Dealer Ratings By Metro

33,308 Rated Lots

How To Read Dealer Star Ratings

Star ratings are the first thing most buyers check and the easiest thing to misread. Here is what the numbers behind them show, metro by metro.

Call (951) 267-8500Check Your Metro
Instrument cluster of a used Honda photographed at key on during an inspection
Stars come from the sale. The gauges come from the car. You need both.

Written by Domanic Robson, Owner, Doms Mobile Garage LLC, Noblesville IN. Author Source. Updated November 11, 2026.

Stars Need A Count Next To Them

A 5.0 from twelve buyers and a 4.7 from three thousand are not the same kind of number. The first is a few good days. The second is years of sales, including the bad ones. When you compare lots, read the review count before you read the stars.

What Our 33,308 Rated Lots Show

We sorted every rated dealer in our September 24, 2026 pull by how many reviews it has. Small records score higher on average and hit a perfect 5.0 far more often. Big records settle lower, but they are much harder to fake.

Rated Dealers By Review Count, All 109 Metros
ReviewsLotsAvg StarsPerfect 5.0Under 4
1 to 19 reviews13,7394.0336%36%
20 to 99 reviews8,6234.267%24%
100 to 999 reviews6,9594.432%11%
1,000 or more3,9874.520%1%

5,348 rated lots show a perfect 5.0 from fewer than 50 reviews. Some of them are great. Many simply have not had enough buyers yet for a bad day to show.

Why Small Records Swing

With 12 reviews, one angry buyer can pull a 5.0 down to about 4.7. With 3,000 reviews, one bad review barely moves the score. A short record tells you about a few deals. A long record tells you about the lot.

The One Star Share

On the average rated lot, 16% of reviews are one star. That share is often more useful than the average itself. Two lots can both show 4.4 stars while one gets a steady drip of one star reviews about the same problem.

A Simple Way To Weigh It

  1. Under 20 reviews, treat the stars as a first guess.
  2. A few hundred reviews start to mean something.
  3. A thousand or more is hard to game, but still read the worst ones.
  4. Look at the dates. Fifty reviews in one month reads differently from fifty over five years.

PPI Auto puts the same idea into its dealer grades. Read PPI Auto on review counts for how small records are pulled toward the middle.

Sources

  • PPI Auto dealer file, 33,308 rated used car dealers in 109 metros, pulled September 24, 2026
  • Buying a Used Car From a Dealer, Federal Trade Commission, April 2024