Sales man david reed claims to be able to hook your website for your business to hundreds of other pages and sites and promises that your website will be directly linked to service magics site free of charge as soon as you sign on. They list only the beneficial ratings of companies, and through 'direct match' wash there hands of bogus leads. Before you sign up for the service it is promised that they filter leads both coming in and also going to the contractors. Once your signed on they then claim its just advertising. Fraud comes to mind.
They claim they do checking and research for licenses in the areas you wish to serve, false claim and to prove it I was able to add Iowa for my line of work who requires contractor licenses for the state, but I wasn't able to add minnesota who does not require any licensing for my line of work. They offer there so called services in all 50 states of the United States, the goods or promises they make are vigerious 10 point screening. (more like 3 point screening)
What they call a Ten point inspection turns out to be a check for insurance to make it look good and a check on the contractorsrouting number along with the account numbers. Another false thing they do is tell you leads are direct match, but in fact they sent that same $30 to $60 lead to roughly 3 customers on average, equals about $180 per lead for them, and a piss off customer that go's with someone else completely do to being bombed with calls. Injury to my bank account and my reputation is on the line for buying into there sales pitch, empty fraudulent promises.
This company is immoral, unethical, oppressive, unscrupulous; and substantially can injure consumers and contractors alike by mismatching professionals the consumer believes to be qualified, contractor that is slow on work that is having a rough time, by being mismatch and potentially running there reputations.
End result, out of work contractor that may have been legit for there original field, an unhappy customer that has to pay more a second tine to have work done twice, and the people that run ServiceMagic a few dollars richer off this miss portion of others. They fail to disclose material fact at the time of sale of profiles to the consumers who later in the system are the contractors, also to the home owner slash consumer that hires these screened professionals.
They also speak against other lead companies saying how they can't do anything for anyone, (Product disparagement). The whole things built in bad faith.
I have been a service magic contractor for over two years, we do a lot of business through them, My problem with service magic is they don't really give a dame about their contractors and treat them like dirt to say the least, bad leads, misinformation, I had a major retailer we did work for not pay there bill, Low caot provider with sweatshop merchandise from child labor in India and we asked service magic to stop sending us this customer and they said they could not so it only compunds the loss we have from this company. If I as a customer spent over 10K with a vendor you would think they would try and understand, not service magic they just want your money and could care less about you there customer. As a matter of fact they stated they removed the contractor blog board from their site because they had no room? They are like the President"Only tell me what I want to hear".
The " Personal Project Assistant" are commisioned sales people trying to get you to agree to speak with other contractors for other projects around your home. A girl tricked me and I recieved like 20 phone calls and was bombarded. I told her the things that I want to "EVENTUALLY" get done and next thing I know these poor contractors think I am doing these in the near future. Turns out they each paid for this "Lead" Wow! After doing some research it also turns out that that "Personal Project Assistant" got paid a commission of the revenue that so called " lead" produced. Angry contractors and angry consumer thanks Service Magic
Well I can speak not only as a servicemagic customer but also as an employee. I work as a project assistant at servicemagic.com. Therefore I call people that have already made an original service request and see how things are going and see if they need more help with other projects or if they are in need of more estimates. I make on average of 160 calls a day and I can tell you that 90% of our customers are happy with the contractors we have sent them. Most people want at least 3 estimates on their project. Why wouldn't they? There is always competition amoungst contractors in residential and commercial. I know this because my father and husband are in the commercial paint business. You have to make yourself stand out! Educate the consumer! Be proactive and call the customer when you say you will and show up on time! Get your estimate to them when you say you will or they will find someone else. This isn't brain surgery! Servicemagic.com does work VERY hard to prescreen all their contractors. I have seen contractors be cut off because their licensing not being updated or because their insurance has lapsed. So before anyone goes on talking about something they know nothing about learn your facts first. Servicemagic.com is the most customer driven company I have ever worked for.
In responce to Chris, You are not a contractor paying for leads that are costing you an arm and a leg. You are only seeing this from a user not a buyer of the service. How about you start paying for information on good contractors and after spending a couple hundred dollars to find the right contractor you might see it differently!
"Motorhead" I think you have it wrong. I've used ServiceMagic a number of times as a consumer, and had only positive experiences. The contractors who bought my lead were proactive and I liked the fact that they were calling me. Maybe paying a few bucks for the lead motivated them to be responsive. Also, I've spoken with each of the contractors, because I like to develop a relationship with the people I work with, and they've all had only positive things to say. ServiceMagic provides them high quality, ready to act, customers.
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