The two public scores, with the date on them
These are the ratings we could verify by reading the platform itself rather than a badge on somebody's website. Both were checked on 19 September 2026.
| Platform | Score | Reviews | Checked |
|---|
| Trustpilot (uk.trustpilot.com) | 4.4 out of 5 | 12,318 | 19 September 2026 |
| Reviews.io | 2.7 out of 5 | 188 | 19 September 2026 |
On Trustpilot the distribution was 82% at five stars, 7% at four, under 1% at three, 1% at two and 9% at one, on a profile that is claimed and verified. On Reviews.io, 43% of reviewers said they would recommend the company.
We are not going to adjudicate between those two numbers, and you should be suspicious of anyone who does. We have never used Pimlico Plumbers, we have no access to either platform's underlying data, and a competitor picking the lower score and calling it the true one is doing marketing, not analysis. What we can do is explain what makes two scores for one firm diverge like that, which is more useful than a verdict.
Why one company ends up with two scores this far apart
There are four ordinary explanations, none of which requires anyone to have done anything wrong.
- Sample size. Twelve thousand reviews and 188 reviews are not the same kind of evidence. A large sample averages out both the terrible days and the delighted ones. A small one does neither.
- Who gets asked. A firm that actively invites every customer to review a completed job collects the quiet majority of jobs that simply went fine. A platform the firm does not actively solicit on collects mostly self-motivated reviewers, and the single most reliable motivator for sitting down to write a review unprompted is annoyance.
- Recency. A score built over years describes the firm across those years, not this month. Both numbers above are averages over whatever period each platform's reviews span.
- What the job was. Pimlico publishes fourteen trades: plumbing, heating, electrics, appliances, drains, carpentry, roofing, air conditioning, building, bathrooms, kitchens, handyman work, pest control and commercial. A bathroom refit, a boiler service and a leak search all land in the same average. If you are here about a leak, your slice of that average is thin.
One technical footnote worth knowing on any Trustpilot profile: the TrustScore is a weighted figure, not the arithmetic mean of the star distribution shown underneath it, so the two will not reconcile if you work them out by hand. That is not a fault in the number. It just means the headline and the bar chart are answering slightly different questions.
Indeed and Glassdoor are answering a different question entirely
Search "pimlico plumbers reviews" and employment review sites appear high on the page. They are measuring what it is like to work somewhere: pay, management, shift patterns, progression. That is genuinely useful if you are applying for a job there. It tells you very little about whether an engineer will find the leak under your kitchen floor. Read them if you want the fuller picture of a company, but do not average an employer score into a service score. They are not the same scale and they are not built from the same people.
What reviewers actually write about, in aggregate
We read the Trustpilot profile and its one and two star filtered view on 19 September 2026 and counted subjects. These are themes on one platform on one day, not company statistics, and no individual review is quoted or summarised here.
Among positive reviewers on Trustpilot, the recurring subjects were engineers described as professional and workmanship described as well executed, and fast scheduling including same-day availability.
Among critical reviewers on the filtered one and two star view, the most recurrent subject was price level, followed by communication and callback handling, diagnostic accuracy on the first visit, appointment punctuality and time-window slippage, being charged across repeat visits for a single issue, and complaint escalation and refund turnaround.
The pricing theme is worth reading structurally rather than as an accusation. Pimlico's own rate card publishes no call-out fee and a one-hour minimum charge billed thereafter in 15-minute increments. A time-billed job with a minimum will produce a different invoice conversation from a job quoted as one number in advance, and the recurring subject in those reviews is consistent with the structure the firm publishes rather than with anything hidden.
What a star rating cannot tell you, and what Pimlico publishes anyway
This is the part that actually decides a leak job, and no review score carries it. Pimlico's site sits behind bot protection and could not be fetched directly, so the figures below were read from dated Internet Archive snapshots of Pimlico's own pages. Each one carries its snapshot date, and the rate card itself carries the line "Rates effective as of 15-01-2026". Check the live pages before you rely on any of it.
- Price for the thing you are buying. The rate card lists an hourly rate of £165 excluding VAT for leak detection, in the 7am to 6pm band only, with a one-hour minimum and 15-minute increments after that. Snapshot of 7 June 2026.
- Method. The leak-detection service page names inspection cameras, ultraviolet trace dye, thermal imaging and trace gas, and the rate card's footnote on the leak line separately names "thermal, acoustic or gassing detection". Snapshot of 7 June 2026. Naming methods is the honest thing to do, and most London firms do not.
- A second price that is not reconciled. The same leak-detection page advertises "Prices from £45.25+VAT". Neither page explains how that relates to the hourly figure, so we are not going to guess on their behalf. Quote either figure with its own page, or neither.
- Guarantee. The leak-detection page states that workmanship is guaranteed for 12 months. Snapshot of 7 June 2026.
- Who attends. Pimlico publishes "more than 200 workers" on its About Us page and "Over 230 engineers" on its same-rates page. Both are its own figures on different pages, and they differ.
- Where they go. Coverage is published as "in and around the M25".
What is not on either page we checked is any no-find-no-fee term. That is a statement about two archived pages on one date, not a claim about what the company will agree on the phone.
The ASA ruling, stated the way it actually came out
You may find a reference to an Advertising Standards Authority case and assume it went against them. It did not. On 16 September 2026 the ASA published a ruling on a complaint brought by a competitor who believed engineers did not attend emergency call-outs late at night or early in the morning. Two issues were investigated. One was not upheld, with the ASA concluding that the 24/7 claims had been substantiated and were not misleading. The other was informally resolved after the advertiser agreed to amend their advertising. A competitor lost that argument at the regulator, and we have no interest in relitigating it here.
When Pimlico Plumbers is the right call
- You need several trades on one property and want one account covering all of them.
- The job is not a leak search: a boiler service, a gas safety certificate, an electrical fault, a roof, a bathroom.
- You want a published hourly rate for a named trade before you book, which is more than most London firms will give you.
- You are inside the M25 but outside London proper, where their published coverage reaches and ours does not.
- You want a stated twelve-month workmanship guarantee on the detection work.
A 4.4 from 12,318 reviews is a real body of evidence and we are not going to talk you out of it.
Our own rating: we do not have one
Leak Fix London is new. We publish no star rating, no review count and no testimonials, because anything we put there would be unverifiable and most of it would be invented. Our reviews page says exactly that and sets out what to check on a firm that has no reviews yet, including us. If you want the price and scope comparison rather than the reputation one, that is on our Pimlico Plumbers alternative page, and our own numbers are on the pricing page: £150 per hour, fixed before we attend, no find no fee.
How to check all of this yourself in ten minutes
- Open the platform itself rather than a rating badge on a company website. A badge is an image; the profile is the evidence.
- Sort by most recent. A score is an average over years, and the last two months is what you are buying.
- Filter to one and two stars and read ten. You are looking for a repeated subject, not a horror story.
- Check whether the firm replies, and how.
- Then leave the review sites and read the firm's own pages for the four things a score cannot carry: the price, the method, who attends, and what happens if the leak is not found. If a page will not tell you those, that is information too.
