's biggest crowd-review site: free to read, genuinely tough on fake reviews, but the brands it ranks are also the ones buying ad placement on its pages. |
| 2 | C+ | Grades: its ranked company lists (debt relief, loans, and more) A transparent, well-disclosed star-rating aggregator that doubles as a paid lead funnel for the very companies it ranks, with no independent testing under the scores. |
| 3 | C | Grades: its crowd-sourced star ratings of local businesses The star you see is not the average you think, and ad spend buys the placement above it. |
| 4 | C | Grades: its neighbor 'recommendations' and 'Faves' Reviewers are address-verified neighbors, which is a real anti-fake-review edge, but there's no published ranking method and businesses are openly coached to solicit their own recommendations. |
| 5 | C | Grades: its open consumer star ratings of businesses An open box anyone can post to. By its own count, 7.4% of 2024 reviews were fake. |
| 6 | C- | Grades: its 'best of' company rankings An affiliate-funded "best of" machine that swears the money doesn't buy rank — but with no published test data and a roster dominated by commission-paying partners, readers should read it as a curated shortlist, not an independent lab. |
| 7 | C- | Grades: its shopper star ratings of online retailers A two-sided store-review platform where the same merchants it rates are also its paying SaaS customers, and some merchants allege the unpaid get their worst reviews surfaced. |
| 8 | C- | Grades: its star-average of user reviews on Business Profiles Free and everywhere, impossible to buy rank in, and swimming in fake reviews with an opaque order. |
| 9 | D+ | Grades: its star ratings and 'buyers guides' beside paid brand accreditation A TINA.org analysis found its high ratings went almost entirely to the brands that pay it. |
| 10 | D+ | Grades: its A+ to F business letter grades and accreditation seal A trusted-looking letter grade that a 2010 ABC News 20/20 investigation showed a $425 payment could obtain, even for fabricated companies. |
| 11 | D | Grades: its star ratings and reviews of online businesses The FTC found it inflated stars with pre-delivery feedback from its own paying clients. |
These are the sites that review whether a company is legit (and the rest of the business reputation). Columns are the five rubric dimensions, scored 0-5, with each column's weight shown in its header (independence and evidence carry the most). See the full methodology.