How we check every business

Our five sources

1. Business listings and reviews. Name, address, phone, hours, categories and 856,450 written customer reviews, collected September 2026.
2. Business websites. What 2,992 businesses state themselves: entry fees, warranties, whether they buy cars without a title, how they pay. Where a site is gone we use the dated archived copy and say so.
3. State licenses. The Texas TDLR used-parts register, the Texas DPS metal recycler register, the California DMV dismantler list, the New York DMV and the Pennsylvania State Police scrap register.
4. EPA ECHO. Facility records, permits, inspections and formal enforcement actions.
5. Company registries. Registration year and entity type where the state publishes it.

What customers mention

We read every written review and group what customers say into topics, such as finding the part they needed or returns given as store credit only. Software, including AI models, sorts the reviews into topics; our team sets the rules and checks samples. A topic appears on a listing only when a second, careful re-read confirms it at 90% accuracy or better, and only when the business has at least 20 written reviews and 3 mentions of that topic.

The number next to a topic is how many separate reviews mention it. “× the average” compares how often it comes up for this business with how often it comes up across every business we checked. We never copy review text onto our pages. We count what customers say, and the full reviews stay where customers wrote them.

A topic counts as a strength only when customers raise it more often in four- and five-star reviews than in one- and two-star reviews. When most of the reviews that mention it give one or two stars, we show it with the complaints instead, however the topic is worded. Topics about why people came in (the part they wanted, how far they drove) are the exception: they describe the visit, not how it went.

What unhappy customers say

For this section an AI model reads every one- and two-star written review of a business since 2023 in full, one review at a time. It decides whether the complaint is really about this business (not another yard, or an insurer), then picks every reason the review gives from this fixed list:

• Offer or price changed at pickup or at the counter
• Paid less than agreed, or payment problems
• Pickup late, missed or rescheduled
• Wrong part sold or pulled
• Part didn't work or failed soon after
• Refund or return refused
• Order not ready when promised
• Told they had a part that wasn't there
• Rude or unhelpful staff
• Phones not answered or calls not returned
• Prices felt too high
• Weight or scale disputed
• Unexpected fees
• Long wait
• Closed during listed hours
• Title or paperwork problems
• Yard unsafe, messy or picked over

A reason counts only if the model can point to the exact words in the review that show it, and our software checks those words really are in the review. One review can give more than one reason, so the reasons can add up to more than the number of reviews. We show how many reviews give each reason, how many of those came in the last 12 months, and how many one- and two-star reviews arrived each quarter. We show counts, never the words.

A complaint is one customer’s account. A count tells you what to ask about before you go; it is not a finding that the business did anything wrong.

How a business compares

Each listing sets the business against others like it in the same city: salvage yards against salvage yards, scrap yards against scrap yards, junk-car buyers against junk-car buyers. When a city has fewer than 15 of that kind with 20 or more written reviews, we compare against every business in the city instead, and the listing says so.

On each bar the shaded band is the middle half of the city’s businesses, the tick is the middle business, and the dot is this one. Only businesses with 20 or more written reviews go into a comparison.

Who writes the words

The figures and most sentences on a listing are built by our team from counts and records. Some listings also carry a short summary, tips from customers and a line under each topic saying what customers mean by it. An AI model drafts these from the business's own reviews and has to point to the reviews behind every line. Our software then drops any line that fewer than two reviews support, that repeats a review's wording, that says more than its reviews do, that gives a price or policy from an old review, that counts complaints without saying out of how many one- and two-star reviews and since when, or that guesses at anyone's language or origin. A second AI read then checks every remaining line against the reviews it rests on, and an editorial check reads each page as a whole. Only pages that pass every step show these lines; we set the rules and read samples of the results. The number beside a line is how many separate reviews support it.

Opening hours

Hours come from each business's own listing. When a listed day closes before it opens (8 am to 5 am, for example), we show the hours as listed with a note that they can't be right, and we never use them to say whether a business is open now, in comparisons or anywhere else on the page.

Ratings are floors

We show ratings as floors, such as “4.0+”, and review counts as floors, such as “250+”. Live numbers change daily; floors stay true between our quarterly refreshes. Businesses with fewer than 20 reviews get no rating.

What we never publish

• Names of staff, owners or customers from reviews, or license-holder names from state registers.
• Words like “scam”, “fake” or “closed” as a verdict. We show facts and dates and let you decide.
• Scrap metal prices. They change daily; call the yard.

Quiet listings

A business with no review in 18 months is shown lower down, greyed out, and never marked “open now”. That is not a claim that it has closed; call first.

Corrections and business owners

If something on a listing is wrong, or you run the business and want to add facts, write to us with the page address and what should change. We check every change against a source before it goes live, and we never charge to correct a listing. Use the correction form.

Updated 30 Sep 2026.