When a neighbor says, “They were great,” ask what the company did. A good faucet repair is useful information, but it doesn't describe the company's experience repiping a house.
Reviews and recommendations are more useful when you can connect them to the work you're considering.
Ask when the work happened, what it included and whether the person has hired the company again. Find out what made the experience good: communication, the finished work, handling a change or returning to fix a problem.
Those details help you decide which questions to ask the shop. One successful visit doesn't answer every question about another kind of project.
Look for the agreed work, completion and response when something went wrong. Check dates and more than one source.
The FTC recommends reading across review sources and cautions that appearance alone doesn't reliably distinguish genuine and manipulated reviews. Contradictory reviews deserve a look at the circumstances, not an automatic decision that one customer invented the experience.
Request recent projects like yours and references from customers who have agreed to speak. Permissioned photos and a general job description can help without exposing someone else's private information.
Ask a reference whether the finished work matched the agreement, how changes were handled and whether anything remained unresolved. Would they hire the company again for that kind of job?
ENERGY STAR recommends contacting HVAC references about performance, timing and budget. Remember that a selected reference is describing one customer's experience, not guaranteeing yours.
Homeowner and contractor accounts in public forum discussions sometimes attach the recommendation to a particular person. Ask whether that person would work on or supervise your project. If the assignment isn't known yet, include that uncertainty in your decision.
Suppliers or adjacent trades can also suggest names. Ask what the recommendation is based on: business dealings, knowing the person or seeing comparable work completed.
Verify the company's license for the proposed work, then read its quote. Reviews describe past experiences. The license addresses authorization. The written offer describes what the company is proposing for your house.
Use those together rather than asking a star rating to answer all three questions. The license guide explains the lookup, and the quote comparison guide helps assess the current purchase.