We tried to find every licensed HVAC contractor in Harris County. We found 57%.

Texas licenses air-conditioning contractors. On the day we pulled the state's file, 2,460 active licenses had a Harris County address. Any one of them can be looked up on the state's license search, free, and it gives you today's answer — not last year's.

That is not the record people read when their AC dies in August. They read the reviews. So we asked a narrower question than “are the reviews real”: for how many of those 2,460 licenses can you even find the reviews?

We took every license and searched for it on a public business-listing search — the name on the license, the trade, the city, Texas addresses only — and counted a match only when the names genuinely lined up.

Active HVAC contractor licenses, Harris County

2,460

Matched to a business listing (57%)

1,401

No confident match (43%)

1,059

Matched listing shows a website (46%)

1,143

Two records that never meet

Every one of these license holders has two public records, and they are kept by different people for different reasons.

• The license is kept by the state, under the name on the license — which is not always the name the business trades under. It tells you the company is allowed to do the work. Anyone can check it.
• The reputation is kept by a listing site, under whatever name the business goes by there. It is what actually decides who gets the call. Nobody can check it.

Nothing connects the two. For 1,401 of these licenses we could join them with confidence. For the other 1,059 we could not — and neither can the person standing in a hot kitchen trying to decide who to let into their house.

The half of the record anyone can verify is the half nobody reads. The half everybody reads, nobody can verify.

The two records do not even agree on whether a business exists. Of the listings we matched, 21 were marked permanently closed — against a license the state was still showing as active that same week.

Finding the reviews does not settle it either

Say you find the listing. You are now reading assertions typed into a box by people who were never asked to show they hired anyone. A glowing review and a bought one look the same. So do a real complaint and an invented one — which is why reporting a fake review goes nowhere.

The license answers “is this company allowed to do the work.” Nothing public answers the question the customer actually has: did the people praising or panning this company ever actually hire it?

Fewer than half have a page of their own

We found a website for 1,143 of the 2,460. For everyone else, as far as we could find, whatever a stranger learns about them is learned on somebody else's page, under somebody else's rules.

That is the part worth fixing — and more stars on another site does not fix it. What does is a record the business keeps on its own domain, where each review has to be tied to something recorded at the time of the job — a scan at the counter, a booking, best of all the payment itself — and is signed so a stranger can check it without taking anyone's word for it. Including the business's: it cannot edit or delete a review either. That is the only reason anybody should believe it.

The directory

1,134 of the 1,143 with a website are listed in our directory, grouped by city — everyone except nine school districts, which aren't businesses anyone hires. Each profile shows the state license straight from the public record.

Smaller cities are in the full directory. If one of these profiles is yours, it is unclaimed — and claiming it is free.