HomeAdvisor PRO (now called Angi Leads) is a fast and easy way to get customers and grow your business. In fact, it’s where I found some of my best clients for my handyman business.
However, it’s a controversial subject for contractors. Some businesses are experiencing massive success with the service, while others trash talk and describe it as a scam.
So who’s right? And most importantly, should you use them to generate leads? That is the ultimate question I’ll answer in this article.
Here’s what I cover in this HomeAdvisor Pro (aka Angi Leads) review:
- Controversial issues to be aware of with HomeAdvisor
- Quick Facts and Stats
- The pros and cons of using HomeAdvisor
- Should you use HomeAdvisor to grow your business?
- Tip for getting better (and cheaper) leads while using HomeAdvisor
Why the Controversy?
Issue #1: Lots of complaints from other businesses
HomeAdvisor has had over 1,900 customer complaints with the Better Business Bureau in the last three years. Even though they have an A rating, that’s still a lot of complaints.
(Side note: This article alone has received over 280 comments from local businesses about HA – 90% of which are negative reviews. Feel free to scroll down and read them.)
This doesn’t necessarily bother me, though, because they deal with tens of millions of projects every year and have over 100,000 small businesses using their platform. When you deal with that many people, complaints are inevitable.
The real problem is with what those complaints are about.
Issue #2: Fake leads
Many of the complaints in the comments on this page and on BBB are about HomeAdvisor “scamming” contractors with low-quality or fake leads.
I’ve personally dealt with dozens of bad leads. Some of them are “dead leads” who don’t even answer the phone or respond when you follow up with them. Some of the bad leads are homeowners who are price shopping and don’t realize their curiosity costs contractors real money. And some of the bad leads are from competing businesses that are doing market research.
Low-quality leads are a real issue, but I wouldn’t call it a scam.
When you pay $15 per lead, these bad leads get annoying. But when you are paying $150 for a lead (which is the case for some services), it can be downright painful.
However, I think that a big source of these complaints is business owners who can’t close the sale. They are unable to turn leads into customers and end up blaming HomeAdvisor.
It’s important to know that HomeAdvisor provides leads, not customers, and if a business doesn’t follow best practices for turning leads into customers, they’ll likely waste a lot of money with little results.
A tool is only as good as the hand that’s using it, after all.
Issue #3: Deceptive marketing practices (This is a BIG one)
If you decide to sign up for HA, be sure to read the fine print because by signing up, you give them the right to use your business name, logo, and images for marketing purposes, such as directing links back to their own site.
That means they can go out, create a bunch of profiles on other online business directories in your business name using your logo and pictures, and then point those directories back to HA, where they can then sell the leads to other contractors (or to you).
Several contractors and handymen have found out the hard way (including myself). Not only does HA build links back to their own site in the small business’s name, but they also list HA’s phone number. When a potential customer calls that number, they forward it to you, the business owner, and charge you for what they call an “Exact Match Lead.”
I couldn’t believe it myself until I read their terms of service and then did a quick Google of my business name. Sure enough, I found that my YP.com listing had all of my business information but the wrong phone number. Upon dialing that number, I was connected with HomeAdvisor! Not only that, but they spelled my business name wrong.
Not cool, HomeAdvisor, not cool at all.
This is a pretty big issue for me, and it definitely hurts HomeAdvisor’s image in my eyes. Although it is clearly explained in their terms of service, this is not something they explained when I signed up. It’s flat-out deceptive.
However, this issue can be mitigated by simply doing some cleanup work online. I’ve sought out these fake listings and changed them to reflect my business’s correct information.
One thing I recommend doing before signing up for HA is creating your own online listings. By doing so, you reduce the risk of this happening to you.
Issue #4 – Pushy and misleading sales tactics
Many of the complaints occur because pros were promised the world by cold-calling HomeAdvisor salesmen, only to be immediately disappointed by what they actually get.
One pro complained that when he signed up, the salesmen said he would receive about two leads per week. Then, in the first week, he received ten leads, many of which were bad leads.
Unfortunately, the salesman failed to mention something that is stated in HA terms of service – which is that in some cases you can receive leads above your spend target. So, if your profile isn’t carefully configured, you could end up spending more on leads than you are prepared for.
Another thing I dislike about HA and other websites like YELP is that they are constantly cold-calling small businesses in an attempt to sell them ads or premiere placement on their platforms. They are usually pushy and persistent, wasting the precious time of already time-poor business owners.
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HomeAdvisor/Angi Leads Quick Facts and Stats
HomeAdvisor certainly has some questionable business practices, but they must be doing something right. Otherwise, how would they have built a billion-dollar business?
- Originally called ServiceMagic, HomeAdvisor was founded in 1998.
- ServiceMagic rebranded in 2012 as HomeAdvisor.
- HomeAdvisor merged with Angie’s List in 2017, forming Angi Homeservices Inc. (NASDAQ: ANGI), which is the world’s largest digital marketplace for home services, including everything from maids to handymen to contractors.
- In 2020, over 240,000 businesses used Angi Homeservices to connect with customers, and over 32 million projects were requested in more than 500 categories.
- In 2020, Angi Homeservices had revenue of $1.47 Billion, 10.5% higher than in 2019.
- In 2021, HomeAdvisor Pro was rebranded to Angi Leads.
Source: Wikipedia, ANGI 2020 annual report.
The Pros and Cons of HomeAdvisor
Pros
- It’s effective. There’s one major reason that HA is still in business, and that’s because it works. With more and more people turning to the web to find service providers, having a strong online presence is essential. HomeAdvisor has an extremely powerful web presence and a well-designed website that makes it easy for homeowners to find pros. After all, they are part of the biggest digital marketplace for home services in the world.
- High long-term ROI. To some people, the price of leads seems expensive, but if you consider that many of the customers you connect with on HomeAdvisor will end up becoming long-term clients, the value proposition becomes more attractive. For example, I paid $20 for a lead to mount a TV and that customer ended up hiring me for over $20,000 in work over the following years.
- Good for new businesses. Before you can start generating customers from word of mouth, you need to actually have customers. HA allows you to leverage their brand to gain trust and gain your first clients. It also allows you to reach customers that you otherwise wouldn’t have the marketing abilities or funds to reach.
- Easy to manage. Once you’ve set up your account, it’s straightforward to manage. You can even turn your leads on and off whenever you choose. This allows you to only use the service when you are slow or trying to expand your business. They even have an app where you can manage customer requests and collect payments. HA clearly understands how to leverage technology to make their platform easier for both customers and service pros.
- You choose which jobs you get leads for. One of my favorite things about HomeAdvisor is how you can pick and choose which jobs you get leads for. If you only want leads for TV wall mounts, you can do that. If you discover that certain leads don’t turn into customers, you can modify your profile to stop getting those particular leads.
- Great for filling gaps in your schedule. One of the best uses of HomeAdvisor is to fill gaps in your schedule during slow times – like during winter when business tends to slow down or while you work on other marketing strategies that free you from having to pay for leads.
Cons
- Giving up some rights to your brand. HA’s terms of service clearly state that HA can use any information on your profile to direct links to their site. This essentially allows them to use your name to promote their business – and then charge you for it. And this extends to any pictures you upload, your logo, or even pictures of you. They get irrevocable access to use this however they want if you sign up and agree.
- Bad leads. I’ve received several leads that were just people price shopping with no interest in actually hiring anybody. Sometimes leads won’t even answer the phone. A refund will be granted in some cases, but I’ve still paid for several bad leads. This isn’t surprising since it clearly states in HA’s terms of service that they make no guarantees on the quality of the leads you get.
- It can get expensive. Paying for leads can eat into profits fast, especially if you are signed up for more expensive leads like kitchen or bath remodel leads and cannot convert leads into customers effectively. But lead fees aren’t the only fees. You can also pay for a subscription to simply have your business listed with your phone number (instead of HA’s). You often have to pay an enrollment fee of $300 just to get started. They will try to sell you other services like website development and hosting. There’s even an option to pay to use HA’s seal on your website. If you’re not careful, the fees can add up quickly.
- It can be a headache. When you get fake leads or leads that don’t even answer the phone, it gets frustrating – especially when you shelled out cash for those leads. Additionally, it can be tough to differentiate yourself from the competition on HA. That often leads to having to be more competitive on price, which can further eat into profits.
- Reviews aren’t yours. The reviews you work hard to earn while using the platform are owned solely by HomeAdvisor, and they clearly state that you cannot use these or republish them in any form. The only way to legally post the reviews on your website is to purchase your website and hosting from HomeAdvisor, which I wouldn’t recommend for anyone.
- Feeding the “beast” – As I talk about in this article, using services like HomeAdvisor further strengthens their already dominant position as the go-to place for homeowners to find pros. As useful as it may be, this gives the middle man a lot of power, which may not be so good for small business profits in the long run.
Should you use HomeAdvisor?
Here is the ultimate question, and the answer is that it depends.
Personally, I believe it’s effective and I have personally had success using the service. In my first year of business, I spent $1,152 advertising with HA and gained $4,425 in business directly from leads received. Those numbers may sound small, but as a handyman, my average job size is just a few hundred dollars. The real value came from helping me build a client base from nothing while working on other, long-term marketing strategies that I rely on now. I was able to gain some excellent customers and accelerate my business in the short term, which gave me time to invest in less expensive and better marketing strategies.
However, I don’t agree with some of their business practices, namely how they use a company’s name to direct leads back to their website. This is a real problem for me.
I no longer use HA, and I dropped them as soon as I could keep my schedule filled without them. I view this service as a tool for jump-starting a small business but not a long-term marketing tool.
Here’s What I Recommend
If you are starting your business and can’t wait to grow your business slowly while implementing your own marketing strategies, then HomeAdvisor is worth a test run. The potential upside outweighs the downside. Yes, you will waste money on bad leads, but sometimes you have to spend money to make money and the momentum it can give your business is very nice.
It’s also worth testing if you are already established and need a method to quickly ramp up leads either during the slow season or if you are hiring help to scale your business up.
Just be careful of which services you sign up for. HomeAdvisor does far more than send you leads now. They will build and host websites for you, allow you to use their seal, have a subscription service, and even collect payments from customers. Who knows where things will go next since they are part of a huge e-commerce conglomerate that also owns Angi and Handy platforms.
I wouldn’t recommend having HomeAdvisor build or host your website – especially given how easy it is to do it yourself. It will just further lock you into a company that you may not enjoy partnering with over the long term.
I wouldn’t recommend their subscription member service either since all you are paying for is a listing on their directory. If you are going to pay to be in a directory, you might as well pay to be featured on YELP.
I also do NOT recommend paying to have their seal on your website. This is silly and would only give a marginal improvement to conversions at best. Also, it will only matter if your website generates lots of traffic already, which if it did, you probably wouldn’t need HomeAdvisor in the first place.
Now, if you don’t need customers immediately to survive, then there are better ways to generate leads that I recommend focusing on first.
Either way, don’t make the mistake of totally outsourcing your marketing to Home Advisor, Thumbtack, or other lead generation companies. If you do, then you don’t really have a business. You have a job. Think about that for a minute.
Quick Tips to Maximize ROI with HomeAdvisor
If you do decide to use HA to grow your business, here are some insights that I’ve gained from my experience that will help you close more leads and spend less.
Tip #1: Call leads immediately
This is the single most important tip for making HA work for you, even more so than having good reviews. I’ve found that nine times out of ten, if I call within minutes of receiving the lead, I get the business. Some customers have even told me that they always choose the first person that calls without even entertaining what the next service pro has to say.
So, if you want to get the business, call immediately. Don’t even waste ten seconds. As soon as you get that lead, pick up your phone and call them.
Tip #2: Only sign up for small job leads (at first)
Leads for big jobs are expensive at $50 and up. With price shoppers all over the place, this can eat into your profits really fast. That’s why I recommend only signing up to receive leads that cost under $25 (usually includes small repair jobs and handyman jobs). This way, you can still get your foot in the door, build your client base, and then bank on the return business.
Once you get your sales process dialed in, then it makes sense to start paying for the bigger jobs like kitchen and bath remodels.
Tip #3: Eliminate leads that don’t pay
After you’ve been using the service for a while, it’s a good idea to go back over your past leads and see which lead categories paid off and which ones provide mostly junk leads. When I did this, I noticed that leads for certain projects nearly always turned into customers, while leads for “general handyman – multiple projects” NEVER turned into a single customer. I also noticed that this was my most common lead. So, I changed my profile to no longer get leads for “general handyman – multiple projects.” The result was lower lead costs, fewer bad leads, and just as many good leads.
Tip #4: Read the Terms of Service thoroughly
Not only will reading HA’s Terms of Service page give you a better understanding of what you’re signing up for, but it will also help you understand the different ways to use the platform. HomeAdvisor is constantly creating and testing new ways to connect service pros with customers. In fact, buying leads is just one way to use HA to gain customers. By taking thirty minutes to read the terms and conditions carefully, you will gain insights into different programs they are running and be better armed to talk to the salesman before signing up.
Tip #5: Don’t be afraid to negotiate
Just like cable companies, HA has designed its pricing to maximize profits. That means those who are lazy will pay a premium. But, if you are willing to ask a few questions and even threaten to quit or walk away, you can likely get out of paying huge enrollment fees and high subscription rates. At a minimum, it never hurts to ask for a better deal.
Conclusion
HomeAdvisor (now Angi Leads) can be an effective tool to attract customers and grow your business. But just like any tool, if it’s used incorrectly, it can end up hurting you. Use it with caution.
A good rule of thumb is to use it as much as necessary, and as little as possible.
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I got listed on Angie’s List early on, and that provided some leads, though I must say they are a mixed bag. There is nothing like real word-of-mouth. When I get that, new clients trust me right away, and I can usually trust them based on the referral.
I wouldn’t even THINK of signing up with Service Magic or any of those types of services. You are better off posting a flyer in the kinds of stores you go to, which will lead you to the kind of people you will get along with.
Early on, a friend asked me what percentage of jobs you go out to look at really turn into work. I’d never thought of it before. I paused before I said “All of them,” because I had never considered that they wouldn’t all turn into work. Then came Google Local Business, a free listing based on my area. Phone calls increased somewhat do that, and it was helpful, but I was spending more time on the phone and a then I, only occasionally, had visits that didn’t turn into work.
When I was able to change my phone message to say that I wasn’t taking new clients except those referred by existing clients, it freed up a lot of phone time, and increased the goodness of fit with my customers. There is only one way to get to that point: do impeccable work, don’t overcharge, make sure they know you will come back and fix it for free if something goes wrong. Having a level of expertise that they will call you first for everything in their home helps, too.
Signing up for Service Magic is like contracting for Home Depot. Why would anyone who can run a decent business and has a good reputation do installations for Home Depot? Why? Because they can’t find the work themselves. Why? Because they don’t do good work. That is why everyone who has ever used a Home Depot contractor says the same thing: “Never again!”
Yes, it took a few years until I felt I could depend on the money, and a few more before I was turning away work. It is worth it, though, to have a set of core clients who call me again and again, who depend on me, treat me like one of the family, and call me first.
Hi Tim,
Thanks for your sharing your thoughts. I understand why Home Advisor (Service Magic) wouldn’t be useful to you as you have been in business for a while and have a steady stream of return business already.
However, for a new business that needs to get their name out there, Home Advisor does a great job at that. period. You may deal with some bad leads along the way, but that’s better than not having the phone ring at all. Additionally, you can still build the same long term relationship with these customers that you have built with yours, just faster.
I’ve been running my handyman business for a little over a year now and have the proof that Home Advisor is effective. If it’s not for you, I understand. But I don’t appreciate you saying that Handymen who use Home Advisor do lower quality work than those that don’t. Sure, there are many bad handymen using HA, but to say that advertising with HA makes you less of a handyman, that’s just not true.
Big D
Just a thought on the New businesses. When I started I went out and charged less then the going rates for the first year. I found the high end shop of materials in my area and offered to do installs, resurface, etc. at around 40% less, and instructed all this would be for my first year only. I found that the Doctors/ Lawyers/ Business CEO’s/ etc. who are well known in my community would go to the high end shops to get their materials, and once I proved my expertise in my work the word was out that first year in business. I went from 8k gross 1st year to 17k, the second, 34k the third, over 70k in the 4th, and over 100 after the 5th if I recall correctly. In other words, if one is as excellent in service, ethics, craftsmanship, etc. then no need to pay others to show your work of services, just give the local high end shop your portfolio and go to their clients with the discount of work you perform acknowledging that it is a limited time offer, once all their colleague’s see your work the phone will ring off hook as your prices climb as you get busier. Have to say, I knew my experience in my services are above average and have been blessed in life to have mastered my trade and service. I am still learning though, and anyone that state they know it all, stay away from them including those that pedal services like Service Magic/ Home Advisor/ Angie’s List/ etc. Good Luck to all that are beginning, it is quite the ride;0)
The service is a necessary evil…..I’ve spent $14,000 with them and the ratio is about 10×1 per dollar spent on profit. The problem with them is they’ll take anyone with a pulse, business name, and no felonies. So many knuckleheads flood the industry every year doing shoddy work, and having absolutely no idea how to run a business. I’ve been in business 9 years and spend about 3k annual on marketing. No one can stay in business strictly on referrals unless you’re either 1. EXTREMELY well connected. 2. Are a 2nd or 3rd generation contractor. A true start up business has a marketing budget, read any franchise proposal before you buy in. I’ve used HomeAdvisor for 8 years, there is a new bozo listed on their site every month. They’re for sure a “burn and turn” organization. BUT, door knocking in your painters bibs in January has a conversion rate of about 2% not to mention a lot of work I don’t have time, or patience for. Most small contractors are terrible salespeople, have no marketing intelligence, and think their “work speaks for itself”. If you’re in a business where anyone with a truck and a quote form can underbid you, how do you expect to get in front of people? Go kiss ass at the local building supply will not keep you in business long. You need to diversify your strategy, set a marketing budget, re-market to past clients, and stay away from stuffing flyers in mailboxes.
I take it your a painter! As far as marketing/business goes I stink at it but I’m a very good painter trying to start my own thing what do you recommend me doing to get the my name out.
Signed up without signing a contract. Credit card debt 4× with only 3 contacts. Every time your name is given out you get charged. Was told YEARLY fee. Not pre contact. BBB & FBI investing Home Pro from Contractors end.
Just wanted to share this with you. Anyone with a pulse and a truck. We now refer to them as two men with a truck. I’ve had three really bad experiences with Home Adviser and one contractor has a business that can not be located. Home Adviser is the biggest contractor scam I have seen in a while. I recently got a no estimate promise to finish the job screw. A rodding and hole in the basement cost over $7 Grand. Horrible. It’s really an insurance fraud issue since the contractor listed a lot of things on an hand written invoice that he didn’t do. I just wanted to agree. Home Adviser will list anyone with a pulse and allow them to post accolades that they are bonded, insured licensed professionals.
Hey big. D I am in the process of trying to start up my own handyman business what’s the best easiest way to get started and get my name out there.
Hi Jody,
I’ll be releasing some free videos on Oct 10th to show you exactly how to get customers. Just make sure to sign up for my e-mail list because I won’t be publishing those on the blog.
Dan
Disclaimer: Yes, I do sell and provide services to small businesses and if anyone reads this and is interested I would love to connect with them.
Now that that’s out of the way, I ended up here because I was trying to see if I could locate a price list or even a range of prices showing how much Home Advisor charges per lead and for their annual membership since this information is not publicly available on their website.
I first learned how crazy Home Advisor’s fees were from my house cleaner. She told me that Home Advisor charged her $40 just for my phone number. She happened to be the first person who called me and she was professional so I hired her on the spot. However, over the next 3 or 4 days I got calls from at least 3 other businesses. I thought it was crazy that they were charging people so much for non-exclusive leads.
I believe that businesses should make money, but not at the detriment of the businesses they are supposed to be helping. That’s why I started my business to provide exclusive local leads (amongst some other services) to local service providers. Everybody is good at something. I happen to be good at lead generation… Hahaha!
I’ll leave all of you wonderful small business owners with some tips so that my post adds value to your life and your business.
1. If you do not have a website or your website is not optimized for mobile viewing, you are losing a lot of potential business. Even when people are at home they use their mobile devices (phones and tablets) to search the web often because they want the freedom of browsing the internet without being chained to a desk.
2. If the website you have has little to no content (words) and does not list your phone number, address, and hours of operation on every page, you are losing a lot of potential business. Please… Please… Please… take the time to add tags to ANY photos on your website! Search engines cannot index photos, they index text. Images rank highest in search results!!!
3. When people are mobile and they search for “florist near me,” the results they receive are based on map results. If you are not listed on Google, Bing, or Yahoo maps… You are losing a substantial amount of potential customers!!!
I’ll end my rant here. Please have a great day! 🙂
Before starting your own contracting/home improvement company, make sure you understand the bid/estimate part of the business. Best way to do that is work for a contractor and ask him to let you observe his process. I started my company in ’03 without knowing the formula and it took me years to get good at it. You need to be a good salesman, excellent at customer service, and need to know your limitations and how fast you can work then add 20%. things take longer than you expect. if you have workers to pay, it could end up meaning they get paid and you don’t. Start small and watch a lot of instructional videos. theres a dozen ways to skin a cat and you should know them all. Good luck!!
HA charged me over 600.00 for leads I never responded to as I was out of town in another state.Am looking into filing charges.Stay away from HA
I am interested in this HA website and contact information. I am looking at opening my own business come the new year and have read a lot of different views. I believe the best form of advertising is word of mouth but I also know that sometimes it doesn’t get business in the door as fast as we would like or want. I don’t want to pay a fortune for advertising to make no or little money but would also like to maximize my abilities and profit the most i can what is everyone’s thoughts?
They tell you an annual fee but continue to with draw MONEY from your credit card. You are changed for every client, whether the hire your services or not.
Justin,
I run a electrical contracting company that went from 2 to 17 guys in less than 4 years. I was fortunate enough to inherit a small customer base that kept 2 guys working consistently via the T&M structure and using that as a base we expanded. I can see someone starting a business from scratch via Home Advisor but it is a ton of work. You can turn leads on and off but if they come through you pay. I could not make it work with the existing commitments of running the company. Eventually in need of work I took a good salesman out of the office and had him do nothing but focus on Home Advisor as 8-10 leads/calls come a day. We are converting 3 out of 4 calls to business at rates that are higher than we had ever charged previously.
The people who we have dealt with have for the most part been blown off by other contractors and just want to get the work done. It’s a pain in the ass if you are busy, I don’t believe it possible if you are actually trying to get work done in the field but if you have someone that can work the phone and fill your calendar with sales appointments it pays dividends.
Time and material pricing with a not to exceed cost structure will never fail you. Singles and doubles build a business, swinging for home runs just isn’t sustainable.
Home Advisor is a big money scheme and i told them that when i cancelled. The more people i can inform the better i will feel about the money ive wasted with them. ive had 3 times the amount of customers by advertising on craigslist for $5 a month!
First let me say I hate giving HA my money but it does work if you know how to sell, and offer a good service. You have to be willing to get screwed on a lot of leads. If your not open to this you shouldn’t sign up. I would say for me 50%+ are garbage leads and HA credit process is difficult, not fair, and won’t help you solve the garbage lead problem. IMO their sales people and customer account reps lie and tell you whatever you want to hear. But again you can still be successful. If your good sales person and have the ability to get the work done with 48 hours of receiving the request you will be successful. Unfortunately I spend thousands a month on HA but I profit thousands as well so it works out. IMO a lot of the people requesting leads are either looking for low prices, want the work done immediately, or really can’t find someone. My solution to HA is to charge the customers a premium for finding you through HA, and try to do the work the next day before they find someone else to get it done cheaper. Don’t believe anything HA tells you. Originally they send leads to 3 other companies but then HA staff hounds these people with follow ups. Every time a customer says they haven’t hired someone yet HA offers more contractors and if the customer agrees HA will keep sending them more contractors. After I finish a job and the customer pays I tell them next time to contact me directly and the price will be less because I won’t have to pay HA. Most consumers have no idea HA is getting rich of us contractors. If you are a bad contractor that does bad work HA is great place for you because most of the contractors on HA are garbage, use this to your advantage. Tell your potential customers to look at your reviews. I am a featured contractor on HA with a review score of better than 4.4 out of 5 and I get lots of work from people cause they say I was the only one with review score above 3. Call your leads immediately and do the work ASAP. There’s no better way to start a company on Monday and be booked solid by the end of the week. I’ve started 5 businesses of HA leads and it’s by far the easiest way to start a contracting biz. I hate giving money to the devil, but spending $2K per month to make 10K profit is worth it all day.
Well said, Robert. HA is not perfect, but it does work IF you approach it properly. Thanks for sharing.
On my profile i cant put pics of my work. An i get leads that dnt even answer
I’m just starting my own carpentry business and needed some way of getting my name out there.I have been a carpenter for quite a while always working for some one else.I’m used to some one handing me working drawings or prints and saying “here,build this”. A few years ago I took a night course at the local tech school that focused on blueprint reading and setting up an estimate.It was well worth it! I am by no means a sales man,so I went to the web and found HA.I sent them an e-mail and they were after me like a dog on a meat wagon.They loved the fact that I was fully insured,and taking the the g.c. test in a couplke of weaks.Like I said I am no sales man,but know how to use everything I can to my advantage.I ask customers if I can take before,during and after pics of the job asuring them I will not use their name or any of their info.If they agree I use the pics for my own webpage.In a way it’s kind of degrading for me to use HA,but I need to start somewhere.I’m not a premadona,but after you have framed houses and custom built kitchen cabinets it hurts a little as I am sure a lot of you know.I just have to ride it out for a while and see how it goes.I’ll post my experiences and any thing I think will help anybody out.Good luck!
You spending 2000 to make 10000 tells us nothing. What are your gross sales ?
My husband is a painting Sub-Contractor and we are starting a business. He called me earlier saying that he received a call from Home Advisor and was asking what I thought. I told him I’d research it (SO glad I did!). I’m hearing a lot of mixed reviews, and even the good reviews have a dark side. We could not much afford to be burned right now, but we could certainly use help in starting our business.
I think my biggest Q would be is if this would be good for him in his category. He wouldn’t be “cheap” since he does great work, but would HA “fee” us to death???
Problem is it’s hard to sell and work at the same time. You could book the appointments but he or you still need to show up on THEIR schedule more or less. It’s a race to the phone then a race to the job. I find myself frequently sending techs to look at small jobs for me because of travel time and a booked calendar. I am also in the electrical field in a area with a huge shortage of electricians. Actually been a riot watching the scumbag property owners who screwed contractors over during the slow times beg and grovel for someone to do their work and still get turned down.
Remember to turn your leads off when not answering the phone, it can get expensive
Make
I’m sure you’ve received your replies by now! I’d like to add one. I received a call from Home Advisor back in January 2019. The whole setup sounded good at the time so after giving them my information and instructing them not to proceed until hearing back from me in a few days, they went ahead and charged my card anyway as soon as the call over. The next thing I know is that my checking account is being overdrawn because they charged $386 to it without my approval. They apologized for jumping the gun then started a refund which took 3 weeks.
I decided to give them another shot a couple of months later and nothing but Dead, Recycled leads that they charged for. I’ve had it with them and told them to sever all ties ASAP. You’ll owe more than you’ll make!
I own a Welding wrought Iron fence Business Home advisor helped me get Started but I figured out they were bleeding me dry with lead fees for people that just want to window shop I still use them but I pause them every chance I get and the home owner has no idea they are costing me 70 dollars for them to see if they can afford to get work done
While I respect your comment. People should know homeadvisor gives you bogus leads. And does not give you your money back. Nor will they let you cancel. Instead they send you from homeadvisor employee to homeadvisor employee. I had a lead that told me they never contacted homeadvisor. I contacted homeadvisor myself and reported it. They told me it would need to be reviewed and they would call the customer. 3 days later my lead was ineligible for a credit. I called right away and they said they would look into it again. 2 days later they finally said it was a bogus lead but instead of giving me a credit actually gave me a cheaper (the original was about $120.00 the replacement about $85.00) lead that turned out to be bogus. Another 5 days later we got another bogus lead. Now there is no turning it off or getting our money back.
If you cant find value in being able to target specific type of jobs in specific geographical areas down to tbe zip code then you are completely clueless and should shut your business down. The membership is 287.99 for 12 months. Translation; $.79 a day for a 24/7 billboard for your company online listed on 8+ different contractor websites. Good luck with your flyers, oh and how often do you have to knock $ off a projects for your “word of mouth leads#.
I understand local advertisement. It’s important. However society and technology is dictating a new era in social media and online (easy convenience shopping; why wait when I can get it now mentality) Let’s look at your discount. You just decreased and average price per job by 40% right of your normal charge. Let’s say the job would have been $200 normally well you just worked for $110 to do the same job ie…you just spent $90 to work ONE customer. A traditional LEAD fee for a handyman is around $15. That would range you around SIX new (potential customers) if you are as good as you say…you could get at least ONE new customer out of the 6 and still profit the $110. However, you just had the shot at SIX new customers. Not just ONE. for a potential gain of $200 per customer and a profit of $1200 rather than just $110.
You pay for advertising in one form or another whether it is time beating the streets or money on the paper to walk the streets. Advertising is essential. It’s all a matter of how much you can AFFORD to do! and control it at the same time!!! Good luck to all Businesses! We appreciate all your hard work!
Very nicely worded!
I’m a small cleaning business that was born 7 years ago.
I’m trying HA for my newly moved area.
It is what it is…. it’s like starting all over again, I’ll take what is stated from you all & kick – butt here in the Beavercreek area!
Good Luck To Us All!
I think Andrew might work for home advisor. I just heard the same spiel from the local home advisor salesperson. The dude seemed to be upset that I wasn’t interested at this time, and then he laughed and told me good luck and he’d find someone else to do the work. I will never do business with them on principal alone.
How would someone who repairs computers do?
It seems to me that decent people are on this site looking to get help or offer help. Bottom line is that it is not for everyone and if you are starting a business in the contracting industry odds are you have accumulated a vehicle, tools and if lucky a little bit of money to tide you over during a lull. Year one of my I could not have physically worked the jobs I was on and simultaneously race to return home Advisor calls. I also could not afford to pay for leads that I could not or was late to pursue.
For a startup I would recommend the following:
Pay for the year or go monthly if your bank account dictates
Turn leads off during working business hours
Turn them on as soon as you are done physically working for the day
Get up early and turn them on prior to going to work then off as you are out the door
ALWAYS HAVE THEM ON DURING THE WEEKENDS
In thinking about my first two experiences with HA it didn’t work because I am past the grind stage of my business (wife said figure out how to work and be here for your children or go back to working for someone). I don’t do night or weekends unless one of my biggest longest standing customers calls and this is what made it not work.
The good leads always come at three times. Nights, early mornings and weekends. It makes sense to me, if someone is booking work during the day they are most likely elderly or not in the income bracket I want to work with. Your target market has a good paying job and as a result cannot be answering our calls from 9-5.
I really believe that chasing leads during this time period is the best way for a young company to go about it.
The site works well enough for me to have the highest paid tech in my company now on salary doing nothing but Home Advisor selling and scheduling. Once you have employees everything changes. I can’t look a guy who has been with me for a couple of years in the eyes and say sorry things are slow I only have 20 hours for you this week. I was close to doing just that and put someone on Home Advisor for a day and it has filled 4 guys schedules the past month.
It is definitely harder than a referral where you show up and you have to work at losing the job but if you need work and approach it with some common sense you can make it work for you on a budget.
PLEASE TAKE WHAT I HAVE SAID KNOWING THAT THE AREA I AM IN IS BOOMING RIGHT NOW. UNDERVALUED WATERFRONT PROPERTY HAS BROUGHT A TON OF MONEY IN AND WITH IT A MASSIVE SHORTAGE OF AVAILABLE TRADESMEN
HomeAdvisors is nothing but a scam! As a former small business owner I strongly encourage consumers NOT to use this service. They scam small businesses and have many red flags that need to come to service. HomeAdvisors does take the time to “validate” a company to post on its resources. However, they don’t work for the small businesses like they say they do, and they are only puppeteers to consumers. They consumers’ marketing trends to rip off these businesses. They make it to where the small business gives them access to a bank account and they continue to withdraw money from the accounts without a reasonable invoice or even explanation. This is not a fair company and I strongly recommend that we go away from these here one day gone the next .com agencies that only have fancy websites, someone to answer a phone, and a way to take money. Also to consumers, they do not care if you make a match at all. They do not put your needs first when they “match” you with someone. It is a scam. Please don’t use and pass it on to others in the industry. Go back to using word of mouth or a quick google search of your own. These guys need to go down!
Home advisor is a BIG SCAM, they just charge me over $200 for elands that I didn’t even did, customer canceled or they offered to little money to do the job omg the worst mistake I ever made to become a member of this scammers that live from small business hard earned money. they never mention this negative things when you sign up.
HA is definitely a SCAM. I signed up with them late last year and received nothing but bad leads. Called and emailed all of them. No answer, no call back and no email response. These leads amount to $600 + the sign up fee for a year. I’m at the moment fighting with them to give me some credits on these leads. This is not professional. We have a small business and can’t afford to throw away money. Stay away from HA
I had a similar experience, but I have good look with their competitors. I use http://www.projectquote.com because its pay per lead and no other fees.
It’s scam, more than 3 years ago i tried HA when i was in construction, so I gave them a pre-paid credit card number, so they never send me a lead, no phone call nothing, well, i canceled them with the app, and after that time start to show in my bank account money despairing, went to my bank and started an investigation with fraud department, eventually i recovered some but I ended today in collection for 6o something dollars, well it’s an scam, im not longer in construction so i advise people not to even try it , wont work for you as many if you read over internet
I concur absolutely. RUN, don’t walk away from HA! I’ll preface that statement that here in upstate New York, the business climate is absolutely brutal with high taxes and regulations; extremely unfriendly to businesses. period.
My first HA lead was a restaurateur who didn’t know what he was doing, put up drywall before the mechanicals, paid less than the 50% down and bounced that check as well. He went against our professional advise and then, when we agreed to do the job as other HVAC hacks in this industry told him about, he decided he didn’t like it and started picking non-existent holes in the work when it came time to pay up.
The rest of the so-called leads were basically looky-loos who didn’t own the property, I had one caller who was actually PRANKED by someone else.
EXTREMELY low rent clientele. Half the so-called leads never returned my call or were unreachable despite me calling them IMMEDIATELY after the lead came in.
Then, to add insult to injury, not only are you charged a $300+ annual fee, they keep charging you $55 to $75 a “lead” whether or not you can reach them or whether it actually does pan out.
Even when they say they give you credit for the (non) lead, even by HA’s loosey goosey standards (basically anyone who accidentally clicks on their website) they zap your credit card so you are always vetting the leads and disputing the charges. SO not worth it. RUN, RUN, RUN!!! Just DON’T MAJOR SCAM!!
I’ve been with home advisor for 9 years and learned it well my opinion is stay away from them they could care less about u and your small amount of start up money for bizz you’ll all ways be chasing the rabbit with them with carp leads unjustified customer reviews etc.I finally quit them and have plenty work without them they suck
If HA was so bad and ripping you off why’d you stay for 9 years? Was it difficult to get away from them?
I just started getting calls from contractors out in South Carolina and GA. I live in Washington; It got to a point where I told them yea come give me an estimate and gave them my address. What was crazy some of them continued to ask me for more info until I pointed out to them that I live in WA. I contacted Home Advisor and ask them to remove my number, yet I still got calls after 8 days. Found out that you guys are paying for my number and I NEVER EVER went to their website. What gives?
In my personal opinion, HomeAdvisor has a group of people that purposefully input bad lead information to generate revenue…all at the expense of the paying customers using HA. Have a cousin of mine that lives in Colorado and dated a woman that use to work for HA and ServiceMagic. He claims she divulged information stating 60-70% of all supposedly legit leads are in fact false/fabricated by HA powers that be, or they have someone doing this in secret. This is defined as FRAUD. Not sure how they are getting away with this? More people need to stand up and make complaints. Call the attorney general for the state of Colorado and make a complaint. This could be a great system if it wasn’t being manipulated in the name of greed.
I found this thread because I wanted to investigate why a contractor just called me out of thin air. Long story short….the contractor said he got my info from Home Advisor stating I had requested a roof repair quote online. I didn’t. He had my legal name, ph #…but he had my old address, and the bogus e-mail he had was myname@gmail. Seemed like someone was pulling public records and making up the rest. The contractor kinda wanted to ‘make sure’ I did not need any repair…as in he did not take my word for it the first time I explained. I suspected that perhaps he paid $ for this bogus lead. And what a great scam….just sprinkle in fake leads and a contractor will just think a certain % of people don’t follow up, went with someone else, or were window shopping. Businesses beware.
I am currently working with another company like HA. Five years ago when I started with that company I felt the same about everything positive and negative I have read here. I even suspected they were giving me bogus leads to line their pockets. Reviews are key but customers are finicky, impatient and at times unrealistic. The other company has started a pilot program to change the game and I am part of it. I went from 2 extra jobs a month, due to lead cost, to a minimum of 25 extra customers per month. BUT they take 25% !!!!! of each initial job.It’s painful and costs me a fortune every two weeks. That is why I am trying out HA. I know the game. I am grateful for the huge increase in business. However I need to fill my calendar full immediately since I hired four more employees to keep up.
I’m not sure I totally agree, though I used to say the same thing.After being overloaded with jobs years 4 thru 19,I sometimes must look for work.I used to start/finish 1-4 jobs per week but have been doing much larger jobs the past 5-6 years that may last months.While efforts are made to fit in small jobs during large ones,often it can’t be done.This has forced the client to look elsewhere.I land at least 9 of ten bids so if anything,prices are too low.Many clients have called for more than 20 years and some are willing to wait a week or two,but there is a limit.I used to turn down most jobs that were more than 2 weeks in length.Many times we are given a key to the house and free reign to work,that is why I don’t simply add workers.Point is,while poor quality work is a main reason for the phone not ringing,don’t overlook other possibilities.
You have some good points Tim but I highly disagree with if you do good work you will be busy,I do do exceptional work and have maybe only 1 or 2 call backs in the 3 years I have had my business but it dose not guarantee I will stay busy,I have had plenty of slow periods even though I do good work,and I do not have the kind of money that some companies have to spend on advertising but to me it’s a catch 22,if you don’t spend on advertising then many customers would know you are out there even if you do the greatest work around,word of mouth is the best but dose not keep me steady.I have tried yp and yodel and it was horrible I spent a lot of money for very few jobs so I’m left scratching my head and that’s why I’m looking into Home Advisor,I am still very hesitant.You did have some very good tips that I will take into mind
Was told an annual fee but got charged for every refural. Locked up wife’s prepaid credit card. Now she’s out more than $359. Recorded as they did, one time anual fee. They have been turned into the BBB as well as FBI for theft and unethical practices. Two Uncles that work for Government. She’s a former Federal Credit Union employee. Now trying to extort another $170 from me.
The other scam of HA is that they say the lead only goes out to 3 contractors but in reality the give the lead to as many as 7 contractors very often. Ask your customers. I’ve had many tell me they received calls from several contractors within minutes of using HA. HA is a huge scam! They get on average $40 per lead and you’re stuck competing against 5 or 6 other contractors.
What do you think about HA or Service Magic for established electrical contractor trying to fill gaps between contract work. Any residential we do is very high end and we set our own prices. Would this be a good fit, and what is price structure. They seem to want a lot of info to get any information.
Thanks,
RD
We’ve been using it to fill gaps in pipeline and had such success we’re going at it hard with HA.
We do pretty much exclusively T&M work and have had no issues with getting HA leads to accept this as long as we give them a worse case scenario price. Quick side note, we have been getting $10 more per hour than we had ever charged. In the end between the calling, site visit etc. and the amount of admin time it’s not as profitable as it sounds but it is turning a profit, increasing our customer base and much better than laying off good help
the Home Advisor system of lead categorization is fundamentally flawed.
I set up these categories of with and then let the customer choose what work category they “think” they need work in. From my measurement customers get it wrong 1/2 the time. Which causes me to have to police HA on the categories they choose. Then to add insult to injury, the home advise “credit research team” is slooow to research and most of the time deny the credit request. They DONT back off their decision. Just a crappy business model imo. I have tried them twice over the last two years and their business practices have not changed. I am headed to dump them again. As they are not interested in changing their business model; they are just interested in sucking money from us vendors.
Home Advisor charged my acct over 500 in 3mo.for which I never contacted any leads as I was out of town on personal emergency.Am looking into legal action for fraud and theft.Adam Corolla should sever ties with HA .
Thanks everyone for the great insights! I hesitate to call HA a scam, if for no other reason than there are hundreds of REAL scams out there purporting to provide the same thing. With that said, HA has designed into their system the certainty of getting bad or poor leads. I found this out when I “tested” the system by seeing what a customer might see if they were looking for a service that I could provide. Basically, if you get past the name, email address, and phone number stage on their website – you have sent chargeable leads to ALL companies that are in that category and area! I know because I accidentally created a chargeable lead for my OWN COMPANY. So please, do NOT spam your competitors with hundreds of bogus leads! And don’t EVER get this info to hackers who create bots that may send thousands of such leads. It might break their system!! After seeing how the system actually works, I cancelled before the 72 hour period was up and they are refunding my annual fee of $348. Thank goodness. If they changed the system to actually screen the leads, even marginally, it would improve things dramatically. Or give the businesses the ability to screen the leads themselves instead of ALWAYS charging for every lead no matter what.This may work for a beginning business but make no mistake – this is advertising like any other with pros and cons.
Thanks for the information , I will explore a few other avenues while considering Home Advisor , it sounds like 50/50 thing that and the business info. .
Good tips here. I would add one additional item. Anyone in the home service industry would gain long term if they put in place a system to stay in connection with past clients. As repeat business and referrals are the best source of new business any company can have.
That’s a really great tip. Thanks!
There are programs that can help you with this system…Ie MHELP Desk Software. This program can help you manage present and future customers easily. And reminds you of your past customers need to be reached out to…Alot more bang for your buck! Good luck guys!
Hi there.
I am looking to register with the various free online advertising companies but i do not want to use my own address. I read that using a PO BOX will not work or you can get penalized for it.
Have you any suggestions on this. Did you use your own address. Would you worry about bad customers showing up to your home.
Thanks
Hi Big Red,
I recommend getting a mailbox at a local UPS store or another mailbox rental service. This is what I did as I don’t want customers to know where I live. It looks like a real address, too instead of just a PO Box.
It costs about $120 every six months and is well worth the cost. I don’t recommend getting a PO Box, however. A PO box looks less professional to customers and possibly google.
I have a shop with an address, so not worry about customers showing up since I no longer stay there, just work out of. When I first started business though, I stayed lived there. I would get phone calls from do it your self people looking for supplies cause the ran out on there projects. I would go ahead and help out on the supplies and give them free advise on how to get project completed. They would find out I gave great advise and tell their friends how hard it was for them to do their own Hardwood Floors and tell them about my free advice but consider hiring my services instead, so I got work from helping out those that could not afford my services;0) Just a thought for others!
You most definitely can get penalized for using a PO box, or even a UPS store as Big D suggested. According to Google’s guidelines (and this is word-for-word):
“Do not create a page or place your pin marker at a location where the business does not physically exist. P.O. Boxes are not considered accurate physical locations. Your business location should be staffed during its stated hours.”
One can argue “well my location is staffed with a UPS employee during business hours”, but that doesn’t work with Google. They want it to be staffed by someone from YOUR company.
The other option is a virtual office, but even then, it’s against Google’s guidelines.
The correct way with Google is to list your address, but checkmark the box that will allow you to hide your address from being displayed (Google is actually now starting to decide themselves – automatically- on whether they will hide your address).
There are some po box places that allow you to list the box as anything you want as long as the number is the same. For instance you can say “Suite 101” instead of “PO boX 101” and this makes it seem like you have an actual office when it is just your po box.
I have found one in my area in San Diego.
Generally the only companies that offer this sort of thing are privately owned packaging and shipping companies. The one I use is owned by a Vietnamese couple. You wouldnt be able to do this through your post office. As this isnt techincallg illegal but it is frowned upon by the powers that be.
But the way I look at it is I am doing honest work I just cant afford nor do I need an office. And dont want to use my home address.
I am a drafter and structural designer / fabrication designer. So all of my work is on a computer.
Big D,
Having recently moved to a different state to be close to my children and grandchildren, I am effectively starting all over. Your comments about HA relieved my mind as I was facing those same issues you mention above as I was beginning to wonder what I was doing wrong.
In a phone call with their customer service I strongly recommended they set their system up to only let a “client” click on one contractor a day for a specific task instead of hitting three or four and playing the “cheapest route” game.
I’ve had only two successful leads out of two dozen so far, so I’m not impressed at all, but I’m going to adjust my leads with your suggestions for now to help get my foot in the door locally.
Ya, you need to play with it to see which leads are getting you good customers. One category that didn’t pay off for me was the handyman/random tasks or something like that. I got only price shoppers looking for the cheapest option.
Let me know how it works out for you.
Big D
hmm, 2 successes out of 24, thats close to 8% lead to sale. Its not bad IMO. You gotta realize there are other handymen in the industry too and are probably bidding on the same project. So if the consumer wants to go cheap, they’d go with the cheapest option available to them.
I think in general handymen are not very business savvy .. businesses run on numbers. Not everyone walking through the door will be a buyer. But overtime you will see a trend where a given % of those who walk through the door will be buyers. And it all depends on how much you get out there.
Like D said, if you are starting out, your first 2 years are crucial .. you pick up jobs, do em cheap if you have to, do em well, and make sure you get repeat business and referrals from them.
I am not sure about the process of homeadvisor can you please explain me. What do you means by Lead???
A lead is basically a job opportunity with a specific customer. When somebody goes to HomeAdvisor looking for home services, they fill out their information and the type of work they’re looking to have done.
Home Advisor then sends that information (the customers name, phone number, address, and job needs) to 3 service providers. These 3 service providers can then contact the customer and try to get the job.
When I say call the lead immediately, I’m referring to the customer who is looking for help with their home.
Big D!!! This is an awesome article but I thought you were way to lenient on Home Advisor. Glenn mentioned above that consumers should only be able to post one job request per day. That is a good idea but the problem is on the backend, HA shares every lead they get with as many prospective sellers as they possibly can. This causes three things to happen. First, the consumer ends up getting bombarded with calls IF they gave a real phone number so they get annoyed. More importantly, the contractors paying $50 for the lead are competing with each other right out of the gate. Third, HA get rich by reselling leads, annoying consumers and having their clients compete for jobs that very rarely close. I also didn’t realize that they require access to profile info AND placed their phone numbers and links on their clients’ profile pages. Thanks for sharing this. I’m going to advise some of my clients of this that are still using these guys. I can’t believe these guys have built a billion $ business operating this way but I am thankful because how we solve this problem is so fair in comparison.
Eric,
Thanks for the comment. However, I have no evidence or have seen nothing to suggest that HA sends the leads out to as many people as possible. According to their claims, they send regular leads to 3 home service providers and no more.
As for the issue with the customers getting bombarded, that’s why it’s so important to call first. As long as you aren’t rude or aggressive and are simply trying to help the customer, I don’t think this will have any negative affect on your branding.
Big D
I’ve spoken to a few friends who used Home Advisor or Service Magic (previous name) and while they were told only 3 contractors would be given a lead, in reality they saw up to as many as NINE others shared the same lead.
I have personally experienced the same thing, Craig. I receive exact match leads on a regular basis and it claims on the lead info that our company was the only one to receive the lead. After speaking with the homeowner, they received calls from 4 additional contractors all referred by HomeAdvisor. Someone needs to shake this brood of vipers from their corporate nest and get some justice for all of us service providers taking the shaft on behalf of HA 😉
We have been using HA for several years now and in the beginning it did pay off. Right now I have suspended our leads because we are way too busy with work from word of mouth and other avenues. I do agree with Eric that HA sends more than 3 out per job because we have encountered this numerous times. We also have experienced contractors being sent out that are not qualified or experienced in the work that we do. They under cut us and then 6 months later they are calling us to repair the work that the other contractor messed up. This happens quite frequently. Right now we are booked out with work until October and are researching different lead generating companies instead of HA.
I did a test on homeadvisor. I submitted a lead under a different name. I was called by 5 contractors. I also received that lead sent to my company. That meant it went to 6. I told all of the contractors that I did not own the home yet and was just looking for information. I then called homeadvisor as the customer and said I made a mistake. I told them I do not own the home and did not realize I would be contacted. I told them I don’t want the contractors charged. They lied and said they don’t charge contractors for leads. I then submitted a request for refund as my company. Guess what? They said they verified the customer was the owner! Stay away
Thanks for sharing that test, Chris.
I have found Home Advisor to be elusive and simple dishonest about their service.While I agree a new guy in business needs a mechanism to locate leads HA is not the best solution due to the fact they lie.
Eric,
What type of client do you serve?
Thanks for the great article. I have been using HA since 2007….glad I did when the crash hit in 2008 is AZ!!!! Yes I get some price Checkers and bad leads but over all the only business for 4 years came thru them. I win 2 out of 3 contracts all the time. I also ‘cleaned’ sites to my number as you did. Now I have a client base and still get leads. In the design business every drafter out there now does side work and HA is one way to continue to show them up.
Sounds like one needs two different names of business, one to register with HA for their leads and the other so HA can not override your business name/numbers with theirs. Have to say, that is enough for me to never do business with HA.
Incorrect and Mythical and creating slander. Home Advisor does NOT sell leads. And ONLY send the leads to a MAXIMUM of 4 contractors. However, there are companies who home advisor cannot control that take the leads and re-sell them. You have to offer equal opportunity to ALL businesses and not discriminate. Home advisor can only screen if the business is trying to represent a business that is willing to market and advertise with them. STOP making Home advisor the bad guy. Home advisor can regulate fraud and when they find out that it’s happening legal actions are taken. But it is not made into a PUBLIC spectacle for all to know about. Can you then discredit Home advisor? Truth to the lie. Thanks I wish you all the clients and customers in the world
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like its helped me. Great job.
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Its not necessarily what HomeAdvisors does, its what the lie to you that they don’t do. They will lie to you about what exact match is and what they do to attract exact match leads. they will basically steal your market identity then feed it back to you at 150% of a market match lead. In other words, they will insert (somehow, I dont know how) their contact info in seemingly every place you have contact info for you company. So, anyone that looks you up gets their contact info. So rather than contact you directly, they contact HomeAdvisor. Then HA bills you 150% of the market match price for this. If you have paused your leads, you dont get the info.
Its not what they do, its what they lie to you to get your business. this is fraudulent. And needs to be reported. Oh, by the way, now they have a “listing” that clients can review and call you directly. For $30 per month flat. No choice. Ask them to produce what this is? they cant. Another rip off.
this needs to be report to you state Attorney General.
Your 100 percent correct. Companies like this are destabilizing the economy with their propaganda. It’s only good for them and their day is
coming real soon . They are being investigated and a stoke of a pen in a reputable paper will go national once the AP gets ahold of it.
FTC and FBI complaints were filed in NYC against Home Advisor and ehardhat of Woburn Mass. Ehardhat steals business identities extracts commerce across state lines via the Internet. It lists business names with photos and bios without the business owners consent and redirects the calls to Home Advisor. It’s false advertisment,fraud, fraud by deception. Both companies simulate relationships with companies that they have absolutely no affiliation with to lure the consumer into their vast network. Liutenant Weston checked out ehardhat and said it looks like they left in the middle of the night. Prosecutor Casey Silvia located the owner Fabio Espindula and he claims he is still in business with nearly 3 million contractors
In his network. Leads are generated falsely and sold to Home Advidor. The consumer feels duped and won’t pick up the phone. Contractors credit cards are charged weekly. I smell a rat and media exposure coming real soon . The complaint was filed by renowned celebrity contractor Gabe Kis.
Big D ,
The previous comment is correct. Contractors are recruited by Home Advisor via Crsigslist. They are told that consumers contact HA. That’s a blatant lie. All my ratings with Service Majic were 5 stars. When I bailed is when they switched to Home Advisor and jacked up their fees by 80 percent. I’m not paying that kind of money for worthless leads . HA refuses to let their contractors leave. They keep wanting to update credit card info and also strong arm contractors into paying for leads they did not turn on.
They turned me into collections and then dropped it when I threatened to go public. I was clearly under the impression the Home owners
Contact HA. Look at the bottom of your invoice. It clearly says
helping you build your business 1 homeowner at a time. Home Advidor formerly Service Majic has about 84,000 contractors in its network after 13 years. They now fraudulently get there leads from ehardhat
Phony directory that boasts it has 2.800.000 contractors in their network
With all the calls going to HA. It’s called Fraud. Ask reporter Amy Woodward
at the Golden Transcript in Colorado why the CEO Chris Terrell of HA
paid her editor a visit to squash the story. Going to an attorney is a waste of money. Home Advisors business practices need to be made public.
That’s what they don’t want. They make money out of lies and
steal money from working people’s credit cards weekly. I have an excellent reputation and HA is a company that is an online thug. Get a piece of all the action. It needs to be regulated by Federal authorities. Time to call the BUNKO SQUAD.
Filing with your attorney general is free and a help to weed out Companies like HA!!! Sometimes the Attorney General will do a class action suit where one can be compensated for damages along with others that businesses like HA damaged!!
I just signed up and will give it a try for a couple weeks but if I decide to stop the service, will HA still have rights to all my company links as you say is in their contract? And to top that off…I never received anything written from them stating their terms???
I’m not sure whether they will still have rights or not. You do have the ability to clean them up yourself and correct the info at anytime, though.
I’m sorry but, I have to put the truth to the lie…HOW can HA steal an account linked information to your ONLINE presence? You have accounts and advertising with So called reputable advertising sources that you have access to and PAY them to advertise your business. HOW does home advisor get into YOUR account. NOT POSSIBLE. Home advisor. has an exact match # on your profile for the TOP 3 spots that consumer can call and be directed to you as an EXACT MATCH LEAD. Other companies who take information off of the web can extract and information from anywhere…ie…Manta, Yelp and have our number listed on a FREE listing that was taken from ANY source…and so on. Home advisor use your profile information to gain your company additional visibility and direct customer to you and pays for SEO based on key words in your profile to BOOST Your BRAND and NAME Recoginiton. Truth to the lie
Read their terms of service, Dale. It says it all right there. And, this is not a lie. They actually used my business name and signed up for a directory that I hadn’t signed up for yet, with my business name and their phone number.
I didn’t write this article to bring down Home Advisor or make them the bad guy, I did it to simply educate others to make a good decision. In fact, if you actually read the article, you’d see that I actually recommend the service.
When companies, or individuals, put themselves “on line” – for business, or otherwise, though mostlly business…I’ve noticed on a number of different sites, when looking up an entity, it says “Do you want to edit this information?” And, there are times when you can. That should not be able to happen, if it makes the originating person/entity create a password, and, therefore, nobody but the one who holds the password, should be able to change it… But, bear in mind it can happen, and, some things are beyond our control. ?? FWIW. Good luck. And, I appreciate everyone’s views about HA. Thank you.
kemccull256 is correct. I just got off the phone with a customer service rep at HA. Their sales rep flat out lied to me in his initial phone call, neglected to tell me about “auto accept” and I am being billed for leads that I declined. Ironically, our company happens to be remodeling the home of an FTC attorney 🙂
Sorry to hear that Jana and thanks for sharing it here on the blog. Let me know how that ends up working out for you!
Got another call from an HA “telemarketer” last night. I’ve talked with these guys/gals off and on for the last three years, even before the name change.
Funny thing about this call compared to the one in December 2013: the “agent” politely apologized for calling me, noticing that his records revealed HA had not recently received any requests for window cleaners in my area. The person who called last time mentioned nothing about that and was actually a bit rude when I said I was not interested in working with HA.
Dave
Hello, home advisor has , and is servicing me well, there’s always something about anything you might not like, there’s some customers who may not like your work, but that doesn’t mean everybody feels that way, good day
What is your Position at HA Robert? I can see that HA needs to get people they have on their Payroll out and about to squash the real thoughts of their services!
I have to say home advisor also known as service magic is a true scam. You would think since the service
Professional
Pays to keep this thing in business they would defend you when you have an unhappy customer, think again! I also know for a fact they do not do a fu
Check of your business as they state to help ease the mind of homeowners as I am off that. After spending thousands in advertising with home advisor, we received two bad customer complaints, mind you out of hundreds of leads , dropped us like a bad habit. Went to rejoin with our new company name and two years later I called about something and saw my cell phone number associated with the old account and they dropped the new company. Who are these people and company? They need to be stopped and service professionals and consumers beware! You can do
The homework yourself and switch to Angie’s list! They double dip on leads they give that are supposed to be exclusive! I understand not eveyone is going to be happy but if I could help just one person stay away from
This scam company I am happy! They have bad reviews all over the Internet and anyone who likes them
Does not fully understand the way they work but you will find out as I liked them once as well until you need them to defend you, their customer as a service professional!
Truly a waste of time and money. Tried them as Service Magic as a handyman and only landed one job. Tried them again as Home Advisor and landed zero jobs. Their business model is built on non-verified leads and people looking for free information. Over half of the leads I received had bad contact info. Their CS reps are rude and you have to fight for every lead replacement. I have much better results prospecting leads via my local chamber of commerce, BNI, and other networking groups.
Not gonna lie HA is expensive as shit I pay $30 for some of my leads but it’s kinda like Alcoholics Anonymous it works if you work it I do Tree and landscaping in the northern Virginia area I do quite well from them but took a while to figure out how to use it to my advantage I couldn’t land any of the jobs in beginning but once I had some great reviews I landed probably 70% of my in person estimates what I like about HA is the customers want a licensed insured tree company and I charge for it other lead services the customers are looking for redneck with a truck and chainsaw to do it for almost nothing
Okay i just Got on phone with a representative at home adviser, and he gave me some info on how this Home Adviser Pro Lead program works. I am not sure this is the best fit in Plumbing field. They get less than hundred leads on monthly basis and there are probably 50 and above plumbers listed in the area. So each plumber gets about 2 leads. Now an average lead that a company might get could be even more than that, so what is the reason being listed in their directory? just to get 2 leads? a month? you wont get all the leads and probably you wont even earn the money you paid. I would really recommend having a directory and just letting people add their business there such as Yelp.
Excellent evaluation of HA, Angie List, Service Magic to Yelp!!! I have found my customers to put positive on Yelp about my services, so great way to get referrals!!
I’m the owner of an AC company in the Phoenix area, after realizing home advisor uses your company name to attract business, I dropped them, they are still using my company information without my permission, and also have a CPM. (Google ad campaign ) using my company information, basically I am competing with Home Advisor for my own name, we are a $1mill company with 35% of our customers coming directly from google, do the math on that! If you are using home advisor, what ever you currently generate from online or organic searches, home advisor gets that same dollar amount using your name! Think about that! We track every lead! I made my third and final call to home advisor, tomorrow I’m going over the initial terms of service, contacting the attorney generals of both states, filing complaints at every outlet possible, including the corporate commissions, I’m then starting with this state, going to research every contractor in my field using Home advisor then personally inform them how it works, what they stand to lose. I informed home advisor for the last time today, I am devoting 100% of my time and I have Two office employees I will have working on this matter when it doesn’t interfere with normal business. If you don’t mind, I would like to post updates on this forum
Thanks for sharing, Dan. By all means, please post updates here and let us know how it goes.
You might consider also to tell your prospective clients that your competitors use HA (if you know this for a fact), Service Magic, Angie list, etc. and that they need to go online and see how deceptive their practices are through reviews. I bet you will find them wanting your services. Hope you can get HA to cut loose your listings/ phone numbers/ association. What a nightmare. Glad I checked out this site on all, shows one needs to build their own reputable business and not let these internet companies get ahold of your business identity!
We have this same issue with home advisor. They are still using our name to generate traffic to their website. When we did use them, we constantly got charged for exact match leads and the home owners would tell us they got contacted by many contractors, way more than 3 per lead. I can assure you. As well as all the lies customer service and ha sales reps tell you. Anything to get you to pay more. My advice if you do use home advisor is to use a pre paid credit card and only put money on it when you want them to wipe it because they will no matter what you were told when you signed up with them
I started using ServiceMagic in 2002 and at first it was great, it generated a ton of leads and I was probably at a 90 percent win ratio but over time and as ServiceMagic developed it morphed into a way to rip off contractors andshandyman providers I personally have generated leads to test the quality of leads that I was receiving, I generate a lead as a customer I accepted the lead as the handyman then as the customer I remove the lead and ServiceMagic kept th leade fee. ServiceMagic has always done a poor job of educating their customer on that we the handyman pay a fee for their information they’ve always done a great job of finding ways to collects fees.I was even charged fees from work done by repeat customers that had posted a job to get the competing price quote. I didn’t except the lead so the customer contacted me directly. Servicecmagic did a phone follow up with them. When they found out they had use my company they charged me. Its inthe ttons. So if you are using these people be very mindful of all there charges and fees. They are sneaky.
Hmmm… glad I found this info about Home Advisor. I think I will continue to work by word of mouth and local advertising. I am a hard worker, have a lot of experience in many areas, and am told I do very nice work. My wife and I are okay with our lifestyle, even during lean times. I don’t feel the need to get drawn into a less than desirable situation just for a few jobs a year.
I recently received a call from HA trying to recruit me to their program. I surprised them by pointing out several restrictions specific to Ohio (ie Ohio only licenses “Commercial General Contractors & skilled trades.”) It is instead, local municipalities that register and license “Residential General Contractors.”
Handymen in my market are REQUIRED to be licensed as such. However, most of the handymen I have talked to in my area are not licensed, bonded, or insured. I advise anyone seeking to do business, especially in my market, to go through the process (And expense) to become licensed. I feel anyone calling themselves a professional should carry those credentials. HA did not seem to know of that requirement here locally.
I am a licensed, bonded, and insured general contractor serving Upper Arlington, Grandview Heights, and Hilliard, Ohio that specializes in minor home repairs, small renovations, and handyman services. While skilled, I am still always looking to better my abilities, and I actively seek out ways to meet new customers; as is prudent of any small business owner that plans to be successful.
I know my way around a home and I also have a lot of experience in marketing; I was Recruiter of the Year when I was in the Navy; worked for Sears Home Improvements generating leads and then doing outside sales, when they were in business as well. I am okay with slow growth. I treat customers like family and they spread the word for me. I don’t see that changing.
Best wishes,
Larry Spears
Liebert-Spears, LLC
General Contractor
Larry,
I have searched and searched but am unable to find licenses for general residential contracting in Ohio. My electricians and Plumbers are required. Some municipalities require you to be registered, but that just means they want you to have insurance. Is there something I am missing?
Ohio Residential Contractor License Requirements The Ohio Construction Industry Licensing Board (OCILB) licenses Commercial Contractors for the following trades: Electrical, HVAC, Hydronics, Plumbing, and Refrigeration. Ohio Construction Industry Licensing Board 6606 Tussing Road Reynoldsburg, Ohio 43068 Phone: 614-644-3493 Fax: 614-728-1200 http://www.com.ohio.gov/dico – See more at: http://www.bbb.org/blog/2011/11/confused-about-ohio-contractor-licensing/#sthash.sr8mbXIX.dpuf
Hi Dan and fellow concerned HA and SM marketing people,
I too, before finding this site, found out that HA had taken my identity and address and put their own ph. #, so what did I do? I copied and pasted their phone # and changed it to my number. It took a little doing, sometimes calling the site and others would send a pin# for you to change the listing and others like Google would send a post card, but I did it!!
Unlike Dan and Home Improvement people, I was on for basement, additions, and home building. Did try smaller tasks but, I hardly called back right away and probably should have, even with the bigger tasks. The % of leads that I won was roughly 1 out of 10. One month spending $1000.00 I might have gotten two basement remodels. From being on SM and HA, I actually landed a Home Build and that was a referral from a previous SM customer!!
So HomeAdvisor does work but you have to go through the bogus, browsing, whim, false, NUMBERS, etc. I know that it is a pain, believe me! —
I try other sources- Angieslist for example, the first year I was on the list, I received two jobs totaling $175,000 (2 additions). So I thought “why not pay $1800 to be on the top of the list” -nothing came of it that year! Weird!
Thanks Dan for your help in this!
Daniel
Your welcome, Daniel. Thanks for sharing your experience.
I too am a HA client. Could somebody please explain how I can get my business info from HA to My own. Such as changing their Phone # back to my number. I can’t believe they are actually using my information to direct internet calls back yo them and then charging me for that same lead! I would like to clean up my sites. Thanks for your help on this!
Al B.
My husband runs a plumbing, heating, air conditioning business and we have been clients for quite some time, first with ServiceMagic and now HomeAdvisor. The problem we always saw, was that the same lead was sent to over a dozen contractors when we were told several times the same lead only went out to 2 or 3 contractors. I would call immediately the customer after receiving the fax. Approximately 9 out of 10 times, they would say they already found someone. And guess what? We still have to pay for that lead whether we get the job or not. Very disappointing, to say the least.
Thank you for this great article and comments.
The business I work for was looking into using HA, however once learning all of the information you guys disclosed hopefully I can talk them out of it!
Let this be a cautionary tale to those considering enrolling with Home Advisor as a service professional. This e-mail chain between me and E*** from HA is only hours old, and is indicative of the low character, nefarious goals, and underhanded tactics of this operation.
I am the owner of a licensed and insured general contracting design/build firm in NC. I had been on the phone with HA after receiving an unsolicited phone call from them (first mistake). When asked where they got the company information they said the Chamber of Commerce, so I listened (second mistake). It sounded pretty good, so, over the next 4-5 months I would periodically take their calls but say that I was not quite ready. Then the rep that had been calling me was replaced by E***. In sales techniques this would be the ‘Closer’ coming on the scene. I let him pitch me for 35 minutes & thought it sounded pretty good, but still hesitated to enroll. Then he did a search at the Secretary of State and found that I had not filed my annual report for the LLC… Thanks! So I scooted down there and filed it. Voila! That was cool, and I thought, “Wow, they really do check out the potential enrollees. These guys might be the real thing. Hot leads here I come!”
When I asked him to send me an enrollment package, he sent a link to the HA page. By law, they must publish the Terms & Conditions, and there they were. I read them to the letter. Not good. Then I came to this site and heard the comments. Case closed. Third mistake not made. Below is the exchange edited to protect the innocent, and the jerk from HA.
Honestly, though, I’d love to print the name, but I really do not want any cyber trouble from this guy.
_________________________________________________________
**********, E***” wrote:
Mr. C****,
I need to set a 3 minute appointment with you today so that we can wrap up enrollment. We’re not going to handle any details, start talking about the clients, or anything else. Just finish enrollment. It takes three minutes. That’s it.
Once that is finished, we can work with your schedule whenever you have time to go through details. But today, I have to finish enrollment with you. Details and adjustments can be made whenever you have time later. Call me ASAP.
Best,
E*** **********
Phone: 913.529.**** | Online Marketing Consultant
_________________________________________________________
E***,
Can do. I’ll give you a call in a bit.
Thanks,
**** C****
***** ***** Llc
——————————————————————————-
From: “E*** **********”
To: “Mr. C.”
Sent: Monday, June 30, 2014 4:14:07 PM
Subject: RE: Appointment
Ok perfect. What time are you thinking?
E*** ****
Phone: 913.529.**** | Online Marketing Consultant |
_____________________________________________________
I didn’t call, instead, I penned this reply.
_____________________________________________________
From: **** C. ********/ ***** *****, LLC
[mailto:*****************.com]
Sent: Monday, June 30, 2014 5:08 PM
To: **********, ****
Cc: ************* C.
Subject: No enrollment.
E***,
I’ve hit a major roadblock that prevents enrollment in Home Advisor, but I’m glad that I was able to dig this up prior to taking a step. Green Build Llc will not grant perpetual, irrevocable license to anyone at anytime, specifically Home Advisor.
***** ***** Llc, and/or **** C. , does not agree to license Home Advisor to use the corporate or personal identity in any way, at any time, for any reason.
This excerpt from the Terms & Conditions is not acceptable:
“Grant of License. You hereby grant HomeAdvisor and its users a perpetual, non-exclusive, royalty-free, transferable, assignable, sub-licensable, worldwide license to use, store, display, reproduce, modify, create derivative works, perform, distribute, print, publish, disseminate and place advertising near and adjacent to your Content in any format or media (whether now know or hereafter created) on the HomeAdvisor and apps in any manner that we deem appropriate or necessary, including, if submitted, your name, voice and likeness throughout the world, and such permission shall be perpetual and cannot be revoked for any reason.”
Thanks,
**** C.
***** ***** Llc
______________________________________________________
John,
Honestly that’s fine. At this point, I doubt you would be a good fit for us. But for arguments sake, what are you afraid will happen? We are an industry leader and subsidiary of a Fortune 500. Your concerned that we want to ADVERTISE YOUR USER GENRATED CONTENT (ratings and reviews, pictures, company information)? Are you aware of what we do?
But we both know that isn’t the issue. Good luck John.
E*** **********
Phone: 913.529.**** | Online Marketing Consultant |
——————————————————————————-
From: “**** C. /***** *****, LLC”
To: “E*** **********”
Sent: Tuesday, July 1, 2014 11:44:43 AM
Subject: Re: No enrollment.
E***,
Yes, I’m aware of what you do: Home Advisor requires it’s enrollees to grant irrevocable, perpetual license to their business identity. The extent of that licensing agreement (or Terms & Conditions as you call it) is out of balance with the scope of the advertising and referral service. Looks to me like Home Advisor is collecting perpetual licensing agreements for it’s own purposes. I’m glad that I caught that before it was too late.
Your oblique closing comment, “but we both know that is not the issue” is interesting… What is the issue ?
**** C****
***** ***** Llc
__________________________________________________________
… and that is the end of the exchange so far, about 7 hours ago and no reply. I’m glad, too, because my initial thought when E*** wished me good luck was to reply, “Luck You, Too.”
Pressure technique, then a switch to attack after being rebuffed… amateur and unprofessional. It was just like all the posts here said, only because I did not enroll was I spared the experience of paying them to snatch the corporate identity. E*** was not happy, his grammar and spelling fell apart and he printed IN ALL CAPS !!
When E*** pivoted to “…not a fit for us…” it was right out of the HA playbook: just like the folks on this thread had been treated.
So, thank you so much for all of your comments. They have been very helpful to me. Getting deep into the Terms & Conditions was the right thing to do, and for all of you that read the excerpt, go back and read the whole thing on the HA site. It is still in force after enrollment. The rest of the agreement is even more alarming. Note the part about the limited screening process on the Contractors; they don’t really even do the vetting process well. Check laws in your state, though, but HA has a pretty firm grip on you and will not be willing to let go. Thanks again to all that enrolled, got hosed, and posted warnings here.
To those professionals that have yet to enroll with Home Advisor… RUN AWAY and don’t look back.
Sincerely,
Mr. C.
I think the “No home advisor for any reason” and “Home Advisor is the best thing ever” people are both wrong. It all depends. I happen to have a perfect experience with home advisor. It all depends on your busness goals, industry and other factors.
-I happen to have a monopoly in my area for the service I provide. So I get only exact match and don’t have to worry about leads going to other providers. 25% of new clients of mine come from HA.
I am not a “get a few customers and stop growing” type of business. So for my company its nice to keep getting leads every few days to increase my customer base. Also, durring my startup phase, it also helped allot, as it was as if my business was “turned on”. I got my first lead within a week of starting, and averaged 3-5 a week. (again results will vary by industry) I had 200 customers plus by the end of my first season in business. As my customer base increases I add more capacity.
The problem in general with the home improvement/maintenance industry, is simply that most individuals are experts in what they do not experts in business. They don’t know to monitor return on investments and so on. I average $2.54 per customer acquired because of home advisor. This seems cheap considering my category charges $18 per lead. But I label my customers by HA lead or referral from HA lead. Although you might spend 18 or even 50 per lead directly, if your work speaks for itself, you can end up with free referrals from that lead. I had 36 customers (from a home owners association) from one single $18 dollar lead. They referred me to the president of the HOA. I think the moral more than just HA, is to have good metrics when assessing the return on investment with advertising efforts. If you make $50 per hour doing your work, and you spent 2 hours going door to door to get one customer, you spent about $100 in your labor getting one customer. Even at $50 per lead, you could have gotten 2 leads for the same capital effort. Just making up numbers to drive home the point that you either have to keep track of the const of all forms of advertising, both in dollars and in time, or hire someone to do that for you.
Just what I was looking for. Definitely everyone will have different levels of success and failure, but with the information that you provided we have better understanding of what to expect. Great tips to Maximize ROI
If you are looking for leads to purchase, one of the best areas is to find a vendor that will offer exclusive leads. You will pay more for your leads as they are exclusive and they will usually be phone call leads vs lead for leads, but they are well worth the higher cost if you are willing to pay for them. There are company’s that charge double Home Advisor’s cost per lead, but since they are phone call leads and exclusive leads, your conversion will be much higher. Also, generally these company’s will not touch your brand name either, which protects your own leads coming into your company. This is just something to think about as a good way to get more leads.. I hope that helps.
Can you mention the name of those other sources of leads?
Thanks!
I work with contractors on an exclusive basis (not Home Advisor style). Feel free to drop me a line if you’d like to talk about generating leads for your contracting business.
Home Advisor has a pretty bad rep for putting quantity over quality in their service offerings. Treating contractors poorly and charging for unqualified leads are catching up with them. The best thing to do is to do your own SEO or hire a pro to generate calls for you.
I’ve used Home Advisor in the past and most here are correct, that they sell leads to multiple clients or you have to pay more to be exclusive. I’ve signed up with a smaller company – MyProHome, which so far has been great, except they limit the amount of leads you get due to quality. So far, I’ve been able to see each lead before purchasing and they can be quite cheap. A basic roofing lead I purchased was only $10. I would recommend finding the competition like MyProHome as the bigger companies appear to sell leads to just about anyone! Happy building, Tom.
To get ha to remove their # on your listings, call and get syndicated exact match removed. There are different settings for exact match
how?? explain please
What I really find intriguing, is that customers are not even aware of the exact match. Homeadvisor matches me up with customers, that are unaware of exact match. To me its another excuse to charge 20.55 It can be effective, for example, I’ll get a call from HomeAdvisor agent stating, that Mr. Or Mrs. X wants to speak with you. All along the customer doesn’t realize HA is matching them with me. They simply just want to speak with me, which is good, but for HA to say they are an “exact match”, is insane! It’s like when you meet someone on a date, we cant assume wedding bells in the future!! I wont lie it does have it goods too. It just needs to be tweaked. If peopke are just shopping maybe homeadvisor should have a section for “price shopping” and charge a small fee or something, I would pay the small fee for price shopping. Niw if they are ready to hire then thats different. Im just tired of paying for leads that: Dont answer their phone, thst after 5 or 10 calls they finally pick up and say they hired someone else or are not interested. There has to be a better way. There’s been weeks where I make good money. And thats HA MO, they’ll tell you on the phone you gave to yake the good with the bad. If your Coca Cola or AT&T they can afford a loss. We small companies can’t ALWAYS afford it! Does HA give a s**t, most likely not.
I am a flooring contractor and was disturbed to find Papa’s flooring in my city (and yours).
Papa’s flooring sneakily extract clients details and pass them to Home Advisor, and HomeYou. Without informing the client that a subcontractor will call, and without telling the flooring contractor that the lead was generated on Papa’s flooring website.
http://www.papasflooring.com/
http://www.papasflooring.com/Flooring/illinois-flooring-services/flooring-il/
http://www.papasflooring.com/Flooring/yourstate-flooring-services/flooring-ys/
try subsituting your state and 2 letter code into the address above.
Also papas drywall repair
http://drywall-repair-concord-california.blogspot.com/2011/07/drywall-repair-concord-ca-r-drywall.html
Home Advisor charges $20 to $30 PER LEAD, which leads are already serviced by other businesses or given to every competitor in the area. DON’T WASTE YOUR TIME!
So I’ve been in business do sprinkler install/service and repair since 2010. Found this way way way cheaper website and get tons of leads. And have 8 five star reviews all in the 1st month I signed up. It cost $2.80 for the leads. Once I get the lead and I reply to it. I get charged. If they don’t reply to me then I get my money back. I’ve probably made around $6000 in one month from the site. And probably spent about $75 on leads. My budy as a tree service business and he’s blown up from the website. We both said we wish we found this site years ago. It’s called thumb tack dot com You won’t be disappointed!! I’m still going to advertise through home advisors and a few others. But thumb tack is worth every penny by far!! Good luck everyone!
HA has a new way to screw you around, I get a bogus lead ( not the homeowner or for work I don’t do),I request a credit nd I goes to their internal ” credit review” dept…then they bill me on Friday. That’s BS. They also forgot to tell me that when I turn off my leads and turn em back on…that’s a new “month” to them. The next new trick they have is ” instant booking” the customer tries to set YOUR schedule for the appt. They charge 105.00 for this and it does NOT count in my spend target. I told em no when they asked…they sent me one after that..then tried to say..” Oh No Sir, you opted out AFTER we sent you the lead.” I had to fight em on that. Seem like a biz that says we only deal w/ upright CTRs…sure do some crappy biz practices
I’ve discovered that Home Advisor is scamming their clients. I was phoned by two separate service providers that said they got a lead from them when I did not do so, plus it’s not even applicable (carpet cleaning when I don’t have carpeting). They also had my first name different from what I would use. I informed both companies that they are being charged for leads that are bogus. Since the name they had for me only appears on legal documents, it is my belief that HA buys or obtains homeowner information and gives it to clients so they can charge for non-existent leads. I’m sure they give refunds if asked but I have no doubt they often get away with it because their clients don’t realize it.
Warning to service companies: because of this fraud, I will not only not use Home Advisor, but I will not trust to use any services they endorse.
I just signed up with HA. Two leads so far, one was another contractor testing the site, HA said they would refund. So far they never charged me for it so I guess that’s good.
Second lead came in with the customer quoting the flowing:
“Consumer Comments:
I am a renter and I could smell the mold in the carpet and closets when I moved in.I need some guidance, the owner doesn’t believe me. I have a lot of symptoms that match mold exposure.Please call me, the problem is how I can afford the testing.”
You can see in the last sentence she cannot afford to even pay for service. I do mold remediation, this lead wasn’t even requesting mold remediation, only stating a problem she has with her landlord. Pretty sad lead if you can even call it a lead. I called HA, they said they would submit to their refund department for review. Again, there haven’t been any charges for these 2 bogus leads on my credit card statement.
Thanks for all the other reviews. I’m going to activate my remodel services lead flow. I am a licensed contractor who does mostly insurance related repairs. In my first month of business I am at $50,000 in sales from direct leads from insurance adjusters but I’ve been in this game over 15 years, those leads were earned long before I started my own company.
Anyway, I will update if I have any success with HA. So far, as long as they don’t charge me for the bogus leads, that’s ok. I feel like if they can send a lead where I can actually do a site inspection, provide a quote, meet the owner, and get a chance to sell my service- the price seems legit if I am doing mold remediation jobs and remodel projects.
Will keep this thread posted!
-Kevin R.
GET as far away, as fast as you can, from this scam. Im a Mechanical contractor they flood you with so called leads and charge you for every one weather you accept them or not, they charge your CC weekly. BEWARE you have been WARNED!!
I got a sales call from Home Advisor recently for my junk removal company in WA State. The lady who called said they had lots of junk removal requests in my area and wanted to make sure my business qualifies for HA so that I can use the service. She asked me if I had my general contractor’s license, I told her I don’t because junk removal businesses in my state don’t require a contractor’s license. She said that it IS required. I told her that it is NOT required, explaining that I have a business license and that is all that is required. She kept telling me that it’s required because her “system” says so. I told her to call the state licensing department and confirm that it is not required. She continued to argue with me, acting like she wish she never made this call (bad attitude). She said she would “ask around” at the office and call me back. She never did.
I tried Service Magic for one year, This is how it worked out! They was the Pimp and I was the Ho!
Now that is the absolute FUNNIEST & TRUEST thing said on here!! To my fellow small-service entrepreneurs… PLEASE watch your money and ALWAYS protect your investments!! Ohhhhhhh… and stay FAR FAR FAR FAR away from ThumbTack.com!!
All lead sites are populated with low quality contractors who are unable to generate their own leads through word of mouth.
Jay,
I used to be a carpenter for 20 years, 11 of which I had my own business. Meanwhile I went back to school got a EET degree started working as a tech, then finished my BSETT later started working as an electrical engineer for the next 20 years total. During that time, I also continued to do some construction work, for myself, friends, family. In other words, I am not an amatuer.
I retired, and wanted to make a little money on the side.
HW called me, made a lot of promises like helping to figure out my business, follow up, etc. and talked me into signing up. After the first 5 calls I realized something was wrong, and stopped responding to “leads.”
I started with home advisor to build my company but little did I know when they came to me that I was about to get taken advantage of. I do free estimates and they have sent me all over gods creation to look at jobs but the customer’s are not wanting nothing done but a lot were either wanting land clear cut which I am not a logging company or there was rental where people would go through them send me on a wild goose Chase when it was another tree company but when I figured it out and called them it was an excuse on this and that and I had to still pay for the lead. Not until December I I learned there was a credit program but again little did I know they didn’t care and still want their money and I have only done 4 jobs for home advisor and not one of those jobs was over 100.00. I requested my .money back and refused to give it back so they stole my money and said no refunds. So now I owe them 457.00 for jobs I didn’t do or get much less go price due to the ratious was not I’m my range or close to where I lived. Home advisor will lie to you and make you think everything is ok and that they have your back but ready to make us contractors pay for their mass ups.
completely agree, they pay to be first in google search and they are ripping off contractors trying to find work by sending same leads to multiple contractors and only one gets the job ( maybe ) and most of the leads are a complete waste of time as most if not all customers ( ha, i use that term loosely ) never return phone calls or emails. they promise to credit you for jobs that don’t pan out, but it never happens. one ha employee that i spoke to on their online chat line said, and i quote, ” oh, i’m sorry but we never refund any money, whoever told you we did was mistaken”. and to the a-holes that say only crappy company’s can’t get this service to work, scru you. i have had my customers for many years ( some for 13 years plus ) and home crapvisor lied to me when i asked if their was any jobs out there. ” o yes, tons of people looking for pros in your category” bs. i have been a professional cleaner / handyman for 28 years and this company takes advantage of struggling company’s and takes even more of their hard earned cash and probably laughs all the way to the bank. they should be put out of business and be forced to give all the millions of dollars they stole from hard working professionals and be forced to call and complain to their own company for days on end as i and i’m sure many pro’s have had to do for days on end. ha is an absolute rip-off, period.
HA recently called my company. “We have a water heater we need installed quick its an emergency” When I called in their was no water heater, just wanted a sign up fee with no guarantee of any work. Complete joke and a waste of time imo
When I first set out, I did have word of mouth service. If I didn’t, I would not have set out to begin with. Our work is always of top quality. Even with our price range being equally competitive we would receive our work in waves. Using the former Service magic for leads was a way of maintaining projects in between the waves.
Yes, we ran into false leads, paid for leads that were tire kickers, annoyed by the fact they presented links and such back to them. We were spending upwards of 2000 per month on leads. These leads paid off and brought additional word of mouth business.
I would keep a record of all the leads. I downloaded them.
Every 3 months we sent out flyers to the former leads, about the services we provide. This was a valuable resource to get us started. After 2 years of using the service we stopped. Not because it was not producing, we simply no longer needed the service.
As I stated, it is not perfect, you will receive false leads from individuals that are only looking, you will receive leads of phone numbers that no one answers or is the wrong number. This is not very common, maybe one or two a month in our case, and yes, it was annoying. But as I said, to help us through the slower periods, it was a nice help.
Another nice feature was the ability to select specific zipcodes and municipalities to avoid working in areas that we were already familiar with being a “dead” zone. Meaning very few calls are ever serious from the area. We cover a very large area, so the specific locations was important when avoiding false leads.
We are also a professional company, uniformed, clean rust free vehicles with proper business markers.
I have seen other contractors that were poorly dressed in ripped blue jeans, greasy shirt, smelling of b.o. and booze in a rusty beat up truck bidding on the same job and was also from service magic/home adviser. ( I have a feeling this is the majority of those that complain) If this sounds like you here is some advice, if you don’t get the job… it is most likely not the service.
We landed 7 out of 10 leads on average. Those leads generated additional work by word of mouth as well as repeat customers.
Its all in how you use it, how you market your self, and how you present your self.
Home Adv is a rip off I don’t think it is right for them to charge for leads you don’t get and they send leads for summer projects in winter and most people are just price shopping and in addition to the sign up fee I have been charged for 8 leads and not a single job from it. They are the ones making the money some of the leads for painting was 82 bucks. They don’t explain the price that they set for their leads. I have wasted gas going to these price shopping people who have no idea of a cost. If I was to get a job I will be working for free to pay my loss so who really comes out you do the math. People who are in support of this company I wonder if they have been paid or just telling a lie.
I did some research on HA and i have to admit they sorta p*ssed me off with there sales calls to sign me up. I also have had two customers that wanted me to fix mistakes from junky homeadvisor contractors. I guess as a legitimate handyman I don’t really want to be associated with HA
I used Servicemagic 16 years ago and in the beginning as a new handyman service it helped to get established in the first couple of years. Then the service and leads became horrible, just horrible. I spent countless hours on the phone with customer service to get refunds on junk or bad leads. Old leads regenerated and no call backs,including no details the consumer is describing. Here’s their position and the root of the problem. They sell or provide you a lead/ contact info. What happens after that is up to you, regardless you are charged no matter if the lead never responds or its old regenerated, or no description. As far as they are concerned they don’t care. If they send you the lead, you pay for it good bad or ugly, no matter the quality, or if the consumer/lead responds or not, doesn’t matter if the consumer/lead doesn’t fill out any details or description. It doesn’t matter. They claim they sell you the info and what you do with it is up to you. So contractors you take the risk they do not. In other words they have no guarantee and do not stand behind their product. They say we should take the good with the bad. While some or in my case a low percentage is good leads, but it is clear to me the bad far out weigh the good. It took me 30 hours to assess the good and bad leads and for men 1 lead in 16 turned out to be a lead that turned into good business.
Yes the company Servicemagic had a horrible reputation years ago and they simply changed their name to Home Advisor. I was told time and time again by their sales people begging to have us rejoin as Home Advisor because it was not the old Servicemagic. They are now Home Advisor a new and improved company, now they are different. THEY ARE NOT DIFFERENT, they are exactly the same when it comes to their customer base contractors selling the same shitty regenerated leads, with no description, in correct information, and leads that do not respond and Home Advisor expects their clients to bear all the risks and not guarantee the product they sell. I stated with a $500 budget and in less than 30 hours they slammed me with 16+ crappy leads for over $505 plus $288 for annual membership for a grand total of $793 for one good lead that paid me $690. I promptly canceled and was told my $288 membership fee was not refundable. So do not try this service after you learn exactly how they treat you, because you are bearing all the risks.
BEWARE OF LIARS, CHEATS, and Thieves
I signed up with Home Advisor for a second time. the first time was ok, a few bumps and bruises along the way, but I would have given them a 3 star rating in 2013. now they get one star, and if I could give zero stars I would. I signed up for a plan that would send me $300 worth of leads a month. in the first 3 weeks they BOMBARDED ME with $550.00 worth of leads. they say they send this out to 2 other people, but I saw 2 of my leads receive up to SEVEN people, 2 of which were not even for the service I provided (Painting) and they got leads for SNOW REMOVAL – WTF???? really? I called my “rep” (which is only my rep for the first 29 days they say, then they don’t care about you anymore), and all I heard was how horrible his job was, and how he was so overloaded. Save yourself the hassle, and build your own website that generates your leads for a tiny fraction of what home advisor will screw you out of.
After a year of disappointments, I ended up cancelling the service. A charge showed up out of nowhere and I was told it was because I cancelled 5 days after the “new billing cycle”. Funny, the first guy (who I’ll call “Slick”) on the phone didn’t explain to me that’s what was going to happen. Oh well, I’ll read my terms of service more carefully next time. Home Advisor didn’t work for me, I’m a guy with a truck. To stop work and chase down leads is not my business model. If you go with them be prepared. Read the contract carefully so you know what to expect.
Home Advisor is a JOKE.
I sing up for a year and I cancel it in 15 days.
They just like to send Leads for however and for many people they can.
I’m F. piss with HA. This is scan.
Thank you guys to share.
Good Luck!
I called a company “directly” to ask about a project on Friday. It turns out their bookings had been handled by Home Advisor (no one disclosed this during the call to Company X). As a result, I began receiving dozens of calls and emails from different contractors who had details about my job “from Home Advisor”. I finally called Home Advisor and they said Company X had been in their network but was not any longer and they didn’t know why my call was routed to them, but indeed there was a profile for me and they agreed to delete it. They said it would be several days before the calls and emails might stop. So, beware legit businesses, Home Advisor is happy to transmit a job inquiry theoretically called in “directly” to your company to dozens of other contractors who will contact the prospective customer and try to bid it. I am the exact case of that happening. I was stunned at the positive reviews for Home Advisor so I thought I’d come share my experience somewhere that it mattered. And no, there’s no other ratings or referral service that I prefer or recommend. I just had a bad experience with a fake front door to Home Advisor.
Hi my name is Brandon and I’m a sales consultant at HomeAdvisor, let me help to maximize your amount of potential customers. We can get you the leads in the area you want to make money in and get you in front of more homeowners. Email me at B.Killings@homeadvisor.com or call me directly at 719-624-2387 thanks and we look forward to working with you.
HomeAdvisor gets it’s leads by simply paying to show up first on Google searches. So, when someone searches “Home Remodeling Company Atlanta, GA” – HA will pay a couple bucks to show up #1 on Google. The consumer searching (AKA the Lead) clicks on HA. So, this lead that HA just paid a couple dollars for, they turn around and sell the same lead to 5 different companies for $30+ each. (Price of lead depending on industry).
I work for the Berry Company, we sell the same program HomeAdvisor uses to show up first on Google. It is called an SEM campaign. Basically, what you do is select zip codes to target, and keywords to target. So if you are a plumber, you target words such as emergency plumber, plumbing contractor in ____, best plumber near me, etc etc. Then, we make your company show up first on Google to generate more calls and leads. This is EXACTLY what HA does.
The three biggest pro’s with this compared to HomeAdvisor are –
1) The lead goes to you AND ONLY YOU. No other company gets the same lead
2) The lead is calling you, instead of you having to race to call them and hope to be the first lead. Also, sometimes contractors purchase a lead – and call them, but they do not answer -wasting money. This eliminates that issue as well.
3) The closing rate goes WAY UP, as you are the only company getting the lead, and since the middle man (HomeAdvisor) is cut out – that helps a ton as well.
The packages start at $350 per month and go up, from that we see an average of 15-25 leads the first month (remember these are leads that you only get, they are calling you, and they are searching for specific services you offer) and that increases as the months go on. The reason being the campaign is critiqued as the hours, days, weeks & months go on to make sure it is getting better and better.
If you want to learn more, please email or call me – I can do a phone consultation or a webinar to show you how the SEM program works, and how simply it is to cut out Home Advisor. My contact information is below.
Nik
859 444 2194
937 610 4167
ngligorevic@localvox.com
This company does not understand the word no I am not interested. they call and harass me constantly with emails and calling me at all on hours when I told him repeatedly I’m not interested I am a solo handyman person and I am busy beyond belief and I do know I need anymore work. BI think this is a scam and I will be contacting certain people to make sure that they stop calling
Thanks to all above for taking the time to chime in….I haven’t signed on with them but they do have my company information….should I be worried that they’ll use my info even though I haven’t signed on with them?
The biggest problem is that – like Angie’s & others – there’s no PRO (architect or engineer) that has inspected the worker enough to qualify him as a good referral. The only criteria is that they are in the club via cash investment.
Now when considering a good worker, they have a good enough reputation or good worker friends – both helping them get jobs foe free.
On the other side of this coin, consider that any jerk might be the worker’s client, since they get referred to him for free. Better to get a client/Owner from a friend or past client that liked your work.
Spend your hard earned money with your local BBB – that’s the place everyone knows deals in honesty and holds the tools to negotiate disputes & settlements via trade-savvy volunteers.
Stay away from Home Advisor! These guys think its funny to harass contractors that refuse to buy from them. I politely refused multiple times and finally had to ask for a supervisor which they laughed and refused to let me speak to and finally after multiple smart rude comments and an out right refusal to let me speak to a supervisor I am having to contact the better business Bureau to take care of this. I in no way want affiliated with these people and have my customers treated this way. And to think with the non stop harassment rude behavior profanity and multiple hang ups to annoy intentionally they ask people for a ss number to do background checks. This is scary. I can only imagine what they do with personal information. Please don’t have anything to do with these people its a nightmare getting away from them.
Emily,
Next time they do that simply preface any conversation by telling them the call is being recorded. If they say they didn’t give permission, tell them all they have to do is hang up and if you stay on the line then the call will be recorded. Also tell them that any future calls will be regarded as harassment and will be reported to the FTC and your State DA’s office. Document everything; call your local news station, post on social media about your bad experiences and harassment calls. Don’t give up and keep after it, it will pay off in the end.
I’m getting a bobcat skid steer and I’m gonna be doing land clearing and stump grinding an also a little dirt work? would anyone recommend
HA to help me start and grow?
I think Home Advisors is a scam. I signed up and paid my 200+ member dues on a Fri.afternoon .That Sunday got my bank account hit for fee. Wasn’t suppose to get leads yet. Continued to get phone calls from customers, H.A. weren’t doing there job but were still hitting my bank account. Called them about it, they won”t give the money back only credit. That”s thief in my understanding. Shame on them!
Good News ! After being in the distribution business related to hardwood flooring for over 20 years and have been swinging a hammer since I was a child , I decided to come up with an idea to save Pros valuable $ and the consumers the hassle and
” Get ER done “…I wont charge for “leads” which is BS and a scam. We’ll only charge a yearly $ 30.00 fee for you folks to advertise your company and other ideas we won’t discuss at this time until the web site is done. I personally spent thousands for advertising on the web for my company and was relentless in an idea for consumers to find contractors, suppliers and “MOM & Pop business to get back to business , make a profit and feed there families the old fashioned way . HA and AL are way to much $ for anyone to survive in todays economy-They make $ on us hardworking folks-TOTAL BS. One website charges over $100.00 a month for leads or to sell wholesale product on line-REDICULOUS !
Stay tuned for ihomzz.com… A long time coming for the web. It’s about time …
Sincerely……….. Ted CO of ihomzz.com
Ted, just wondering how much $$$ you have in the bank to market your new ihomzz.com to get your brand out there and to build trust. Do you realize it takes millions of dollars to create a new brand and not to mention how much it takes to build trust in a brand. You are not doing anyone any service if you start something and can’t take it all the way to the finish line and then some. People would be putting their business and their trust in you and what happens if you fail them? How would you generate income to keep your website operational if you’re not charging some kind of finders fee? What exactly would you be offering them? Are you guaranteeing them free quality leads? How exactly would you do that? Just saying.
The main problem with Home Advisor is they share leads. So you and every other company is chasing after the same client. One alternative is a new company called Online Crowd who only works with one company per city in each industry and focuses all leads to that one company. The cost per lead is slightly more, but most leads are phone calls so they are hot leads (meaning they want your business NOW) and the customer isn’t waiting for 100 call backs. You have the opportunity to close them on the phone right then and there and your conversion rate should be much higher, so the higher cost per lead shouldn’t be a problem. Only downside is that you need to be big enough to handle calls from all over the city. Worth checking out though if you want an alternative lead source. http://onlinecrowd.net/lead-generation.
You have written an accurate synopsis of this service. Maybe you are working for HA themselves seeking insight. In any event, I have many complaints, most of which you did address– for the present time, any leads are better than none but someday I do feel I’d be better off without using them. They have the market all figured out, “metrics” as they say. Paying for leads outside of my preferred radius doesn’t garner much for me, as travel expenses, etc (in my industry) defeats my reasonable quotes.
Thanks for the post. We have many clients that either used to use HA and were angry so they moved away to another company or they just used it…like you said…for the first few months to get them up and running. We tell new business owners that they are definitely a lower cost option to at least practice your “pitch” the first few months you’re open and, heck, you may even come across a whale or two. If you play your cards right, a large referral business may even develop from those initial HA leads. I feel like a lot of the successes we have seen people have with HA is based off of them coming into it with a correct mindset and having the tools to follow up and keep these people in a database for long term communications….
Here’s the side from a consumer – used them once – contractor was a liar & did shady work.
Now have a problem with my HVAC guy who IS listed on Home Advisor although I didn’t get him from there I just checked their site. HVAC partners are nothing but liars & thieves. So that’s two of two that I know of that are listed. Home Advisor doesn’t check into these people, removes negative reviews & never gets back to a consumer.
So, if you are listed on Home Advisor it’s a negative & from now on I will use them as a “do not use” list. Food for thought.
This company is the biggest ripoff artists I have ever seen call and cancel your account and they still bill you the folling year and you have to pay for the next years advertising and tell them you want to cancel right now in order to sto[p them from billing you more!!!! RIPO OFF!!!!!
Home Advisors is NOT for the homeowner, they charge the people working for them, of course it is passed on to us. I tried to warn homeowners about Executive Tile & Stone, in Murphy, NC gave a much deserved bad review, and they removed it from HIS website! All they want is money, at our expense and I wish I had been warned about this man this is why there are only good reviews on his website. I will not use HomeAvisors again, if my review is not put back, I will report them to the BBB
Thank you for the article and the comments. I am a professional organizer and I have been wavering back and forth to sign up as a member only. I know a few organizers and junk removal companies that use them [HA] and seem to get a lot of work but the leads imo are too expensive, the account reps are relentless and become rude when you ask them to stop hounding you, and the reviews are awful. There has to be truth behind it if so many pros are unhappy. This post and comments definitely convinced me to stay far away.
On the other hand, I strongly recommend Thumbtack. It’s affordable and their customer service is superb and responsive! I wish every company Customer service emulated Thumbtack. As for leads, if your lead doesn’t answer the quote you give to them within 48 hrs, your credit is refunded back. If you think a lead is bogus, they will investigate. As for the leads themselves , hey, we all know that a large percentage of folks using the service is looking for a bargain, the rest use it for convenience of not spending too much time researching or networking for recommendations. I decided not to lower my rates to stay competitive. Guess what, I’m still doing well. The customers who are looking for quality and excellent ratings will pay the fair rate.
the concept is a good one butt the worst experience I’ve ever had . my bank account was empty I would not refer home advisors
A guy left me two voice mails inquiring about needing to get work done on his bathroom. I called him back and he begins asking me questions like he was a customer it wasn’t till midway through the conversation that he reveals he works for home advisor and then starts trying to sell me on the advantages. It felt very shady and deceptive and I told him he would have been better just to come out initially and inform me that he works for Home Advisor and as soon as he realized I wasn’t going to be buying any leads from him he huffed and said alright then and hung up. Based on this experience alone I won’t be using these guys as they seem to think this is a acceptable means of selling their service. Always be honest and upfront with people. Basic rule of sales.
I manage the marketing for a land surveying company. For the most part, the service works effectively for us.
BIGGEST TIP:
BE PROACTIVE – I have to constantly tweak the zip codes for our service area. Initially I added every zip code in the couple counties we serve. I discovered over time that in some zip codes we NEVER won jobs. I ended up removing several zip codes as a result. Occasionally Home Advisor send us a lead that is not one of our zip codes, but is very close. After getting a job or two in those neighboring zip codes, I ended up adding them. This really goes back to what the author said about eliminating bad leads.
THE BAD:
My biggest complaint is how HA gives you contact information for potential clients. Mr Smith wants a survey for a fence. HA sends us the Mr. Smith’s information, but a HA phone number and extension number to dial. I CALL the customer to discuss their project …. then have to ask them for a PHONE number to add to our job file. It make us look like idiots.
Getting reimbursed for a bad lead can be a hassle as well. Occasionally a potential client will submit the same request more than once on the HA site. I get the SAME address sent to me three times. When I try to get credited for the duplicates, many of the reps aren’t smart enough to figure out why we deserve a credit.
We spend ~$1000 a month for leads, and the average job we are awarded is just under a grand, it only takes one sale to pay for itself. We convert 6-8 leads to sales every month. Every company’s situation is slightly different, but cash flow-wise it works for us. Obviously if we weren’t selling surveys at a grand a piece, it would be a waste of money.
Home Advisor employs some incompetent people. I fell for the sales pitch as a contractor. I will not work with them. I was not told at the begining they could not send me any leads until I spent more money and got a State license. My state does not require a license for painters. They still would not send me leads. I also had to call them several times to get my “service area” corrected. They had my area as far as 100 miles away from my actual area even though I told the employee my area was small. I guess that helps them make more money from me!
I’ve been on thumbtack for 3-4 weeks and have spent 700+ dollars and sold 5 jobs out of 70 that returned A email to me for a quote. I found HA
And searched for reviews and found this blog.
Seems to be discrepancies about HA as well as the Thumbtack that I agree with. I see a lot of the same names poping up for bids. 90% of my emailed proposals are never replied to. Makes me think they are fake: here’s why. I signed up as
A consumer looking for an estimate and I received
4 quotes. The 5th came to my vendor App.
Of course I’m not going to pay to estimate to myself so you see how the fraud can happen here
While these sites self generate jobs and non of them have phone numbers to reach any of the customers. Not all of them but 80% of them I’m guessing . Now if Home advisor provides a contact number that’s got to be an improvement
Over thumbtacks page.
P
I really like reading a post that can make people think. Also, thanks for allowing for me to comment!
I’ve had a bumpy ride with Home Advisor. The fee is charged regardless of anything else, and so Home Advisor makes money whether I do or not. Another problem I face is the quality of calls I get, and I’ll attribute this to an entitlement mentality, because I don’t know how better to label it… but people think the service is free, and when people get it into their heads that something is free, the value goes way down…. and the contractor ends up in the middle of this.
Yes, I know that not all customers are the same, and this isn’t a fair assessment of all, but I also use other sources for work, and I’m far happier with those other sources, and the customers seem to be a different caliber, and not an entitled mentality.
if you are a pro looking to sign up for this. DON’T this site will cost you more money than you realize. you have to pay to even have your name on their site then you have to pay for getting the leads like as for a roofing lead you will pay about $100 per lead. if they don’t call you doesn’t matter they will not refund you. it does not matter to them their are far better sights to get lead from. some that don’t cost at all. I should of cancelled along time ago but they kept convincing me to stay on and hold out. I did everything they ask about calling the lead. over and over and over. I received idk how many scam lead from home advisor. I called in and complained when I would get them. when I said I wanted my money back. they would not refund my lead fee back to me because they could not get ahold of the so called person. they would try twice on one day and never try again. I called back in a couple weeks later and they told me that its not their responsibility for these leads to be refunded because they cannot talk to the home owner. Total scam leads and they wouldn’t refund me. complete BS I had my butt chewed for 10 min asking how I got his information and everything and I explained this to them and Home Advisor still didn’t care on bit. all they want is their money for the leads and that’s it. I will never use this site again. i’m absolutely sick of paying for leads that don’t call back or return messages. it really makes me wonder how many of those leads were scam as well. probably of them. i’m sure home advisor is making these leads up and charging the pro’s just so they can get more and make more money.
I repeat if you are a pro looking to sign up with Home Advisor DO NOT DO IT.
I am speaking from experience
HomeAdvisor has its pros and cons. I’ve been in construction for over 15 years so I decided to start my own company. I had to build clients on top of the ones I already had. So I signed up. WHAT YOU NEED TO WATCH OUT FOR. I checked off a whole bunch of services I offer because im well rounded and can do mostly everything. I got slammed with a ton of leads about 500.00 worth mostly crap leads that wouldnt answer the phone or were window shopping. (They thought they could get a magic price online) I called home advisor and told them I was all set with the service to cancel. They offered me the option to view the leads without the contact info and choose if I wanted to accept it. This is perfect because you don’t have to reset the leads to turn off all the time and you can kinda weed out the bad leads. I’ve gotten 4 out of 5 jobs that I called. You need to call right away.. one job was for 17,000 another 12,000 another for 4500.00. there is definitely some shady stuff going on though. I had contractors calling me about a lead for a gutter job on a job site I was working on but never posted anything for a lead crazy… So def some shady stuff. But overall if you work it right it will work.
Never had much luck with homeadvisor. Most of the leads I got were dead-end. Just price shopping. Unless you can beat your competitor’s price (which is hard to do if you actually provide quality work), it’s difficult to get the job from them. I prefer companies that offer exclusive leads (like the one I’m working with now) instead of farming the same leads out to a handful of other contractors. That ensures I have a better chance of closing a deal.
OMG where to start? Let’s start with H.A. Is a giant scam. I paid about 300 bucks to get a membership then the leads were outrageously priced I spent 3 days running around getting bids together running all over town wasting gas time and money. I didn’t get one single job then these jerkoffs drop a bill in my lap for 360 bucks for wasting my time and money for absolutely nothing. All I want is my money back.I will be getting a lawyer to do my talking for me in small claims court
I am part of a franchise system and they recommend using home advisor. I guess because HA gives them a lot of money. They are experts at ripping people off. They say that they will not bill you for bad leads but when I have called leads and their system does not work, or the telephone number is disconnected, or the customer says that they did not place a request, those are not valid reasons for not getting credit for a lead. BS.
I survive strictly word of mouth from my previous customers. The new customers,bless their heart, can and will wait for me until I am done with my task at hand. They know that if I say they will be next in line, then I will be there for them until they are pleased/happy with my work. This is an Old School traditional way of working. I tell them how much I need by the hour and I refuse to bid their work. I do not and will not allow some money sucking scumbags like Home Advisor to get in between me and my customer, so that they can make their easy money. My theory with Home Advisor is simple. K.O.M. A. Kiss Ol Mikes Ass. Every time I see Home Advisor commercials on T.V. it pisses me off.
Got scam from this company , they are only after your money.
but I have great news for all of you . I already file. about time this came up.
Chimicles & Tikellis LLP
Class Action Filed Against HomeAdvisor & IAC/Interactive
Chimicles & Tikellis has filed a class action lawsuit against Defendants, IAC/Interactive, a media and Internet conglomerate, and its operating business, HomeAdvisor (formerly ServiceMagic), for deceptive, coercive and unfair business practices related to HomeAdvisor’s lead generation services and purported benefits of Membership Programs.
HomeAdvisor is a nationwide home services digital marketplace that claims to help connect homeowners with persons and businesses in the HomeAdvisor network who provide home improvement services (the “Home Service Professionals”). While the service is free to homeowners, Home Service Professionals are required to purchase an annual membership in order to join the HomeAdvisor network, plus pay an additional fee for each lead. Defendants market HomeAdvisor’s lead generation services as providing Home Service Professionals with qualified business opportunities; however, C&T has alleged on behalf of Plaintiff and a class of Home Service Professionals that Defendants acquire, generate and charge Home Service Professionals for leads that are not from targeted, serious, qualified and/or project-ready homeowners. As a result, Home Service Professionals paid an annual fee to join a HomeAdvisor Membership Program and paid hundreds and thousands of dollars for leads comprised of: wrong or disconnected phone numbers and contact information; persons who never even heard of HomeAdvisor; stale leads; contacts for homes that were listed for sale; and contacts for vacant or non-existent residences.
Defendants’ deceptive and fraudulent practices do not end with the sale of bogus leads. In addition to maintaining and employing systemically flawed and deficient processes to generate leads, the complaint alleges that Defendants have adopted fundamentally unfair business practices in dealing with Plaintiff and the class of Home Service Professionals including, but not limited to, the following: (1) using heavy-handed and coercive means to solicit new members for Membership Programs; (2) concealing and omitting material information about substantial monthly fees for mHelpDesk, a startup, cloud-based field service software; (3) blatantly disregarding Home Service Professionals’ lead parameters and budgets; (4) distributing the same lead to more than four Home Service Professionals; and (5) adopting uniform internal procedures intended to deny and discourage refunds and/or lead credits.
Attorneys for this case:
Nicholas E. Chimicles
Kimberly Donaldson Smith
Stephanie E. Saunders
HERE IS THE LINK : https://chimicles.com/class-action-filed-homeadvisor-iacinteractive/
I am the owner of Alpine Roofing in Sidney, NY. We have been a customer of Homeadvisor for about a year. On November 2, when we were reviewing our online presence, I Googled “Alpine Roofing” and “Alpine Roofing Sidney”, and some other variations. The top Google Adwords ad (pay-per-click ad) was “Alpine Roofing Offers”. When you click it, it goes to Roofing.zone which asks you to input information about the roofing project you need done. I set up a fake email and input info requesting a roof estimate. At this email address, I received emails and calls from other Homeadvisor associated contractors. Essentially, another company is advertising as our company online and selling the lead info to Homeadvisor, which in turn is charging each of the other competing contractors around $70 a pop for a lead which was originated by a google search for my company. In effect, for who knows how long, I was paying Homeadvisor to direct customers looking for me to other contractors. In the beginning of November, I used Homeadvisor chat customer service to get some resolution. I sent screen shots and forwarded emails. Nothing happened. Weeks later, I called, cancelled my account, asked for these ads to be removed and was assured it would be looked into. Again, no response. Today, we got an email from Homeadvisor, telling us that we would start receiving ( and being charged for) leads from them. I also Googled us again and the fake “Alpine Roofing Offers” ad is still at the top. I called Homeadvisor again this morning and was told, again, that someone would look into it and that my account was cancelled before but “not everything was shut down” and that it would be now.
I am the owner of a plumbing company in the Texas area. I have been in business since April of 2016, so a fairly new and small company. I received numerous phone calls from Home Advisor, to add my company to their list. I have been with Home Advisor since May of 2016. Home Advisor started out working great for my company, so i thought. I was told at the beginning of the contract, that when Home Advisor gives 3 contractors the lead info. that if you were busy or could not do the work then do not call the customer. Because the only time you were billed for the lead is when you called the customer. I have come to find out that HOME ADVISOR bills the contractor no matter if you call the customer or not. Also i was told by Home Advisor that i could link my google calendar with them so they would know when to send me leads. Apparently that is not the case. I just recently found out from a text, Home Advisor sent me while my company was closed for the holidays. That i had a customer that wanted me to do the work, but i could not receive the information due to i had reached my limit. That is where i started looking into my invoices. HOME ADVISOR had charged my company over $350.00 in leads while my company was closed for the holidays. I thought that this was a mistake. I called Home Advisor to see if they would resolve this issue. Their way of fixing this issue was giving my company a $58.53 credit. WOW. You do the math. To me it sounds like that Home Advisor is not out there to help out the business. So all i am saying to the other businesses out there with HOME ADVISOR, look at your invoices carefully.
I advertised through them for a year and the reason why i stayed that long is because i paid for the yearly membership, i wouldn’t recommend anyone to do business with them. They send that same lead to 4-5 people and u have to fight for it than u pay like $33???? Very expensive and not worth it at all. U could go bankrupt and they dont care. Theyll keep addding those charges to ur account even tho someone else got them.
The biggest problem with Home Advisor is that consumers actually think they are getting a deal. I gave them one solid year to prove to me that they had changed since changing their name from Service Magic. One year later and almost $14K in payments to them, I had only obtained $15K in revenue. Take out the parts costs and I worked for nothing. I showed all the facts to HA and they just didn’t care. In fact tried to “upsell” me on increasing my coverage so I’d get more leads. So let’s talk leads. I logged every lead I received. Just over 1 a day at 482 leads in a year. Out of 482 leads I had 172 that returned my phone call or answer. My average call/email/text back to these leads were 2 minutes 18 seconds after I received them. Out of the 172 that I spoke with 93 were just price checking or “gotta get 3 quotes so I’ll call you back later” and never turned into anything. So essentially I paid just over $190 per “qualified” lead. So if you are considering HA, just figure you are only working for free and hoping those leads turn to future referrals. Angie’s List is even worst on numbers, but that’s another story for another article.
This is a great thread and has a lot of great responses from Pros and business owners. My question back to everyone, if I was a consumer looking to sell my home. My home needs painting, some new ceiling fans installed, a new sink and general carpet and home cleaning. What would you recommend I do to achieve this work? Do I generate a request or lead for every job I need? Can I not post all the work I need and have people bid on them? …maybe something like uShip.com for shipping? Just trying to understand the market from the customer’s perspective and what is out there.
I think time honored methods of asking for recommendations from friends and calling local companies directly is the best way to go. a.) friends don’t recommend shady businesses, b.) you can tell a lot by a phone call or visit during an onsite estimate. I think letting a bunch of companies bid on your work through a website is risky because it is too impersonal. How can you determine if a company is any good based on the price they give you via email?
I will NOT do business with Home Advisor. I received a call from one their salesmen (Brian) to get me to sign up. He was pushy, rude, and often lied. From the beginning he asked me for my DOB and SSN! Emails he sent later seemed legit but I simply couldn’t believe I was being treated so harshly from someone trying to get me to sign up! Brian even literally hung up on me twice! They just lost a business and I will warn anyone else I can.
I was just contacted but I haven’t returned the call to Home Advisor as I was curious what I could find online. Thank you for the blog post as I feel this may not be helpful service to my business. My business is small engine and equipment repair and I have been doing this for 25 years. My concerns are my business is seasonal and weather dependent. I.E. if it rains, grass grows and mowing equipment break but if there is a drought it doesn’t matter how much is spent marketing people aren’t interested unless they need their machine. My problem as it is now when the season peaks I’m several weeks behind, if I’m paying for leads being generated it seems I would be throwing money away. My customer mix is 70% repeat and 30% new and averge repair $250 and I do around 1400 repair/services a year. When it’s slow though the leads for repair will be slow to none existence. BTW the 10:1 ratio isn’t bad at getting new customers for cost. Reading through my comment I think I’ve convinced myself not to engage. It’s the problem with all marketing if you have more work than you can do you’re supposed to do one of two things or both. Raise your prices and two higher more help. So far the latter has been difficult finding good help. I have raised my labor rate up to $90/hr from $80/hr.
Really hoping for some response here as my concerns about these types of internet middlemen grow.
First concern is how many different types of these agencies are out there now .
Second concern is a monopoly on the trade. Or any of the trades for that matter. I refuse to use these services I do not need my hand; however what if everyone starts using these agencies and what if my phone just stops ringing all together.
im glad i read all of these comments,i was actually gonna give them a try but
not now..thanks everybody
PLEASEEEEEEE AVOID HOME ADVISOR…. THIS COMPANY IS A SCAM AND WILL CHARGE you so MANY TIMES EVEN after CANCELLING YOUR ACCOUNT, AND YOU WILL NOT RECEIVE A PENNY BACK!
I have been with them for about 15 years, and I have noticed a dramatic change in this company, Service Magic aka Home Advisor. I’ve received an increased and noticeable amount of bogus leads as of January, 2017, and I’m getting very tired of this company. They used to be simple and the leads were about $13.00. Now, so that they can pay for their marketing aka the commercials we now see on TV, they’ve created all of these tiers for the leads so that they can increase their revenue. The exact match leads are no different than the market leads. Yes, you are right, the majority of the time lately, in my own experience, they don’t even return calls. Other infractions: They pick the wrong category of occupation, many people put in the wrong phone number (I think on purpose), and many say, “Oh, I didn’t know I actually signed up.” Really? How stupid is that. I have received many credits for my leads lately. When someone signs up for the wrong category, I get a credit, and if they say they were just looking, I tell them to please call HA to let them know because I pay for these leads. And that is very disburbing about those back links and linking yourrrr biz to theirrrr biz. Hmmm. I’ve been debating about them for the last three months. Thanks for everyone’s input!!!
Service Pros – do not waste your money on HomeAdvisor. They are happy to deduct charges from your bank account for weak leads.
Just got off the phone with a HA rep; he told me it hasn’t been announced yet, but Angie’s List just accepted a $500+ million buy out from HA.
It is true, HomeAdvisor may work for some, but not all. They will do anything to get clients though. They contacted me repeatedly to join. When I finally decided to give it a shot, a felony from decades ago kept me from being accepted. Don’t fear though, they suggested I put it under someone else’s name which I did and just as easy became a member. The real problem with HomeAdvisor is the significant number of bad leads they send and charge for. Worse is the fact that they won’t credit the leads unless you pay for more. How does that make sense? They explain it as a system algorithm. At the end of the day, it is just as any other service. It is up to the customer to do their due diligence.
Very helpful and accurate portrayal of the transactions you will see as a contractor. Be prepared to pay just to have your brand advertised. They will work with you but that only goes so far. For my company, there is value in getting our name thrown in the mix. I see us using HA for the first year but not beyond that.
I worked at HA in Denver for two years as a sales guy. It’s a brutal call center and if you can lie your a$$ off you can make over $100K. All that dough comes from small contractors. Think “Wolf of Wall Street environment.” But the pressurized burnout rate is serious. They actually provide free food to keep you hooked to the phone with contractor prospects – cold calling. One guy actually had his headset duct taped to his head because he was determined to make his “number.” Do you think he gives a damn about Hank Handyman? Anyway, I crashed and burned out because I am basically honest, so I decided to parlay my experience and become a handyman. I watched a few Youtube videos, printed some cards and started calling on property managers. I found a couple of semi-slumlords and now I complete 2-4 work orders a day without breaking a sweat working from 9 am to about 4 pm. They are great because they don’t want high quality and you do the same type tasks over and over to the point 90% of the work orders take less than an hour. Lately, I have also been calling the owners of cheap “Houses For Rent” on Craigslist in my zip code. It’s the easiest lead source known to mankind. You can always get the owner or p.m. on the phone. Most of them don’t have a reliable handyman and all of those crummy rent houses desperately need all kinds of work. I understand the lure of HA marketing, but if I were you, I would give my start up approach a shot. It’s easy.
Home Advisor is definitely a scam. We signed up went through a “tutorial” to learn how to use the program & end up being directed to another service “m help desk” signed up for a free trial. Tried getting through to cancel service was unable to. Long story short was sent to collections for $230 of services we never received.
mHelpDesk is the only good thing to come out of HA…excellent for invoicing and estimates…it even has time clock ofr your employees…well worth the 60.00 per month
Scam – don’t use them as a business. They send leads to several business and charge all of them. The leads never answer the phone or call you back or respond.
I think they make the up just to charge businesses.
I’ve tried for months to cancel my account and they won’t do it – and keep charging me. I’m hiring an attorney next.
Home Advisor are a bunch of thieves and crooks. They half explain the way things work then simply fall back onto their terms of service and say “fuck you” with a giant apologetic middle finger. They also coach you along the initial set up process and have zero follow through after they get your money. Regardless of what anyone posts….NO, you won’t be getting a refund, not for a bad lead, not for a lead you never contact, not even to close the account. Fucking thieves. Poor business model. Poor help, ignorant customer service reps who like to talk in circles. I hope Angie’s List crushes them.
they are in the process of buying angies list, and AL is a scam as well. I tried them for a month because i likes their fixed price per month…for 250.00 i received 0, count them 0 leads. I told them no thanks, and they tried to hit me with a 700.00 early termination fee. I called my CC company and had them blocked form drafting fron my account any more. This is important…if you simply report the card stolen and get a new number, they can pay to get the new card information,,,you have to call your cc company and block them.
I briefly signed up with a HA and after doing internet research tried to cancel it with them but ended up with cancelling my credit card so they wouldnt be able to get paid.Initially i signed for hard surface installs such as tile and hardwood.My first lead was a kitchen cabinets refinishing 3 hours away…Second one was a bath tub refinishing.So I called them and asked them to close my profile…It was about three month ago…A few days later people start calling me for an asphalt parking lot refinishing…I said to myself WTF wrong with these clowns……?????I called back three more times and every time they were telling me that my profile is closed…Yeaterday which was Sunday around 6pm another guy called and asked me to refinish his driveway…I was polite even I was boiling inside that I am not a man for the job..Moral of the story is HA is crooked enterprise and I think all the contractors that got screwed by them should explore a possibility of a action law suit against them…Bottom line….If you ever as a contractor recieve a phone call from these scam bags – cuss them out with many cuss words that you know and hang up, and block the number after that..Nomatter haw bad you need a job- dont do it….
HA called all the time. First, it is illegal to use for architects and is considered a kickback. Secondly, their screening must be very sloppy – they had a quack who listed himself as an architect but having neither the education nor license that is required. They also put in a top spot an engineer I know whom I would never use again. Thirdly, when you put in the field and location, they show people from all over and sometimes NO one from the locale – they must prioritize big spenders from big cities who gobble up all the prime spots, They are simply poachers in my opinion,
Looking to make a few extra dollars with my vast knowledge of interior painting, I printed up some flyers and put them up around my neighborhood at coffee shops, etc.
Got a great job that paid me a little over $1000 – exactly the sort of work I’ve been looking for.
Unfortunately, have been getting 1-2 calls EVERY DAY from these leeches who give me the “hard sell.”
I am from New York and have no problem hanging up on them now – I won’t even say another word after “HI! THiS IS DAVE FROM HOME ADVISOR!”
Get a job, guys…
I used a handyman from this service about a year ago and it was very costly for this area regarding time spent and it was not a job that required skills. Contacted them recently and wrote in what was the going rate in this area but would paid over this and they sent me porn ..every link was porn on their site.
Home Advisor is one of the best things I ever did for my company unfortunately the leads they provide you is a 100percent joke ever single lead that I’ve had in the time I’ve been with them was just people messing around on the computer wishing or wondering how much this or that would cost not relizing that it cost hard working honest contractors alot of money for them to be playing games I personally found that home advisor is a great company to get your company known but you just have to find the tricks to it and weed out the window shoppers I would like to thank home advisor for bringing my company wher is it today granted alot of money was wasted in the process but it takes money to make money
Paid HomeAdvisor, then never heard from them on the customer service promises that lured my partner into signing up, including the website they were supposed to help us build. Successfully won a refund, but then HomeAdvisor maliciously posted that amount against my fledgling business credit. Avoid this service unless you need help failing.
It is very important to search every thing before advising anyone so that we can save our time and money.
The Home advisors thing is a fraud. This should be considered an organized crime.
They will rip all the contractors off .
there is no benefit to the contractors or home owners.
They ripped me off several times.
I can’t believe there is no class action law suit against HA yet , But its coming soon.
They will call you every day but once they find out that you know about their games, they will never talk to you even if you start calling them daily.
HA has been great for my business, but only because I figured out how to navigate the leads program. HA is a world-class scam artist and extortionist when it comes to their paid leads program. Even if you don’t request paid leads, you get them, and get charged for it. You can manually turn off the paid leads on your profile, but it only lasts for 14 days. If you forget to turn them off every 14 days, here they come flooding in. They can send you as many as they want, charge what they want for each lead and charge you for as many leads as they want. If you call and bitch, they are good about refunding it. But that shouldn’t be necessary. You have to catch them red-handed before they’ll do the right thing. And what’s worse, I suspect they send the same leads to many different contractors, and every contractor gets charged when obviously only one will end up with the job. It’s the kind of thing that you hear about that goes on in lawless, corrupt third-world countries. But it’s right here in the U.S..
After reading this forum it has become clear that home advisor is a complete scam. I have been with them a year mostly turned off on leads due to the fact that they will bury you with bogus leads. Last three I received were all on the same day, I called them immediately. One of them the number was bogus, the other never called back and the third cancelled the appointment.I received credit for the customer who cancelled and for the bogus number but they refuse to credit the third customer who does’t return calls or emails. I got transferred to the cancel department cause I refuse to pay for bogus leads (even the customers address doesn’t make sense) they promised to waive my yearly renewal fee if I stay on.. Now I’m thinking they are just going to charge me anyway for the yearly fee.
Update:
I initiated a chat session, so I would have it in writing and asked for them to confirm that there was a note in the system about the yearly fee having been waived and the rep stated “they have no note about the fee being waived”. My membership is scheduled to renew on 11-11-17, so obviously they said whatever they needed to in order say to get me to stay on until they got paid renew.. Also get this you cannot cancel your account via chat, they have to talk to you before cancelling.
Yes, that’s exactly what I think they will do as well.
I’m internationally known and recognized and have 40+ years in security and law enforcement. Currently I work with a Federal Agency to help protect our Nation’s Infrastructure. I can’t say enough bad about Home Advisors, a total scam to me. I’ve made complaint at the BBB, joined the current class action lawsuit, posting on scam websites and soon the AG’s office for deceptive and crooked practices. My total comments can be found on the web. Too many problems and lies to list again.
yes,you right sir. I am doing cleaning service. I have lies list alot. They take lead fee. i have never get customer. they no refund my member fee. what can i do?
I had just started a locksmith business about 4 moths before I signed for Home Advisor. Worst mistake I ever made. I lost more with them than without them. They have so many rules, exceptions, changes in rules that you don’t find out about until you ask. They charge you for useless leads, the assumption is that the zip code dictates the fee. They even told me on the phone to charge the customer for the lead fee. The customer thinks it is free, I would not deceive my customers with an invisible charge, so I would eat the lead fee just to keep my customers happy. In the area I am in most folks don’t have a lot of money. Lot’s of broke churches and older folks that appreciate that you can save them some money. When you are trying to compete with another company that doesn’t need leads, Home advisor makes it so you can’t compete. The customer service reps could care less what you think. Pittsburgh is considered a metro area, Yea, right. Most of the zip codes are small towns and boroughs. I have lived her my whole life. I learned pretty quick what zip codes to exclude to avoid, in most cases a minimum 20 dollar fee on any job. Lockout services are typically 45-50 bucks, just to compete, add 20 and you not only lose the call but still have to pay the 20 bucks. That was the minimum lead fee for metro areas. I actually do better by myself and I can pay my bills now that my leads are shut off and will continue to stay off until my year is up. Bad deal all around!
Home advisor is a scam. As a contractor working upwards of 14 hours a day I called to cancel my account obviously it’s a weekend so nobody is available. Cannot cancel account through the online portion of the app. Go figure I renew Sunday call to cancel Monday they have no problem removing me from the site but will still charge me for a full year of a service they are no longer providing that they provided one day due to the fact it was a weekend and I could not reach anyone or cancel over the weekend. They can bill for a prorated year. Although that year lasted one day. I see it as no different than stealing. It’s like if I were to bill a customer for 40 hrs but only provide them with 2 hours worth of labor. Extremely bad business practices.don’t even get me started on the leads.
Yikes! I didn’t know HomeAdvisor would create a bunch of profiles on online business directories in your business name. That’s definitely not cool. I just looked up HomeAdvisor’s terms and confirmed… Here’s the excerpt from II What You Agree (section n):
“(vi) SP hereby authorizes HomeAdvisor to take any and all actions necessary to generate click-throughs to SP’s online profile page and telephone calls to Exact Match Numbers, including contracting with search engines, Internet directories, and other online and offline advertising sources and making the representations herein on behalf of SP to such third parties, and (vii) SP authorizes HomeAdvisor to use, copy, reproduce, and sublicense SP’s contact information, SP’s profile, and any content on the SP’s online profile page in furtherance of the foregoing.”
Source: https://www.homeadvisor.com/rfs/terms/serviceProfessionalTerms.jsp
I’ll definitely warn my clients when they ask about HomeAdvisor. I’ve helped my clients rank in Google’s Maps Results and organic listings as well as in Yelp. HomeAdvisor’s actions could confuse Google and mess up Maps rankings. Thanks for the heads up, Dan!
I have used home advisor for about a year, I have no problem losing a bid for whatever reason, that is the customers reasoning but when I get a lead that costs me $75 on home advisor and the customer wont answer the phone, return calls, emails or even hang up on me before I can get my name out then I want my money back , they wont credit you for that, fraud , be prepared for a lot of that
HA you are out of your minds, I don’t know where you come up with these numbers. Your service is the worst scam I’ve ever been taken by. Despite numerous calls to my “salesman” , your guy Chad Buxton, he never returns my calls. Although he sold me your ridiculous service with the promise of “I’m your partner, helping to grow your business through Home Advisor”. I have not been able to contact the fellow since the day I signed up and hung up the phone after payment to the service was made.
I am stunned to see that the service randomly adds fees to my account for no service rendered.
No wonder Home advisor is getting bashed and basted for false leads in your forums and in line.
Continue to harass me and I will take legal action against Home advisor for unfounded charges against my business.
I wish I would have taken the time to read the awful reviews of your service before I signed up. I have been in the home remodeling and painting industry since 1984 and I have never deceived or falsely charged any customer like you guys have done to me in just one week!
Micheal J. Ellis
Mike The Painter Home Services inc.
P. S. I’m willing to bet that Chad Buxton doesn’t have the balls to call me and discuss this matter…
We tried home advisor to supplement our income. We paid the one year fee of over $350.00 dollars and got 4 leads within the first 2 weeks. The first one when we called was not interested in getting a quote just looking to see what the project might cost a square foot. The second when we called set up and appointment wanted to know how many square feet they needed, what materials and how to do the job as they were planning to install themselves and just needed some advise. the third was for another contractor that filled out the form to be a contractor listed with home advisor. The fourth we never called since after the third bad lead we contacted home advisor and requested a refund for the 2 leads that we were sent that were not actual potential customers. We were told they was too bad they would not refund us. So to date we were out 375.00 yearly fee and 225.00 for invalid leads. We told the representive to stop sending us leads and we wanted our yearly fee back since they were not fulfilling their end of the contract. He said they did not refund yearly fees and that we would also not be reimburst for the invalid leads sent. I again stated I did not want any further leads sent and I would not contact any that they did send. They sent us one more that same day before my credit card was called to block any more charges. So in less then 2 weeks time we paid over $600.00 to home advisors and we never recieved a valid lead. This was over two years ago and we never did anything further about it, but then out of no where we get a call from a home advisor rep telling us about all the leads in our area and did we want to sign up. At which point I very nicely told him that as soon as he refunded me my $600.00 dollars that they stole from me I would be more than happy to talk to him. He had me explain what I meant and then continued to tell me how this is no longer an issue, which I stated is not true because a subcontractor we work with is on home advisor and out of 10 leads they sent him over a 3 week period 6 were invalid or for work he did not preform, costing him $450.00, which they are not refunding. It’s a shame a company that makes it’s money ripping off small business that are just trying to get by is allowed to continue to operate and not have any consequences. With all the complaints to the bbb and other agencies how is there not a class action suit against this company.
Hello friends, I wish now I read all of these info y’all have posted here, I would have never contracted with HA to generate leads. I am a person who likes to read reviews about any body I am interested in doing business with, this time I failed! I didn’t do it! It was all because of the sales rep, her name is “Bailey Swagel” the same as my grand daughter, I thought it was meant to be! hahahaha! this lady was calling me for about a year since I first registered my house cleaning service company, she even said that I was “AMAZING” HAHAHA! amazingly stupid! that’s what I was!. I paid $348.00 to connect with them. I asked her many questions, such as: leads from people that were just browsing, oh, no problem, we understand and we won’t charge you with those, liar, I worked with them for two days, I got 3 leads on the first day, and 8 on the third day, nothing on the second day, I asked also about recurrent business, will I have to pay? No, we won’t charge you for those, another lie, I started off on 02/20/18, on 02/22/18, I realized what was going on, 5 out of the 11 leads I couldn’t talk to anybody, even though I left voice msgs, texts, emails, well, they charged me for all of those, I got charged for all those five bad leads $145.00 even though Ms Bailey said they would not charge me. I realized then that it could get very expensive if they continue to send me those bad leads, they have a disclaimer that says something about they are not to be blame if we can’t close those leads, well, they are right, you can close them if you can’t talk to anybody. On 02/22/18 I started calling HA customer service, corporate office, sent messages to Ms Bailey Swagel, left voice msgs as well, to cancel my subscription with them, I told them I didn’t want to be part of their scam, nobody answered, it was like they had dissapeared! The next day on the 23rd customer service answered the phone and at my request to cancel and give me my money back($348) she said that it had been more than 72 Hrs, the allowance they give you before cancelling, well, I didn’t know that, Ms Bailey never mention it to me, I guess she was protecting her commission, They know their tricks rather too well, they make sure not to answer your calls, emails, whatever before the 72 hrs grace period. They have a very good system working for them, they know at all times what you do with the leads because you call through their system, One of the customers/Lead, started laughing when I introduced myself, at my request, he answered that I was The third pro that HA had sent him, he went on to say that He had an appointment already set up for that morning with one of us, That left a very bad taste in my mouth, I realized that HA doesn’t give a flip about us, all they care about is to enrich themselves. So, I was able to cancel my relationship with them on that conversation with the customer service rep, The next Friday they charged my bank account with $145.00 for those bad leads(that I couldn’t talk to anybody)
They can run a small business entrepreneur out of business rather quickly if you let them, my free advice is, stay away from HA, it’s too stressful and not honest at all.
It cost me $348 + $145= $493 to get to know HA for a two days “business partnership” You know, sometimes you have to loose to win! from here on forward, my eyes will be wide opened!
I signed up with HA… for about 3 days. I decided not to do business through them for several reasons. First, their marketing strategy emphasizes sales over ethics. What they do RIGHT seems only due to legality. For what they do wrong… even the laws are flouted if they figure it’s not worth a customer’s or provider’s efforts to take action. I don’t want to be associated with such business practices. The first clue is on their home page…
They didn’t “screen” me even as much as a customer would. I volunteered information about the quality of my work, skills, dependability, and customer satisfaction/warranty… but they had no way of verifying anything I said because they never asked for documentation, portfolio, pics, or references. How that one phone call translates to “…one of the industry’s most comprehensive screening processes…” is also one of the world’s great mysteries. Flashing those dollar signs in front of my eyes temporarily blinded me to the fact that all they wanted was a body to charge an annual fee and per lead fees.
Even now, over a year later, they call me and send me emails although I have asked them not to and have unsubscribed. The voice mails they leave seem to impersonate a potential customer that “needs a few doors installed”, never identifying themselves as HA.
I feel like HomeAdvisors sm is a rip off to companies. I heard they ask a homeowner if they want a list of contractors emailed to them of 7 or 8, for example, and so the home owner will get the list of a bunch of company names and contact info. guess what, whether or not the home owner is a good fit or ready to hire someone, the contractor or company who joined home advisors gets charged. What ever happened to good old google searching? anyway, thanks for listening.
Home Advisor (HA) is a scam! I signed up because of a good persistent salesman. I’ve been using a service called Thumbtack for over 2 years and am a “Top Pro” for both years. It isn’t easy and only 3% achieve that status. That being said, HA charges you at the time you get the lead whereas Thumbtack only charges you if you accept it and is 1/3 the price per lead. HA told me they were more qualified leads and that people had to fill out a 3 page form so they were more ready to act. I have spent just under $1400 with them in 5 months and not 1 job. In fact their lead response rate was about 1/5 of that of Thumbtack’s. When I went to quit, I was talked into 3 free leads and to follow their guidelines exactly so I did. When a lead was sent to me I was supposed to call within 5 minutes because they said 90% of the leads go with the 1st response. (at least if nothing else for an appointment) So I did and still nothing. Today I got 2 leads at 6:27am and 1 at 6:55am. I wouldn’t be stupid enough to call then that early. They are misleading, expensive and their knowledge about their own rules are not consistent among their own employees. They also told me I would be on the 1st page of Google search and other search engines. When I checked last week I wasn’t there. I called and they said I should be. Then a supervisor told me it was on a rotating schedule. I only wish I wasn’t so trusting of people. I could have used that money for better tools. I’M A GENERAL CONTRACTOR AND WORK OFF REFFERALS. IF I TREATED MY CUSTOMERS AS HA HAS WITH ME, I WOULDN’T HAVE A BUSINESS, LEFT ALONE A SUCCESSFUL ONE AS I DO. Go with Thumbtack! They know their product, have very good customer service and are willing to help with problems or questions.
Bob Kohn’s Handyman Service
30 years of experience in customer service and handyman work alone
Hey Bob, I read your review of HA, and had a very similar experience with them as a “Pro”. It’s true their salesman are borderline criminals and I don’t know how they can legally lie about how their leads work. What angers me the most is that they take advantage of contractors who take pride in their work and just want to make a decent living. I’m sorry you had this encounter with this awful company. I wish I never heard of them; would very much enjoy seeing this company go belly up.
As a business owner I thought this may be a way to add to my client list. However, after signing up and using them for six months I found that I was charged on average $300 a month for the leads. While this would be fine if we were to close maybe 25%; however, when we got calls from kids asking questions and students looking to interview to write a paper this did not help. Additionally, the number of calls that ended up being no answers were at least 50%. When processing a refund we were told this was not covered. Another 10% of the calls were just bad information or non- homeowners without property owner permission.
In short HomeAdvisor has no vetting process for their clients and we as contractors pay the price. Nice idea, poor implementation.
Canceled my account and had to put charges in dispute with my CC as HomeAdvisor would not credit to my CC the credit balance I had on my account.
I tried Home Advisor in the past. The sales rep told me I would only be charged for leads he personally sent me. Not true. I was getting charged over $600 per month and easily 75% of the leads either used false emails, didn’t answer or return phone calls or emails, lived in states I don’t do business in or were just checking around. Months later after several calls from the sales rep, I decided to give it one more try. He told me they would give me $200 in credit. Also, not true. After only 4 leads that average $20 each, I got an email and several phone calls saying that if I didn’t pay this $85 they would shut my listings down. I told them I was told I had $200 in credit. They said it doesn’t work that way. I told them to cancel my account and do not call me again. I will never use Home Advisor again and I would not recommend them to anyone.
We have used HA to varying degrees over the past five years. We track our sales relative to each lead source and HA ranks consistently at the bottom. They send the leads to multiple businesses and many customers get angry because so many contractors start calling them and they don’t know why. They also mislead the customer regarding type of work that your business does. For example, if a customer requests an estimate on a drywall repair, HA leads them to believe that our business is limited to drywall repair. The customer then goes to enter another request for painting, so we end up getting charged for both estimates when it’s actually one job. Getting a credit for a bad lead is difficult. Some responses seem to be completely at random, as if they didn’t even read your request for a credit. For example, we do home remodeling and got a lead from someone that wanted only their Ipad computer screen repaired. HA refused to give us a credit for that bad lead. The number they list for calling to discuss your account goes to an endless hold – I waited for over an hour. They do respond to a chat request but when I asked for details on why some of my requests for credit were denied they disconnected me. Thankfully we’re using them less and less (mainly in the slow season) and plan to eventually avoid them altogether.
Had NO idea that contractors pay to be listed. I am a customer, looked for a handyman, the person who called had no ratings, no website, gave an estimate without knowing more about the job, and located an hour away. Second and fourth businesses on the list were closer and with good ratings. Chatted with HA who listed some criteria for being first recommendation but number one met only one. Of course customers use false emails; customers want to do due diligence before contacting someone.
I started using Home Advisor at the end of February 2018. It became obvious really fast that it was extremely hard to make contact with the leads. Over all, I haven’t been able to reach most leads. I always call the leads back the same day if not within the 10 minutes. There have been 2 – 3 leads in one day before and I wasn’t able to contact any of them. Despite leaving messages and e-mails, you never hear back from them. All in all it is a small percentage of the leads that I am able to reach. They simply are not reachable at all, which means they weren’t really a lead. Guess what, it doesn’t stop there. Three different times when I got through to a lead, they told me they had never been on Home Advisor, they were on Angie’s List. Home Advisor had placed my business on Angie’s List and I didn’t know it. To add to it, they got my company info wrong on Angie’s List. I want to believe this might work but I’m paying for so many bad leads I haven’t broken even as far a Home Advisor goes. Almost every lead is a bad lead.
Once, I went on Home Advisor as a customer just to see what the public sees. Home Advisor sent me myself as a lead even thought I did not request anything. So I think that’s it. people go on the website just to be playing around and Home Advisor sends them to multiple businesses as a lead. Regrettably, I will probably stop using them.
I can’t say enough good things about Home Advisor. In the past month I’ve utilized 4 different contractors for 4 different concerns, and without exception, each & every one has been the person we’ve been searching for. We are just so happy with ALL of the results….Thank you, Home Advisor!
I had been contacted a few times regarding home advisor seems like they get many high quality leads for plumbing
To me this is the biggest scam with Home Advisor. Our business does a lot of work with Home Advisor. Our ROI is pretty good with them but one time I went in as a customer. One of the questions was if I wanted a Service provider to contact me or if I wanted to see a list of service providers in my area. I opted to see the list of service providers. I was then being called by several service providers. Is it fair to the business to be charged for the lead if the customer does not want to be contacted? I think not but this is how Home Advisor works.
Total SCAM !!!! They make promises to sign you up and then tell you that they will not approve you as a contractor for the categories that you requested. They throw leads at you that are either fabricated, Bogus or not what they promised. They will take Carte Blanche on your credit card and do not like to give refunds on leads. Asked for a refund because the service is not what was promised to me when I signed up. They said they will not give refunds so I told them to cancel the service and I disputed the Credit Card charged. They are now sending me nasty emails threatening me with collections. All I can say is: BRING IT ON ASSHOLES !!!
Did they ever send it to collections? Thinking of doing the same with them.
As a home inspector, the only qualified lead is someone that has a signed contract to purchase. I am 0 for 18 so called leads. “Only looking”, wanted an appraiser, one 300 miles away, most were unable to be reached on the phone, fictitious names, wrong phone numbers. You waste time getting on the phone or in a chat to get them to give credit for poor leads. What the sales person tells you is not what they deliver; in fact they don’t deliver anything. DON’T SIGN UP IF YOU ARE A HOME INSPECTOR. Oh, you can get your membership fee back within 72 hours. Of course it may take more than 72 hours to get a lead or realize how FLAWED THEIR SYSTEM IS. DON’T SIGN UP AS A PROFESSIONAL.
It’s interesting hearing all the bad reviews with home advisor. I live in Philly PA, and I must say since joining 3 months ago my business really has taken off. Quite honestly most of the business I’m generating from home advisor isn’t even the leads I buy, it’s from people who’ve found me on home advisor. So they are free of charge. I’m guessing alot of this depends on where you are located. We’ve brought about $1000 worth of leads in 3 months which generated well over 10k in revenue
After reading more of the comments I believe a common theme is that many may lack sales skills to win the job an do not understand how sales work. Luckily, I’ve been in sales 10+ years, so I understand that in sales MOST leads will be bogus. That’s just how sales works, I doubt that will ever change. You have to understand some you will win, most you won’t. And that’s OK, if you are charging your services correctly you will still be profitable.
The key here is to stop looking at it as SPENDING money and start looking at it as INVESTING money. That one simple change can work wonders
Well I got a call from a 3rd rep last week. They have been trying to on and off the last few months. I run a web services firm and their “leads” don’t seem to be a match, they appear to be looking for people to wire up offices and homes. I told them this, but the last rep appeared to be dancing around an answer when I asked him exactly what these “jobs” are for. Also if you reply back to their emails, they don’t reply. I won’t be accepting any more calls from them. This is a great page and I needed to see what was up with others who might have tried this service – Percival
I do painting and drywall tape float texture trying to go out on my own I have 22 yrs experience is home advisor worth it
Home advisor takes advantage of their Contractors with Bull Shit fabricated leads and charging their Credit Card even if all the lead information is bogus. When I requested to quit they told me that there was no refunds even though they sold this service to be under the pretenses that they would supply me with leads for the business model that I service and once you are signed us they send you leads that for services that I never requested. They told me that they would terminate the service but continued to keep it running and charging my card. I resolved that issue by disputing the charges with my credit card company that after several weeks of investigating without cooperation from Home Advisor found in my favor and refunded me the money. I am now finding that Home Advisors thinks that they are putting me in collections and sending me threatening emails and phone calls. I would love for them to serve me just so I can stand in front of a judge and show them the Credit Card dispute and the emails that told me that the service was canceled and later emails showing that they kept it open. A word of warning to people who rely on they web presents. If you take action against them they will destroy your search engine rankings. Lucky for me that most of my business it from word of mouth. Home Advisors can KISS MY ASS !!!
I joined only 2 weeks ago. They took my $348 for membership and after another week, they started sending me “leads”. In 5 days time I received 6 leads at an average of $80 per lead. Only 1 of those leads was I actually able to contact and estimate a job. Of the remaining 5; 3 of them I could not make any contact at all (did not answer phones or emails and did not return calls). 1 of them was given to me completely outside the scope of work I do and 1 could not do the job at all due to an electrical junction box location. I used their request credit link and was given credit for 2 of them… Great! Right? I gave it a few days to see if any of the other 3 would call back, they never did. 1 of these “customers” had an address less than 2 miles from me so I drove over there to find it was a dilapidated trailer park and the lot # the “customer” listed was a vacant lot!
I called my rep at Homeadivsor to be told that the jist of it is if the phone number for the “customer” is real then they charge for the lead. That is NOT a lead! It is not a lead if you NEVER EVER get to communicate with the customer at all. Further, I looked at my directory listing (the only thing you get for your $348 per year and they had a phone number listed which isn’t even my number! I called the number to see that the call goes to Home Advisor (in care of my company). THey do this so that when I am lucky enough to get someone to look me up and find me directly, they still get ran through the Home Advisor system so that I can be charged for a lead fee!!! You got that? You get to pay twice for those customers!!! Of course, as soon as I sent my Home Advisor “rep” an email about this they immediately put my real phone number there.
When you call them and complain they let you know that it clearly states in their umpteen pages of terms and conditions that I agreed to pay for any garbage they throw at me. Here’s the real question though… How many other contractors received those same garbage leads that I did? Just exactly how much did Home Advisor make from these jobs that were never going to materialize for anyone? Their business model is awful and predatory and they don’t care one bit. On to the next poor contractor to pilfer his advertising budget. Shame on these chiselers!!
I signed up with Home Adviser and ended up in a months time with all of 3 customers. I was offered a full time job after 1 month and was unable to keep the service. I paid $288 dollars for the year and was refused any refund of any amount. So they got $288 of my money for 1 month of service and all of 3 customers. I would think long and hard before signing up with these scam artists. They will get your money, you will get little or no customers and will waste your money. Not to mention that you are going to have to pay for leads even if you don’t get the job. I ended up paying these people almost $600 between the yearly fee and leads and ended up with nothing. Think long and hard before signing up with these people. You will get more customers running ads in newspapers and online classified ads and pay way less to get customers.
I used ServiceMagic when they first started. The reason I stopped using them, was because I found out that they were sending leads to more then 3 contractors, ( which they advertised they only send leads to 3 contractors). I’m not sure if homeadvisor does that, but ServiceMagic got a whole lot of bad reviews for that. I will say tho, after a couple of leads that I got and were accepted, I didn’t need them anymore, and word of mouth kept me going for the next 30 years! Over all, it’s just another way of a company to scam alot of new businesses!
Thought I could try out the website as a consumer after growing disenchanted with Angie’s List poor billing and other consumer practices. Home Advisor isn’t much better (even though I did not subscribe for any services). After culling several sources for a service I wanted performed I called the phone number on the contractor’s listing–it connected me directly to Home Advisor and the person promptly started to interrogate about the service I wanted performed, and requesting other information. Suspecting this was not the contractor I asked who I was speaking to, they told me and then I asked for the phone number of the contractor, which they refused to do, and shortly later told me the contractor could not be reached but they could recommend another contractor. I replied, “No thank you.” Not sure why the contractor “is not available” as I found the number and quickly reached them and the contractor was available. The system seemed like a slick kick-back scheme to me and undermines the integrity of the service Home Advisor claims to provide.
Angies List and Home Advisor are BOTH owned by AIC Interactive. They own many ‘BRANDS’…. After buying these brands, they put together a Nasdaq company, sold shares, and are probably doing quite well…..
I’ll be interviewing for a sales position at Home Advisor in a 1/2 hour and wanted to get a feel for how contractors feel about it – because it’s their services that I’d be selling. I have a conscience and want to sell something that is truly valuable. This article was enormously helpful. Thank you!
Home advisor is a scam. They charge way to high for the quality of leads they provide. They have no way of vetting potential customer leads and then like to place the blame on the pro for not being able to “close the sale”. Give me a break. How are you supposed to close a sale when the potential “customer” does not really want to hire someone in the first place? And getting credit on bad leads? No way. HA is quick to give you a bogus lead, but when you ask for a credit, they want to make it out to be your fault for not closing the sale. In a nutshell, dont use them. Find other ways of using you marketing dollars. HA is not the way to go. We will never use them again.
Home Advisor bought Angies List and is a scam for honest contractors. They use to be called service magic but there was so many complaints and law suits they changed to home advisor. This company could put contractors out of business. Let me repeat: This company could put contractors out of business. This company could put contractors out of business.
Home advisor works on a SECRET CREDIT RATING!!!!!! They keep this to themselves and don’t tell you. They over billed my company – continuously. They Do Not give credit for unreachable potential clients and give sales tax service charges not disclosed during sign up. They charged our company for 95% for wrong information or wrong phone numbers. Stay Away from home advisor. 55 calls in 3 months and only 13 were real people who needed service, and only 3 books. Meaning i paid an average of $30 for 55 leads $1650. with only 3 jobs that we grossed $420. They charge every single contractor who lists with home advisor more then the job and regardless of contact or getting the work.
Home Advisor is a scam. They will lie to you and continue to charge you credit card after you have cancelled with them, Home Advisor.
The leads are not interested in purchasing. The leads do know answer when we call.
We get charged for leads that never exist.
I have asked to not have my business associated with Home Advisor in any way and Home Advisor Still tries to charge my company for leads.
DO NOT DO BUSINESS WITH HOME ADVISOR. This company is a total rip off.
I have been using Home Advisor for around 5 years and used to enjoy great success. BUT. Thier business model has destroyed my business. You are put in direct competition with 2 other companies paying for the same lead. This causes cut throat tactics where a person is not closing jobs and keeps lowering bids. This has caused a 40% decrease in what I charge for a service. I used to count on my 300 5 star reviews to close but that next call will undercut you. Most leads do not even look at your reviews. Thier contact info is sent out to 3 providers and they get calls. I am now getting 80% uncontactable leads for around 6 months now. Thats $35.95 per lead for an average $150 service before expences. I pay $250 to $500 a week and close to $20000 per year. It will generate a lot of leads just expect to only make contact with 20% and pray you close pretty much all of them. For the 1st time in 5 years I have paid more to Home Advisor than I have made form them, 3 weeks strait. I have shut down leads and exploring other avenues.
While i own several businesses, i only have one field which fits the mold for HA. I have a relationships with several business owners which i would refer business until I stepped into their field. I guess i consider myself rather business savvy and knew what i was getting into before starting a conversation with HA. So, in my short experience so far here’s what I’ve noticed:
1. Most contractors using HA have a poor conversion rate because they don’t have an efficient business model to turn these leads into customers or in our case, clients. Our average response time if not connected directly is 6 minutes.
2. Some of the leads are garbage. However, you pay a yearly fee to be listed and you need to treat HA as a partner in business. I hold them accountable for their bad leads even with their psychological tricks to dissuade you from submitting leads. You are “vetted” through their process, they have a responsibility to perform due diligence on their leads or rectify poor generations as well. We have been successful with credits and have also been successful arguing our points to sales team members and having them issue manual credits to our accounts as well.
3. Doing your research on your area and fields of service, you can set a budget that you’ll find beneficial to your business. HA has a 30 day projection based of historical data on how many leads they expect per field. Fro instance, if they expect $2,000 in leads generated and your budget is $500, your chance of receiving leads is 25% and much less when you’re receiving lead only matched to you. Trying to identify service sub-fields where services are scarce is a great idea.
Technically, we’ve re branded a 16 year old company with strict commercial focus and opened as a new business to the public for less than two months and have spent less than $1,000 and have either signed, signed/completed, or contracted services for a total of $57,000. The previous opinions about using it as a startup and being a great avenue for exposure and mass marketing are correct. Unless you have an advertising budget from startup, I have not found a better ROI for new companies. However as you grow, you’ll have to identify your market and have more direct avenues for long term success. This is definitely not a tool to be utilized long term.
HomeAdvisor has TERRIBLE customer service and even WORSE leads. You get charged $23 for a basic lead and then $34 if your an exclusive match. My company is a 5 Star rated HomeAdvisor company. We recently paused our leads due to poor quality and denying lead credit for leads we received that weren’t even in our service offerings.
We marked our leads paused with the radio button checked to get a call from customer service, we’d been unable to get any decent responses from them. I chatted with one and they wrote “We are an advertising company and can’t call the 200,000 customers we have, please call into customer service”. This was AFTER a rep told me that they can’t help, the leads had to be reviewed and the decisions were final. Seriously!
Our over $10k/mo budget for HomeAdvisor will likely be finding its way to other avenues come January. You can’t treat long-term clients that bad and expect them to just keep sending you a check. I could say a lot more about the experience but you get the gist. The service was once good but they got too big and lost perspective.
How long did you stay with HA before you got out? How do you get out and how do you sign up for low lead job? I haven’t been with them a week yet and feel like I need to get away from them.
So if I sign up can I cancel after 30 days. Don’t know whether this is a law of sorts, but I am extremely unhappy with them and there is so much deception from their sales dept. I should be able to cancel this on my credit card. Thanks, Gio
STAY AWAY FROM HomeAdvisor Pro!!! They will jeopardize your security!!
According to their CS “You must list a street address on your Public Profile page.”
That way every thief “will know where the Handyman keeps his tools/trailer/ vehicle(s).” They could NOT give me a legit answer as to why they have this very dangerous policy. Not one of their competition required this stupid idea! They wanted me to go out and pay for a PO Box to list as my address. Why would I add more work (and expense) to my day for such a stupid idea?
Has anyone else had this issue?
What are you thoughts on any of their competitors?
Thx, Jim
PLEASE DONT GET SUCKERED IN!
For contractors here is what to expect
-Very Poor Leads
-Big upfront fee
-Hard or impossible to get credited for bad service
-Traps – Acount Paused turned back on and leads charging you and cover for Home Advisor so you will think it’s just from the listing you paid for.
-Zero chance of a credit if you fail to realize the service was turned on and you don’t get it paused again. 90 day limit on pauses. Just enough time to forget and have it reactivate and soak you with. Charges and zero recourse.
-Slick personnel to ease you back in.
They used to have a good program years ago.
I used HA when they were SM many years ago and learned back then that you have to respond fast real fast to the lead. I see the numbers you present in your first year you spent $1,152 advertising with HA and gained $4,425. This is a lousy return 25% of your money spent on advertising. I understand you made new long term customers and so in the end the dividends may have seemed worth it to you. For me no more than 15% toward advertising and really like it around 10% of gross or the advertising is not worth it.
I actually did great with them and made a lot of money and a lot of new customers and I did not charge cheap either. I did notice though that leads were becoming lousy and while they did give me new leads to make up for the none existent leads it was becoming all to common for me. So I eventually dropped them and not long after they became HA. I now look at HA, YELP, and some others as my competitor and what I mean by this is, they are on google advertising for the same customers as myself except they’re selling the potential customer off as a lead while I’m trying to pick up a new client. This makes them my competitor along with any other company in my respective business. For any new people looking to startup keep that in mind.
We use homeadvisor’s $287/yr directory listing service with good success. It generates adequate lead volume to more than pay for itself, doesn’t hurt for SEO, etc. As for their lead service, we tried it and stopped using it. Lead quality was poor, stress levels were through the roof always trying to be the first to call, and we also ran into competitors using computer-driven automatic answering services to answer calls faster than any human actually can. It was a losing proposition with a whole lot of stress associated with it.
I FINALLY axed my account with Home Advisor after more than 10 years of loyalty to them. They NEVER really earned that loyalty, but in the earlier years when I would run the numbers I was still getting more business than the scams and lies cost me. That did eventually change however, and after repeated calls and communications even with the owner and upper managers finally said enough and by then was losing far more money to them than business gained by their increasingly terrible service and results.
Here are just a few of the things I experienced:
*I discovered that they were sending me residential leads (an active choice noted on the lead form) but their system was categorizing them as business leads which marked up the lead cost 50%. It took NUMEROUS calls to get to someone that wasn’t just reading off a CS training screen that could look with me to see this was true. They always would claim it was the customer indicating it as a business lead, yet the customer’s choice said residential property but the lead was classified as a business lead for an additional 50% lead charge. After DOZENS of calls, a mid-level manager PROMISED to look into it and go back 2 years that I suspected it had been happening and give me credit for the false fees. His temporary work around was to deactivate my receiving legitimate business leads which are generally more profitable. ??? He called back once to tell me he was still looking into it, but never called or returned my calls again. NO credits.
*As time went on, I got more and more leads that I could never reach. I know leads, and I know some will never choose to connect with you. That’s leads. But there was a very evident decline in the number of reachable leads which could only mean one of two things. Either they were using methods to draw in lower and lower quality leads via marketing methods (more billable volume), or they were sending fake leads. I read former employee reviews that claimed both were happening there.
*Because so many leads were unreachable, I have to wonder if the following situation occurred far more than I knew about, but I had at least two times, a lead that I DID reach tell me that they were offered my services in addition to the service they were instead asking for and told the HA rep ‘no, I don’t need that service’, but the HA rep would say, I understand, but I’ll just send them anyway in case you change your mind later so you’ll have the info, and it doesn’t cost you anything. SERIOUSLY? they just charged AT LEAST 6 contractors for the leads: 3 for the service requested and 3 OR MORE for services the customer said they did NOT need.
*I watched another contractor YouTube video where they called in to HA and documented that HA was lying to them.
I did not read the entire article above, but far enough to see the suggestion that complainers may be those that can’t close jobs. Might be true for a small percentage of contractors, but I know my close rate. I tracked it and worked with business coaches to get better at it. I doubt I got worse over the years. Even in the beginning of this business I consistently closed approximately 4 out 5 leads that I could personally reach. As that steadily declined, I analyzed why and realized Home Advisor was far more interested at shoving as many horrible or fake leads into the pipe as possible because they could charge multiple contractors for each one. Who is paying them? The contractors are, yet they became completely uncaring about that.
NOPE, Don’t do it if you value your hard earned money.
Can’t we all just agree that hard working business owners who have built their business from the ground up are being held captive by the likes of HA and Scamgies List. They hijack customers that would normally come to us anyway, and with no specific knowledge of any of the trades, mislead potential customers into believeing they “vet” potential contractors for safety and make it sound as if they are the only way to assure that said customer is getting some sort of quality person.
I’ve been courted pretty heavy by a HA salesperson and everything they say sounds like BS. If their leads are so promising, why wouldn’t I be more likely to “share” a percentage with them of each closed job then spend my money chasing BS tire kickers? After reading this article and many of the comments, I know 100 percent that my business’ success stands a better chance in my own hands than Chad From Denver who gets a commission from my bank account but doesn’t know squat about my industry.
I am a homeowner / customer. I have never actually used Home Advisor. I have tried twice and had bad experiences. 1) quality of craftsmanship/work of contractors recommended by Home Advisor. 2) Contractors telling me I will have to wait x weeks that they are very backed up.
Home Advisor bought Angies but thank God they have not ruined Angies List yet. Angies List is far superior to Home Advisor since it allows you to select a top 3 or top 5 contractors to screen based on studying their reviews … that’s the biggest plus on Angies side. Also, I have never had a bad experience using Angies in contrast to Home Advisor. I tried to speak directly with Home Advisor one time and he knew nothing about the contractors I was talking about he was sitting in Denver CO as I recall, while I am in Columbus OH area. I advise all of my friends and colleagues etc. not to use Home Advisor.
SCAM SCAM AND MORE SCAM, THAT’S WHAT HOME ADVISOR IS.!!!! They charge you everyday for false leads and leads you don’t respond to. They give leads out to several contractors for same job (I know, I called homeowners several times confirming this). Their customer service always says “we’re willing to work with you on giving you credits, BUT IT NEVER SHOWS UP ON THEIR BILL TO YOU!! Their phone app clearly states that you won’t be charged unless you accept the customer lead. That BS as they charge you for every lead possible. I went 1 week without answering any leads just to see how dishonest Home Advisor is and my BILL WENT UP $200. We need more lawyers here in Las Vegas willing to start massive class action lawsuit against these criminals from HA. I’ve had to block and cancel my credit card before they could steal from my credit card account. They’ve billed me for $600 in fake/false lead service charges and I will not pay them regardless of collections. I wish more people here in LV could get a class action lawsuit against this fraudulent company!!!! DO NOT USE HOME ADVISOR EVER!!
I have been thinking of using them. Im torn because of all the negativity surrounding the company.
I was a Pro with HomeAdvisor for one month. I’m a new handyman and found their lead fees excessive (averaging $20/lead). I was pitched $9/lead by the HomeAdvisor salesman, and then only if I agreed to provide an estimate to a homeowner. Very deceptive, and I believe outright criminal. Also, consider that many of the leads were created by homeowners half-heartedly filling out HomeAdvisor’s “Project” form. There is no cost for the homeowner to post a project – and this makes perfect sense because without people posting projects (ie. leads) then HomeAdvisor can’t charge the SAME lead to multiple “Pros” (ie. contractors). Even if I was a sought-after handyman with years of experience, I would not use HomeAdvisor simply on ethical principles (which are sorely lacking these days).
I logged onto this website just to provide my Home Advisor experience. I was a PRO member for 10 months and did not receive one valid lead from HA. Here’s what they do not tell you:
When a lead comes in, this “lead” is shared with other professionals in your area. Even though it is shared with several competitors, ALL of you are charged the $25-$50 (per lead) fee. Makes no sense at all.
A HA PRO is notified by text and email that they have a lead. At that point they will click on a link and (maybe) receive customer information. In my 10 months I was only able to speak with 2 clients. Despite my instant response (I was holding the phone and went straight to the app and called the client) the customer had already engaged with a professional, or was upset because they were slammed with multiple calls soliciting business.
Your “personal contact” with HA will tell you they’ll bend the rules and refund some of the bogus leads, but that only counts for the first 1-2. After that they’ll ignore your calls. When you call into the Customer Service department they’ll deny everything, every time. When you ask to speak with a manager you’ll improve your success, but you’ve already wasted 30-60 minutes of time explaining yourself to three levels of associates.
Read up on the Home Advisor Lawsuit on Google. It will tell you everything you need to know. STAY AWAY!
As a consumer, I found HA makes it almost impossible to post a bad review about one of their contractors. It took me 6 weeks, multiple phone calls to HA and submissions of photos and paperwork in order to get a bad review approved for posting. And once it was posted on the HA site, the reviewed contractor soon had to leave the HA site as their are so many other contractors in the same field with no bad reviews.
I’m certain HA’s strategy is that most unhappy consumers will simply give up and go away without posting a review, in order to protect their contractor customers.
They are using app power to charge people who are fresh starters to business. You will find your bank account drawened in a month end up calling customers service instead of real clients. It is a perfect way of earning money with sucking professionals Hope’s. It is the worst scam I have seen. Be careful before u open it just think twice
I normally don’t leave reviews, but I felt the need to help other small business trying to land jobs/customers. I called HomeAdvisor Scam because they tricked into joining their business to the overcharge my bank account. Over $700 in two weeks for work/customers I didn’t get.
Here it’s how it works:
1. They set your account to get daily leads (as many as you want-the more you get the better for them)
2. They promise you will only pay for the Leads (Customers) you get. That you won’t pay for any leads who you couldn’t get ahold of, you spoke with and they’re weren’t ready to hire or they hired some else. (Not TRUE they charge for ALL LEADS you get no matter what)
3. They send the SAME LEADS you get to other group of business (Which means they’re ALL paying for the same lead even if that lead wasn’t ready to hire)
4. Customer Services is horrible. The guy who tricked me into joining this service (Jason Lusengo) promised I wouldn’t be charged for these leads and that I’d get a refund/credit for this.. I never did.. I waited two weeks-only because he kept responding to my email apologizing for the inconvenience and that they were working on fixing my account. I called today and spoke with a Manager (Danielle Colorado). She told me the opposite that Jason has promised all along.. that I pay for ALL leads no matter what.. even if you get ahold of the lead, even if the lead just visited HomeAdvisor for an estimate not ready to hire, I was to pay for ALL which make no sense because not only you are paying for leads/customers you don’t have but also other businesses are paying for the exact same leads. Reason I called them a BIG SCAM.
5. This is just unacceptable. I feel like they robbed my bank account. Very Very Disappointed. Please save yourself from this headache. Try other services that won’t charge you outrageous fees for advertising. I’m going back to my previous marketing service. ☹ I wish I had read all reviews from HomeAdvisor. So Sad I trusted such a discreditable marketing service.
We started out by word of mouth which turned out pretty good but needed more. Sent out some fliers to higher end housing got more business. Got magnets for our vehicles which turned out pretty good too. Then 411 locals. That turned out great.
Good base so far. The HA came along. Well now we are losing more than we are making. They only have our credit card and going to change that ASAP. We only got 3 leads out of 10 and most were window shopping and a lead for something we dont even do. Most of the leads dont even answer their phone and we are charged just for calling the leads.. yeah RUN DONT WASTE YOUR MONEY.
I happened upon this site while researching Home Advisor. I was considering searching them for some work to be done. I was stunned when they sent me people who live hundreds of miles away. I don’t live in a remote area where workers are hard to find. I’m in a large county with a lot of construction workers. Why they chose to send referrals for two guys who are so far away is baffling. They even sent referral for people in a state bordering the opposite ocean I live near. That was purely insane. I hope those fellas weren’t charged to have those ridiculous listings sent to me. And now I have to try and stop the spam mail they are sending.
Home Advisor is currently under a class action lawsuit. So many small contractors are the reason for this class action suit. Home Advisor is clearly at fault for saying one thing to get small contractors to sign up and then overcharging them each month. Many of the leads are bogus leads. Our business was paying $96.00 per lead. Only 1 out of 8 were REAL people that answered via email or phone.
Unfortunately there is no one to contact at HA when you have a dispute, need a credit, or even want to cancel your subscription. HA will only allow you to ‘suspend your leads’ for 24 hours and automatically turns back ‘ON’ following the 24 hour clock. This is clearly for the sake of HA revenue. If you are on vacation you must continuously use the HA app to turn off leads daily so you’re not charged.
The only way we found help was to cancel our subscription to Home
Advisors, by CANCELING our credit card.
They’ll call and email you for about 6 weeks. Then they’ll say you OWE US MONEY for all the leads during your credit card cancellation period.
Then they will place you with collectors who call everyday from different phone numbers with different scams.
My latest was a call on Dec 13, to our business phone number, saying they wanted to negotiate a contract with our company to work ONLY with the Jewish Community homeowners in our Metro Area.
He gave a first name only, and said he wanted to meet me at a coffee shop.
Come On Home Advisors, is that the BEST YOU GOT???
I do not recommend any small businesses sign up with Home Advisors.
here is a link to the class action, they are not taking any more cases but you can definitely read more by Googling.
Chimicles Schwartz Kriner & Donaldson-Smith LLP
HALitigation@chimicles.com
I am now a retired home remodeling contractor who had experience with Service Magic / Home Advisor. I built a respectable business on my own with good customers , quality workmanship and reasonable prices. I specialized in custom kitchens from design to completion. I built a repoire with my customers , often going back for additional projects ie bathrooms, basements, decks , home theaters, saunas , etc. My customers became lasting clients. Then at the age of 55 I had a life changing event and moved 100 miles away. I was close enough to still work with a select few of my clients but also had the need to start building a new client base. Along came Service Magic with all their promises. I signed up with no idea of what was about to happen. A monthly budget was set and they did their best to meet that amount in monthly withdrawals in exchange for referrals . They didn’t care if these referrals were qualified or not . They just wanted their money which they could withdraw from my account as they pleased. One of my SM referrals was a handicapped woman who was basically home bound and relied on her computer as access to the world. She completed a form and pressed send . Soon she started getting phone calls from contractors wanting to make an appointment to come out and discuss / measure the job. She told me that she had no idea when she hit send that it would result in at least 5 contractors calling all wanting to come out and discuss her project. Remember now that meanwhile Service Magic had already collected 75.00 from EACH of these contractors. Of course , I knew a few of the contractors and we did not know that Service Magic would refer one job to 5 or more area contractors. I did win the bid on that project and I found a good client to build a lasting repoire . I found the exact set of circumstances on the next couple of referrals before dropping Service Magic like a hot potato. I realized what they were up to back in 2012 then soon after the name was changed to Home Advisor. Their reputation with contractors in this area is very poor. I built my business on honesty and integrity , treating customers how I would want to be treated myself . Hard work , quality workmanship and respect are all qualities that have been forgotten in todays business world and it is time for a company like Home Advisor to be challenged due to their untrustworthy , slimy ways of conducting business.
Home Advisor is the worst. An account w/ them meant control of a card. We were charged for fraudulent leads. Our account manager did little to nothing to rectify issues. We are constantly telemarketed by them and explain our dissatisfaction only to be rudely hung up on or insulted. If you’re an “above- board” pro, trust me – you’re better off with out these ineffective blood suckers screwing with your livelihood. Best wishes to all tradesmen.
I was robbed by them they sent me four legit leads. The rest were wrong phone numbers one was a guy said no I don’t want my house painted. First thing they said when I called was that and I was charged 50$ I called to complain and they said that’s how it works. Two of the leads never would answer the phone and I got charged for that. They said yes that’s the way it works. They are up over 400$ and I made six. I never gave permission to keep charging when my 300$ balance was gone. I feel robbed
Hey Dan,
I really need your help. I’m not quite sure what to do. I’ve canceled Home Advisor and they continue to use my name somehow. I get calls from people saying they’ve heard about me through HA. What can I do to override the marketing practices they continue to implement using my name? Please advice.
Looking forward to hearing from you.
– Angello E.
I have been reading these reviews and I’m pretty bummed.. I have been cleaning houses for 7 years but now as it turns out I have lost my clients due to them moving or the corona virus.. just different things.. I’ve always used craigslist to find jobs but I get so many scams.. I thought I would try home advisor.. they have been trying to get me to work for them for a few years now.. I finally decided that I would give it a try.. but I’m not reading anything that sounds right about doing this, though I really need the work.. I’m not looking for more than like 4 jobs a week. I’m a good worker but man I have a hard time finding my own jobs.. any advise would be appreciated.
Jami
Do not use home advisor. They called me trying to get my company to sign up with them and told me they had many leads in my area yet they didn’t even know the name of my business or where we were located? We kept talking and everything they were saying sounded pretty good and then the question came up to give him my card information. I told him I did not feel comfortable giving it to him until I talk to my husband. He said well I just need a card and we won’t charge anything until we get your approval. I again said no I’m not giving you my card information until I talk to my husband. He then asks if I think this is a good investment for my company. I said yes but like I said I need to talk to my husband. And he said well what if he says no. I said well then I’m not doing it. He said why you just said it was a good investment. All I need is your card info and we can proceed to get you leads for jobs. I hung up on him. He obviously just wanted my card information to charge me and he got very mad when I did not give it to him. Just wanted to put this out here to warn other people of their scam.
Homeowners please watch out for “Home Advisor”
I hired a Home Advisor “Pro” yesterday for a project on my home… It was a terrible experience, as the person was at my house for 6 hours (thankfully the work was on the exterior of the home, hanging Christmas lights). I ‘ve done this job myself over the past few year, an it is a only a 2.5 – 3 hour project. After 6 hours, of him arguing with his wife (who as he said had to come due to his driver’s license being suspended), the two of them swearing profanities, discussing and I how the husband might drive an hour away to get a “FIX” and leave the wife here. Which blow my mind because they know we have outside cameras that record sound and picture (as I found it unusual when they pulled into my driveway that this was one of the first items they commented on when they looked over the house). After 6 hours, and only about 30 actual minutes of work being completed… they disappeared. It was dark now, and cold, so I expected that they just went home, or off to find that “FIX”…. .45 minutes later I found myself putting up my own Christmas light (in the dark)… and as I nearly completed the work myself, the druggie dual return. Of course I sent them on their way. This morning I called the “Home Advisor Happiness Guarantee” department of their company. Only to find out that Home Advisor does not guarantee that individuals arriving have a contractors license, they don’t guarantee that the person has experience with the project they are hired for, they will not share with you the person contact data (just first name and last initial only). Thank god this guy never actual had the opportunity to fall from the roof or I am sure that I would see the legal bills for that. Please do not hire from this organization, you are putting your personal property, home, family, and more in jeopardy for taking a chance with them.
I filed two complaints against this company and I advise you to do the same. The more complaints, the more reasons the federal law could have to take action. If there is a lawsuit against them, everyone could get there money back plus more. Anyone who is thinking about using Home Advisor please don’t. This company is a whole scam and it’s sad. When they talked to me on the phone they told me that I will only have to pay for leads I contact. I asked that question for about a week before actually choosing to do business with them. They charged me so much that within two weeks my bank account was overdrawn. I had been busy with family and never even got to contact anyone for work opportunities. Everyone please make these complaint to the federal government and you city bureau.
Thanks for this helpful article, Dan. I’m starting a landscape lighting business and am in the process of sorting out the details of how HA will make directory listings on my behalf. Like you suggested, I started making my own online directory listings so HA won’t be able to make them for me using their own contact info. There’s tons of directories out there and I don’t expect to find all of them before signing up with HA, so I guess they’ll make whatever listings I don’t create first. You explain in the article that HA is a good short-term marketing strategy for new businesses but not ideal as a long term strategy, and I pretty much agree. So at some point I’ll be ending my arrangement with HA and I’m wondering how I can go about cleaning up the directory listings that they’ve made in my name so they show my phone number and website link. You say that you’re able to do this, but are there any listings that you can’t modify because HA has control of them? For the one’s you’ve been able to modify, did you have to contact HA and / or the directory to request the change or does it just let any public visitor click a link that says “suggest and edit” or something similar? I’m trying to ask this question to HA directly but haven’t talked to any sales reps or managers who know the answer. Thanks again for writing this article.
Home Advisor, formerly Service Magic has no ethics! They use their website ‘Terms of Service’ to escape all responsibility or accountability for Fraudulent leads furnished to Architects & Contractors for a fee. Recently they charged my firm for a lead when no one could reach the customer including myself, and their text had NO address for the business, just a man named John Jenna who they acknowledged had been a past customer but his phone, email, and physical address did not match the so called lead. This is FRAUD. I have spoken to the Assistant District Attorney in Golden, Colorado where Home Advisor is based. They encouraged me to contact the FBI in my city since it is not in Colorado, Home Advisor routinely charges for leads that they don’t even attempt to verify. They just play a numbers game charging for leads that they never investigated or even verified.
Great read. I also have had mixed success with HA/Angi. I did NOT know about them using my brand as you said though. Thanks for the insight.
Biggest mistake ever, after trying to find contractors for 3 different projects I got 1 overpriced estimate and I was bombarded with an explosion of junk emails and phishing attempts. Never again. I know this was intended for the contractors but from the consumer side I will never use them again.
Angi pros is the newest attempt for this service industry mega corp fleecing the fry.
Leads filling pro’s lead box (Opportunities) overnight, even if they turn it off. several hundred dollars in leads given even with setting to 100 a month, so turning your leads off or setting a monetary goal in lead generation per week/month in ignored.
More that 50 percent of these leads are 1. fake (some overseas scammer trying for personal data) 2. Customers who already had the work done, and may or may not have used Angi pros at all.
25 percent of them will be customer fishing, getting ideas, are not ready to hire.
10 percent of them won’t answer when you call, don’t reply to voicemails or text messages.
10 percent of them will answer, discuss project and ask alot of questions and eventually show themselves as someone you wouldn’t actually choose to do business with. If you’ve been in business for more than a few years, you know what I’m talking about.
The remaining 5 percent of leads are the ones that you are in with the moment you get through the door and it’s those ones that end up paying for the charges you get for others and much more. They are why so many people are using these types of service sites.
So, it’s really up to the contractor as to how much B.S. they are willing to sift through so they can find the truffle.
If you’re new to this and don’t have the capital to burn early , it’s gonna be a struggle.
I have had a terrible experience with Angie Leads so far as a start up company i was given credit to get started but have had either fishing or bad leads and eaten almost all of my credit up and got nothing to show for it. this is detrimental to a small company. the services were explained differently to me when signing up and seem to make sure Angie gets there money whether or not the contractor does good or bad. I understand you go into business to make money but at the expense of shutting down small companies it seems like a scam to me. I DO NOT RECOMEND ANYONE TO USE ANGIE LEADS.
I paid to have a pro come mount my TV, $150 through homeAdvisor and the guy never showed up, he didn’t even bother to respond to me after we confirmed the time.
Like any frustrated customer, I called to reschedule only to find out, they charged me another $155 for a service that hadn’t been done yet. Here I am with a loss of $310 to HomeAdvisor for unaccounted for services.
03/04/22
This is truly shocking. I didn’t realize HomeAdvisor / Angie’s-List was even still in business. In 2015, they repeatedly called my contracting-company to solicit our business, and after a few months, we eventually invested (or should I say were scammed out of,) $3000 (for membership-fee, cost of leads, gas, tolls, etc…) for their ‘leads.’ for customers requesting masonry-projects to be built.
It consumed a lot of time and money, and in the end, not one single project was built by any of the HomeAdvisor / Angie’s-List ‘leads.’ After many months, and based on everything I observed, it became obvious they were selling almost entirely bogus leads to us. We cancelled the service — but then HomeAdvisor kept calling and calling and asked us to give them another chance — which we did — and this time it was worse!!
We made a sincere and strong effort to make it ‘work’, however, it was honestly a total scam and wasted a LOT of our time. They did eventually credit us with many leads and did refund many of the charges, along with apologies over the phone and via email, however not until after we’d been complaining for a LONG time. And in the end, it still cost us over $3000 and we got nothing from it but a huge waste of time.
During the exact period, we built many other projects from our usual pipeline of referrals from existing customers as well as other lead-sources we used that were legit. So we compared all the results and project-details and it was like night and day in terms of how NONE of the HomeAdvisor / Angie’s-List projects were built (not by us or ANYONE, [except for 1 project out of approximately 60 leads.]
Back then in 2015, we filed a complaint with the FTC and documented everything in detail with all emails, phone-calls, addresses, etc…At that time, there were was only limited documentation of this scam, and we were one of the first to document the HomeAdvisor lead-scam.
Our company has continued building projects, non-stop, every year since then, during which time, to this day, we’ve never used any such service and have won all our projects based on competitive-bidding.
FAST FORWARD TO TODAY 03/04/22: it’s been years since we thought about it, and we never heard from or saw HomeAdvisor / Anglie’s-List again, and simply put it out of our mind and assumed they went out of business. But now, after not hearing from them in 7 years, they called us on the phone and said “we’re trying to help you out, but you never paid us (HomeAdvisor / Angies-List) the fee or for the leads so we turned you over to collections for a lot of money.”
It’s another scam all over again from the same company!
DO NOT TRUST THESE GUYS — HOME-ADVISOR / ANGIES-LIST IS A TOTAL SCAM!!
A) We have 100% perfect-credit in our business and personally going back almost 2-decades. B) we have zero debt, C) We’ve completed thousands of projects and each and every one all financial / legal / construction dealings are 100% perfect, clean, legal and zero complaints, and in 2-decades we’ve NEVER had an issue owing ANYONE any money! D) It’s like we’re being scammed and victimized all over again by HomeAdvisor / Angie’s List!
So we were amazed to see all these other complaints continuing to build and grow every year against HomeAdvisor for the same type of scam they did to us back in 2015! And we were shocked they called us today!
This all just came out of nowhere today, and also there was never anything in writing from HomeAdvisor / Angie’s List ever since we filed our complaints about them in 2015 and when they issued apologies / refunds to us. So obviously the company is going ‘rogue’ again and they’re violating state and federal laws!!
Back then, in 2015, we simply absorbed the $3000 loss that HomeAdvisor / Angie’s List caused us (after we accounted for the refunds they issued for bogus leads they admitted were defective / worthless.) and moved on.
But out of nowhere today they called us AFTER 7 YEARS!! So we immediately pulled the old records / project-files and the FTC-complaint we filed, and then checked on the internet and this website was the first one that popped up, so we wanted to let everyone know the truth about HomeAdvisor!
Like 90% of all the other contractors that were scammed like us, we wanted to make sure that no other contractors waste their valuable time and money on this scam! And to beware they’re now running a 2nd scam where they try to threaten / harass / intimidate you with their bogus collection scam!!
BEWARE!!
DO NOT SIGN-UP WITH HOME-ADVISOR / ANGIE’S LIST, THEIR “LEADS” ARE A SCAM — THEY WILL SELL YOU MANY LEADS THEY KNOW ARE BOGUS AND WASTE YOUR TIME AND MONEY!! AND NOW APPARENTLY THEY WILL TRY TO SCAM YOU WITH COLLECTIONS AND ACCUSE YOU OF DOING EXACTLY WHAT THEY IN FACT DID TO YOU!!
TRULY CRIMINAL!!!
Would be very interested in information and thanks for the information on your site.
My boyfriend is an excellent roofing contractor and it is agonizing watching him fight and become exacerbated by Angi/Homeadvisor. Homeadvisor has changed its name and is hiding under the Angi List name because they had lost a lawsuit against them for scamming contractors. DON’T WASTE YOUR MONEY OR TIME! NEVER SIGN UP! Once they have your credit card, even if you pause or try to cancel your connection with Angi/Homeadvisor, they will turn leads on, accrue fake leads and charge your card! 80% of leads charged to contractors are fake! Then Angi/Homeadvisor will lie and say that the information on the customer has been verified. We have gotten leads from Hillary Clinton, Jamie Lanister, and names/words that are disgusting. Angi/Homeadvisor will deny those and won’t give credit back to the contractors that got scared. HOMEADVISOR IS A SCAM!
How can you help me to get jobs of cleaning and painting
The best place to start is with my course “Turn Your Skills Into Profit.”
What you need to know about Home Advisor is that as much as they want you to believe that they are a full stack marketing company, with gorgeous websites and chat widgets, they are just an SEO company, that’s it. They sell you leads, sure, but they are selling those SAME leads to your competitor, which makes the entire market a race to the bottom bid. Home Advisor does OK work for SEO, and yes they’ll sell you tons of leads, most of which are marked qualified but are not even remotely qualified.
Look to an individual marketing agency. You’ll have someone to answer to you, and you won’t have a glorified Craigslist website promising you the moon.