How We Score & Review
The five criteria, their weights, and the formula behind every overall score on this site
The overall score
Each of the 15 companies we review is rated from 0 to 10, in half-point steps, on five criteria. The overall score is the weighted average of those five ratings, rounded to one decimal:
overall = (8 x Coverage + 4 x Customer Service + 3 x Value + 2 x Contract Terms + 1 x Transparency) / 18
The five ratings behind a company's score appear in the Score Breakdown of its review, so anyone can check the arithmetic. The overall score is calculated by the site from those ratings and is never typed in by hand, which is why a company shows the same score on every page.
The five criteria and their weights
| Criterion | Weight | What it measures |
|---|---|---|
| Coverage | 44% | What is covered on claim day and how much it pays: scope of covered systems and appliances, pre-existing condition handling, and caps (HVAC cap, appliance caps, annual aggregate). |
| Customer Service | 22% | Trustpilot scores, BBB customer scores and complaint volume relative to company size: how customers describe what happened after filing a claim. |
| Value | 17% | Monthly premium relative to the coverage delivered. A low price for thin coverage is not value. |
| Contract Terms | 11% | Waiting period, cancellation terms, arbitration clause and auto-renewal. Can you get out, and what happens if you need to? |
| Transparency | 6% | Whether caps and exclusions are disclosed clearly, or buried deep in a contract. |
These weights are the ones this site has published for its earlier eight-factor model (coverage scope and caps together carry 40 points, customer satisfaction 20, price and value 15, contract fairness 10, transparency 5), rescaled to 100% across the five criteria that carry a recorded rating for every company. Financial stability and legal and regulatory record are discussed in each review and reflected in the verdict, but they are not scored separately and are not part of the calculation.
Verdicts are separate from scores
The Recommended, Conditional and Not Recommended labels are editorial verdicts that weigh the whole review, including legal record and financial strength. They are not calculated from the score, so two companies with similar scores can carry different verdicts.
Where the numbers come from
- Consumer complaint databases and regulatory filings
- Contract analysis and coverage comparison
- Industry research and third-party studies
- Customer review aggregation
- Attorney general actions and enforcement records
BBB ratings, Trustpilot scores, price ranges, service fees and HVAC caps are researched for each company, and each review shows when it was last verified. Where we could not confirm a figure, such as an HVAC cap, the review says so and the tables show "Unconfirmed" instead of a number. Prices, caps and ratings change, so confirm current details with the company before you buy.