A model classified the main reason in 5,916 one- and two-star Google reviews of 285 high-review-count towing companies in eight U.S. metros.
TAMPA, FL, UNITED STATES, October 2, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — A new study of 5,916 written one- and two-star Google reviews of 285 high-review-count towing companies finds that how the company is run was the model-classified main reason in 86.9 percent of the reviews. The tow itself was the main reason in 11.6 percent, and 1.5 percent were unclear.
The study was published by Sales Roadmap (salesroadmaps.com) and conducted by Kamyar Shah, a fractional CMO and founder of World Consulting Group. It covers towing companies in Phoenix, Dallas, Atlanta, Charlotte, Columbus, Denver, Tampa and Kansas City. The reviews are the written one- and two-star reviews of at least five words among the up-to-60 lowest-rated reviews retrieved per business, with review dates from 2010-03-09 to 2026-09-30.
Staff conduct was the most common theme. The model assigned the staff conduct label to 55.0 percent of the 5,916 reviews, pricing and fees to 35.5 percent, communication failure to 34.2 percent and response time to 22.4 percent. These are themes a model assigned to what reviewers wrote, not verified events, and the shares overlap.
Private-property and impound tows are reported separately. The model assigned the private-property or impound tow label to 1,089 reviews, 18.4 percent of the 5,916. In reviews the model labelled this way, the reviewer may not have chosen or hired the company. Within the 1,089, the model assigned the pricing and fees label to 52.1 percent and the vehicle release label to 24.1 percent. The study did not measure local rules on private-property tows or impound fees.
One reviewer wrote that “a substantial portion of the bill was a $250 administrative lien-release fee”. Another wrote that “the driver yelled at me, told me he just pulled up the map and he would be there, then he hung up the phone.”
“A towing owner can read these reviews as a list of moments to check in their own records,” said Kamyar Shah. “The phone call, the price and the release of the vehicle are all named in them.”
The number that keeps this honest. The 311 towing companies sampled hold 163,832 lifetime Google reviews between them. Of those, 19,747, or 12.1 percent, are one or two stars, and 84.6 percent are five stars. Of the 311, 285 have at least one review in the corpus. The study describes what the one- and two-star reviews say. None of its figures is a share of customers.
How the study was done. Reviews were retrieved through the DataForSEO business data API. In each metro, up to 200 listings were screened and, after filters including a cap of two locations per brand, the 40 businesses with the most Google reviews were sampled. Nine businesses were excluded after their names were read. A language model, Claude Haiku 4.5, classified the main reason, and a second model, Claude Sonnet 4.5, classified 200 of the same reviews. On the binary question of how the business is run against every other main reason, the two agreed on 96.5 percent, with a Cohen’s kappa of 0.801. No sample was checked against human coding. The study did not check any bill or whether any fee was lawful.
“The study counts what reviewers wrote and how a model labeled it,” Shah said. “It does not judge whether any company or any reviewer was right.”
The full study, including every theme, the method and its limitations, is available at https://salesroadmaps.com/towing-company-negative-reviews-study/
ABOUT Kamyar Shah is a Fractional COO, Fractional CMO, and Executive Coach, and the founder of World Consulting Group, with over 25 years of experience helping organizations achieve operational excellence and sustainable growth. He has led 650+ consulting engagements producing more than $300M in measurable results. More at https://kamyarshah.com and https://www.worldconsultinggroup.com
CONTACT Kamyar Shah World Consulting Group https://kamyarshah.com/contact/
KEYWORDS towing company, online reviews, negative reviews, towing operations, impound, fractional COO, Google reviews, Kamyar Shah
kamyar Shah
World Consulting Group
email us here
Visit us on social media:
LinkedIn
Bluesky
Instagram
Facebook
Other
Legal Disclaimer:
EIN Presswire provides this news content “as is” without warranty of any kind. We do not accept any responsibility or liability
for the accuracy, content, images, videos, licenses, completeness, legality, or reliability of the information contained in this
article. If you have any complaints or copyright issues related to this article, kindly contact the author above.
Media gallery
