Guide
How a Street Recommendation Works
24 September 2026 · 5 min read
Review sites collect opinions from strangers. A street collects experience from people you can knock on the door of. Rep is built on the second one, and this explains what that means in practice.
Why the street
A street is not just a place. It is the smallest group of people whose houses have the same problems as yours.
- Same houses. Built at the same time, by the same builder, with the same pipework, wiring and roof. The plumber who has already solved your neighbour's problem has solved yours.
- Same distance. A tradesperson who works your street is a short drive from you, which decides whether they turn up for a small job.
- Accountable. Somebody who does a bad job three doors down cannot disappear from the people who live around it.
- Askable. You can ask a neighbour what it cost and what they were like. You cannot ask a username.
The question is not "how many stars". It is "would you have them back".
What Rep records
One thing, and it is deliberately narrow: a household would use this tradesperson again. There are no stars, no scores out of five, and no written reviews.
It is recorded against the household, not the person. Two people at one address count once, however many jobs have been done. That is what stops a business looking popular because one family kept calling them.
A recommendation can be verified: the tradesperson says they did a job at your address, and you confirm it from that address. Nothing counts until the household confirms it.
What your neighbours see
Your street sees your first name and your house number — "Sam at 14" — because that is what makes it real. A recommendation from a nameless account is just another review.
Everybody else sees the street and nothing more: "a household on Queens Drive". Not your number, not your name.
And you can turn the number off. Set street-only in Settings, and everything you say reads as "a household on your street", to neighbours and tradespeople alike.
What Rep never shows anybody
- your full address, your postcode or your coordinates
- your phone number or your email, to any tradesperson
- anything at all to somebody who has not claimed a house of their own
- a way to search Rep for a person or an address — there isn't one
Being honest about a bad job
You can also record that you would not use somebody again. Rep handles that carefully, because a complaint is a serious thing to put on somebody's livelihood.
- The tradesperson is told how many households would not recommend them. Never which, never from which street, never on what date — street plus date would name you to somebody who knows which job it was.
- Your neighbours see a thumbs down without your house number, unless you choose to let them ask you why.
- One complaint against a long clean record barely registers. A pattern in a short time shows. Complaints fade with age, because a bad year in 2024 that was put right should not follow somebody for ever.
Why there is no paid position
Nobody can pay to appear higher on Rep, and nobody can pay to have a recommendation removed. Ordering is decided by your street first — two households on your own road outrank forty-five in the wider area, whatever the numbers.
The whole mechanism is written out, in full, in How Rep works for tradespeople. It is the page that ranks them, so they are the people most entitled to read it.
Starting one
Most streets start with one household and one recommendation. If you have had somebody good in the house this year, that is the one. Claim your home and say so — it takes a minute, and the next person on your street looking for that trade will find them.