One neighbor in Clinton keeps a file on 9 Hunterdon paving contractors. Ask him which one to call.

Hey neighbor,

You can't trust the internet when you're hiring a local paver

You're smart for that. I've worked online for 15 years, and I'll tell you plainly: a lot of what you read about a business online can be faked or gamed.

• Fake 5-star reviews are a service. You can buy them by the dozen.
• Some websites that say they'll "find you a pro" really just send your request to a bunch of companies at once. That's why you get five calls back.
• When someone in a Facebook group swears by a company, sometimes that company is their buddy or their brother-in-law. And sometimes they got paid to say it.
• Bad reviews get faked too. Sometimes a rival company writes them.
• Every company's own website is written by the company.

I can't unfake any of it. Nobody can. What I can do is read it all with a suspicious eye, then look up the state license record and the Better Business Bureau record myself.

So what do you do?

Simple. You ask a neighbor.

But there are two kinds of neighbor in Hunterdon.

There's the guy three houses down. He's used one roofer and one plumber his whole life. Both are "pretty good."

Then there's me. I'm Steve. I live in Clinton with my wife, our ten-month-old son, one dog, and three cats. And I'm the kind of nerd who keeps files. 9 Hunterdon paving contractors, and I went through them one at a time. Last one updated July 28.

What's in the file

• The license. Looked up in the New Jersey state registry, with the date I looked it up. I won't send you one I haven't checked.
• Complaints with the Better Business Bureau, if I find any. No complaint on file is not a guarantee that nothing has ever gone wrong. It's one record, not the whole story.
• Whether the reviews look real. Before I send you a name, I check its reviews for the marks fake ones leave: a pile of five-star praise from accounts that never reviewed anything else, or a burst of one-star reviews that reads like an angry rival wrote them. If a company's reviews look gamed, I don't send you that company.
• What the written reviews say, not the star average. I read them.
• Whether the recent ones are worse than the old ones. A company that was good in 2021 is not automatically good now.
• How the owner answers a bad review. That one tells you the most.
• What they're actually good at. If the good reviews are all small jobs, they may not be your guy for the big one.

One name, one business day

Tell me the job below and within one business day I'll email you one name: the company I'd call myself, and why I picked them.

If I don't have anyone I'd stand behind for your job, I'll tell you that instead. That will happen sometimes. I'd rather send you an empty-handed email than a name I'm not sure about.

Here's why you can believe that. Every one of these goes out with my own name on it, in a county where my newsletter goes out weekly and people know where I live. If I send you a bad name, you'd be out one phone call. I'd be out my good name. That's the whole business.

It costs you nothing and takes two minutes. One name, and why.

Let's make the first call a better one.

Your nerdy neighbor,

Steve Rajeckas Clinton resident for 6 years · I write The Hunterdon Scoop