The One Star Share Is the Review Number to Check First

The one star share shows how many buyers left angry, and a nice star average can hide a lot of them.

Dealer Reviews Are All or Nothing

Most things people review get a spread of scores. Car dealers do not. Across the dealers we grade, the average dealer has 79 percent five star reviews and 13 percent one star reviews. Only 3.5 percent of reviews are two or three stars.

That tells you how people feel about buying a car. They either loved it or hated it. Very few walk away thinking it was just okay.

Why the Star Average Hides the Angry Buyers

Say a dealer has a 4.4 star average. That sounds fine. But because reviews bunch at the ends, a 4.4 can mean most buyers were thrilled and a real chunk were furious. The average blends them into one calm number.

The one star share pulls them back apart. It tells you how many people had a bad enough time to leave the lowest score. If you are about to spend thousands of dollars, that is the number you want to see.

Think of it like a restaurant. A place where most meals are great but one in five makes you sick does not deserve a good score. The average says it does. The share of bad nights says it does not. A car deal works the same way, except a bad night can last for years of payments.

You can work out the share yourself on most review pages. Look for the bar that shows how many reviews got each star count. Compare the one star bar to the total. If it looks thick next to the five star bar, that dealer has a lot of unhappy buyers, no matter what the average says.

Complaint Share by Grade

Our grade uses a complaint share, which is one and two star reviews as a share of all reviews. Here is how it looks by grade.

• A dealers, 4 percent complaints.
• B dealers, 9 percent complaints.
• C dealers, 19 percent complaints.
• F dealers, 37 percent complaints.

The jump from C to F is large. At an F dealer, more than one in three reviews can be a complaint. You can read how the limits work on our grading page.

How to Read the Bottom of a Review List

Sort a dealer's reviews by lowest first. Then read ten or more. You are looking for patterns, not one bad day.

• What is the complaint about? Sales, the car, finance, the title or service?
• Does the same problem show up again and again?
• Did the dealer answer? Was the answer helpful or a copy and paste?
• When were the reviews written? Old or recent?

What the Complaints Are About

A complaint about a slow wash bay is not the same as a complaint about a car that died on the way home. Sort the angry reviews in your head into two piles. One pile is about how people were treated. The other is about the car, the money or the paperwork.

The second pile is the one that can cost you. Words like lemon, title and transmission show up far more in the reviews of F dealers. Our piece on review words that separate good and bad dealers goes through them.

Does the Dealer Answer?

A good dealer reads its bad reviews and replies. The best replies are short, own the problem and give a name or number to call. A reply that blames the buyer or pastes the same line under every review tells you how the dealer will treat you if something goes wrong.

No reply at all is also a sign. It may mean nobody is watching.

Check the Dates

A cluster of one star reviews from years ago may be about staff who are long gone. A cluster from the last few months is about the dealer you will meet this week. Recent complaints count more. If the one star reviews are rising, walk carefully, even if the grade still looks fine.

One Way to Lower Your Risk

Many one star reviews start with a car problem found after the sale. Our used car inspection is a 122 point check with a full OBD-II scan, a road test and photos of anything we find, before you pay. We go to the car and send the report the same day.

Common Questions

Get the Car Inspected