..especially on DU.

That's why Google is Our Friend.

...to the correct (truthful) links.

Testimonials are worthless.

And it has served me well. Because almost everything is.

Even before the modern age, when bullshit became the basis for our entire economy and political system.

I will say that I've used Angie's List for years, and I've been very satisfied with everyone I've hired through them, with the exception of one guy who suddenly died before he could complete a job. But that wasn't the fault of Angie's list (or the guy).

Thanks so much! In a few months I was going to buy a membership in Angie's List to get some stuff done around the house, but... no more. Thank you!

this looks interesting!

Well, okay then. Long ago when I was young, I said something to someone about assuming something, and they replied with, let's see now, how did that go? "Anytime you assume something, you make an ...". Well, I just can't remember the rest of it. Perhaps you've heard it somewhere.

I have used Angie's list for years. I read EVERY testimonial...I read lots of ratings. Look at numerous businesses in the category. I've hired probably 20 different vendors over the years with great success.

I like this style of consumer feedback. Just sending me three quotes from a company is not what I want.

I think Angie's List business and conservative links suck ass. And it pains me to pay for the bullshit. But frankly it has served us well overall.

The conundrum.

See my post down below. Home advisor isn't much better.

http://www.consumeraffairs.com/homeowners/servicemagic.html

I've always been pleased with the people who hired.

for me to cancel my membership. Thanks!

...AND you have the added bonus of NOT paying for those other sites!

I use Angie's list and I find it helpful, but I would never believe a rating by any source exclusively. If you are spending big bucks you have to be careful no matter what the recommendation.

I recently hired a heating and air contractor rated high on Angie's list. After a couple routine visits, my wife and I didn't like them and we found someone better.

If you read Angie's posted comments by other consumers, you can get a picture about a company regardless of the posted grade. I had already figured out that advertisers get special treatment.

I didn't know they advertise on Rush or give to the GOP. That makes me less inclined to renew my Angie's service.

Found a wonderful pest control guy here - been doing our home for over 8 years now.

Will not renew Angies.

we have kuduz.com for free.

The biggest POS scam company out there.

It's free vs AL...

When you buy their bullshit ads, they'll allow you to delete bad reviews. They are run like a mafia protection racket.

My auto mechanic complained about how Yelp hides good reviews with low post counts--but not bad reviews--unless you pay hundreds of dollars in business member fees. He refused to pay.

I checked it out and left him a good review. I never post on Yelp. Sure enough, it was hidden. But a totally inaccurate bad review--also with a low post count, was there, and hurting his business.

I then posted my review on Google and it did appear. I feel sorry for the guy. I think that bad review was fake, posted by a competitor down the street.

I had good luck with Angie's List. I didn't know they advertised on Fox, since it's only on when my husband watches sports. I'm on the computer in the other room. Geez, football, baseball, golf, NBA soon. It's insane!

I put in 3 names - 2 EXTREMELY well known, major contractors around here, and one that is fairly large that I used for my roof, and Home Advisor did not return ANY of them in the company profiles.

Maybe I'm missing something.

I'm disappointed to hear the bad news about Angie's List but I will continue to use them for now; I have had good luck so far with them. Once my current sub is up I will look at the others again.

about their advertisers. They removed a solely fact-driven negative comment I made about a property management company. Didn't know at the time I posted that they allowed that. Yelp is worthless!

...by putting them on a hidden "not recommended" list.

All these recommendation services are scams. Don't trust any of them.

(Except google - they have too much money to mess with their results.)

- C.D. Proud Member of the Reality Based Community

They deleted one I made for a local dog training service. There deletion policy is supposed to protect users from trolls and the businesses themselves from posting but it seems a bit wonky. Mine was deleted the first and only time I ever left a comment.

as I was a legit dissatisfied customer.

Last edited Tue Sep 9, 2014, 07:30 PM - Edit history (1)

I used Angie's List when putting in hardwood floors, plain, shutters, etc and had great luck. Yelp leans on businesses something awful. I know business owners personally that have had horrendous experiences with them. Just google yelp scam. I could go on all night, but it's late.
At least Angie's had some great $$$ off. Worked for me. We saved hundreds.

http://theyelpscam.com

http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2013/01/yelps-rocky-relationship-with-small-business029/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jimhandy/2012/08/16/think-yelp-is-unbiased-think-again/

Did they return?

unless you like getting spam emails everyday peddling AL's darling companies.

Big holes on what lists they have .
hit or miss .
Did not renew. I try word of mouth but even then your opinion /standards may not gel. I also just go stone cold and have had good results. No real horror stories, but boy I have I heard them!

been tempted to subscribe to Angie's List for my own use. If I want to compare service companies, I use other sites to look for reviews.

When the water line for the ice maker sprung a leak while we were out of town for a week. What a mess! The guy got an A plus rating from Angie - but I gave him a B. It should have been a C. Most of the work was done in a satisfactory manner, but his painter used our bathroom sink to wash out his brushes and clogged the sink badly. He did a sloppy job with some of the finish work, and he dropped something on the brand new engineered wood floor and made a big ding. It could only be fixed by re-setting the entire floor. At this point I just wanted him out.

AND - he admitted to me that all those A plus scores he got from previous clients ---- he paid them in work hours to rate him highly.

Angie is a scam! And now that I know she's a Repug (what a surprise!) - we won't be looking at her lists any more.

We got taken a few years back by a plumber that was highly rated on Angie's List. I take any kind of service like that with a huge grain of salt. I think it's best to rely on personal experience, as well as asking family, friends, and neighbors who tey recommend to do work.

The job in question for us was the replacement of a garbage disposal. We paid a couple of hundred for it, when we later saw it in the hardware store for less than $100. Do I feel like a dumbass? Absolutely. But lesson learned. We won't use that plumber again, and we will not recommend them, either. Word of mouth is powerful.

Or used to

Someone might want to send him a note on this for him perhaps to follow up on.

Perhaps he will also have resources to delve deeper and expose the bad pieces, and maybe help clean it up if there are good pieces of that company that would want it to be cleaned up. I don't think he wants to feel used.

I find contractors the old fashion way... by talking to people.

she knows a wealth of good folks. A broker she recommended busted his butt getting us a killer refinance! Great guy!

pay for it. Zero confidence in Angie's List.

Caveat Emptor. (one of the best life lessons learned from Mike Brady - re: the episode in which Greg bought the jalopy).

Anyway, Angie's was the best, then home advisor, didn't bother with yelp. Why people don't google places like this first is beyond me.

I opened an account with Angie's List to get the benefit of others' opinions when I needed a plumber or whatever. I learned that I could open a free account for my small business, and I did so gratefully.

Then I started getting phone calls pressing me to add some paid doodads to my account so I would get a higher ranking. Wait, what? You mean my ranking depends not only on what my clients say about me, but also on what I pay? That means the rankings I see depend not only on what their clients say about them but also on what they pay Angie's List.

After that I never paid them another cent.

Until they started trying to sell me better results for my business, I thought they had a good business model: good for the consumer as well as for small businesses that provide good value. But now I can't understand why anyone would want to do business with them.

My request went all the way to the supervisor level - surprising as it is usually like pulling teeth to get past level one. The phone op was at first sleepy and bored - when I told my reason he was speechless for a moment then put me on hold to speak to his supervisor. I think I may have increased his political awareness about the company he works for.

I did point him to the HP link and DU - they still wanted to make it very clear Angie's list was not supportive of right wingers. He was more speechless when I told him of the CEO's rethug past and Angie Hicks $ donations - these facts are all on tape no at the call center lol.

They make you feel victimized (ala Faux News) and then fake you into believing that ONLY PARTICIPATION with their service will prevent that (also ala Faux News). Then THEY victimize you. Analogies abound regarding this...

For those that use facebook, look for a community page for your local area. Just recently I found the page for our neighborhood, just to keep up on any local crime alerts. But I see that many many people are putting up 'ISO' (in search of) posts.

For example there have been posts ISO good mechanic, plumber, pet sitter etc. And in reply there are usually dozens of people giving recommendations and their experiences. I would still do my own research to double check, but at least this way you are getting input from those that have used the service and you know it's really a local business, which I like to support. It's free and you can always pm a particular poster for more info.

Several articles have been written about Yelp shaking down local businesses to convince them to buy advertising in exchange for prominently featuring good reviews and lowering/hiding bad ones.

I thought this problem had been exposed and somehow addressed a few years ago, but it may still be going on. I was just talking to a neighbor who owns a local cafe. Someone wrote a 5 star review on Yelp and it disappeared the next day. He had recently refused to pay for ads on Yelp after high-pressure sales tactics. I pointed out the complicated "sort" functions on the reviews, but he insisted the review had been improperly demoted/hidden.

That's anecdotal, though. I'm curious if anyone else knows what Yelp's current reputation is in this regard. Of course online businesses need to make money somehow. It does bother me that "crowd-sourced" business models make a lot of money for a few people who essentially run a platform. The advertisers and investors are coming because of the crowd: shouldn't the crowd make the money and the platform get some small administrative fee? Just a philosophical thought there.

UPDATE:
Hmm, I see this was ultimately resolved when a Court ruled Yelp can manipulate reviews for profit. Woo hoo! The consumer deceived again! http://sfist.com/2014/09/04/yelp_is_allowed_to_manipulate_ratin.php

...like AL.

Much harder to navigate, harder to read the reviews, harder to search.
And as of a couple years ago you can't post anonymous reviews-- the service provider knows who you are and that changes the whole complexion of the thing. Now you look at the reviews and have to figure that lots of high ratings must mean they're good and fewer or more tepid ratings could mean they may have lots of dissatisfied customers who'd LIKE to post a bad review but don't want the hassle and blowback.

that they had to be a scam, somewhere.

The original idea was good, local people commenting on their experiences with local contractors. Then the idea took off and was corrupted for $$.

I have been trying to discontinue and have had a terrible time with them. I think I have talked to at least 4 people there and everyone is really nice and they are going to look at everything and get back with me.

But they never call back.

There is an early termination fee for my accounts of about $250.

I'm just not getting results from my ad and would really like to quit the whole thing and put my advertising money somewhere else. But I am finding it very difficult.

My review of Angie's List is about a D.

Before my knee operations I wanted to check on the local rehabilitation hospitals and none of the free online review sites covered them. I looked at Angie's List and their listing categories had "rehabilitation hospital" included. So I paid my money and went to look at the listings for my area.

Not one rehabilitation hospital was listed in hundreds of miles. I called and complained and the person I spoke to promised that my money would be refunded. It had not by the time I went into the hospital a few weeks later. Months later, after I finally healed from my two surgeries I checked all my credit card bills and Angie's List never refunded the money they promised. By then, of course, it was too long after the initial charge to dispute it with the credit card company and I didn't want to spend the time on the phone to deal with Angie's List personnel again and get empty promises.

I wonder how much of their business model counts on ripping people off the way they did me?

computers, etc. They rate a lot of service providers and one must prove they used their service to submit a rating. Their current rating for HomeAdvisor is 9.44. That, is very impressive. I will start using them rather than Angie's List. Thanks for the tip on HomeAdvisor. Here is the analysis. http://www.resellerratings.com/store/HomeAdvisor I just canceled my renewing membership with Angie's list. Waaayyy too many bad reviews for Angie's list, and now right wingers. No thanks!
Thanks for having posted this on DU!

Oh well. Busted. Wind down then move on to the next scam. No will will ever be called to account.

The bad having been with a big job needing a contractor. I think it's the same if you don't use Angie's List except that I think a lot of people were threatened with arbitration to leave a good review or not put up a bad one. So yeah, someone can have a glowing rating and do shoddy work then leave in the middle of a contract.

.. why anyone would pay the absurd rates Angie's list charges for information I can get free. Even assuming they were an honest broker of information (which they apparently are not) I wouldn't pay anywhere near what they are asking for their service.

what they charge? Is it a membership for a year, or per use? I have never been inclined to use them, since the only ads I have ever heard were on right-wing radio stations. I will buy nothing from firms that advertise on the right-wing shows and no place else.

Angie's List and Gold buying schemes....the top advertisers.

... it was about $30 per month, an amount I considered ridiculous.

You would have to require a lot of contractors to make that amount pay off for you. I just ask neighbors, friends, coworkers, and I have occasionally gone up and knocked on doors of perfect strangers to ask them who did something that I can see from the street. I would always trust this more than anything on line from people I don't know.

.... and then you find that they are cooking the data.

I've hired many people off of Craigs List, from realtor recommendations and friends/business associates' recommendations. Only rarely have I not been happy with the results and when that happens I just don't call that guy again. Problem solved.

It's funny almost every time you find such a business you find that their business model involves playing both sides. For example, there is a "new" (not really new, they have been around for a while) service that purports to tell you what the "fair price" for your specific new car is. Guess where they get their data? Directly from the dealers. What a scam.

So I never bothered. Glad I didn't. She sure advertises a lot on TV.

But then again, I'm kind of biased. I don't like patronizing businesses that support conservatives or conservative causes.

...and today, while watching MHP, I saw TWO of her ads and, knowing AL's fondness of supporting Repigs, decided to post the OP.

But I don't care how nice you look or pleasant or harmless or harmless or inoffensive or neighborly. If your business supports the GOP, I don't support your business.

Thanks Cooley Hurd for posting this. We always have to be on alert. Too many wolves out there wearing nice soft fluffy sheepskins.

Please tell us. Not holding my breath, oh, AL bot!

*crickets*

OOPS! Hidden 6-1. You're welcomed to PM me with your answer.

I signed my old company up a couple of years ago and set up a page and so forth. After that we got regular calls and emails from them of how to optimize our experience, for a fee. It didn't seem at any point that they were really interested in collecting reviews from consumers, which is the point of their operation, I thought.

Yelp is easier to use, and much better over all. I haven't looked at Angie's list in a long time.

... I do residential remodeling & home improvement. I looked into joining Angie's List some years ago & didn't like the way they did business at all. As a contractor I had to keep paying them money to be "featured" (via their advertising). Why? I've always had more work than I could comfortably handle thanks to word-of-mouth recommendations from customers. When you do high quality work & make your customers happy, every job leads to another, or two, or three, or more. No advertising required.

I'm leary of any company that advertises on sites like Angie's List. If they were really good they'd have so much work they wouldn't have to advertise on a site like that.

Just my personal perspective from the service provider/contractor side of the equation.

Could be profitable. This makes a lot more sense.

If I need a contractor, I ask around the neighborhood to see what neighbors say -- which contractor to use, which to avoid.

That's the only way to do it.

Here's my take on Angie's list. I'm 70 years old, served 28 years in the Army, retired in 1995. As a young fellow, I worked at all sort of manual labor jobs -- carpenter's helper, electrician's helper, plumber's helper, drug store delivery, grocery bagger, short-order cook, truck driver, logger, stablehand. I do my own wiring, plumbing, car care, carpentry, and the like.

Young folks, especially those who have grown up in urban surroundings, are not as fortunate as I am -- nor are they as lucky as my two adult children who learned from an early age how to do basic home repairs, change oil and tires, and drive a vehicle with a stick shift. As a result, young (and not-so-young) adults are dependent on scam artists such as Angie to tell them how to get help doing basic stuff that they should know how to do themselves.

it's pretty sad how easily people fall for such crap

from https://www.checkbook.org/:

"Nonprofit & unbiased
Accepts no advertising
Prevents ballot-box stuffing
Price comparisons
Quality comparisons
Expert articles and advice"

I think the only people who leave a review are the angry ones, and a lot of times that is so unfair. All the happy clients I leave behind, are not likely to leave a review online, they may say something positive to their friends but won't leave anything online, only the pissed ones will. I do estate sales and trust me there are a lot of unfair assholes out there. I think her business model has some fundamental faults.

guess i never will.

"fix" bad reviews they are very much mistaken.

I have posted several negative reviews about restaurants here in the TC. BOTH have disappeared. If you read Yelps TOS the pick and choose what reviews appear. The site is useless.

and now that it is paid by Rush, I know I will NEVER use it - ever.

see my post above about Yelp. Angie's List was a help to me. Google yelp and get ready for the scams there. They truly suck.

are TVs EVERYWHERE and most of them seem to have Fox on. Or Kelly and what's his name (nice looking man) and the volume is so loud. One of my last trips to my primary doc, I actually wore an earplug. Already deaf in one ear. I should have know that Blue Cheer concert mega years ago would have some adverse effect.