Home Advisor?

802climber

TreeHouser
Joined
Nov 1, 2013
Messages
251
Location
Vermont
Has anyone used Homeadvisor.com and was it worth it during slow times?

Is there a better service to find leads?

Did you actually get any good leads, or just a waste of time and money?

Thanks!
 
I use it and have mixed feelings about it most of the time. You get a lot of stupid leads, but get some that will pay good. Every time I think about dropping them I will score a large job from them so I keep hanging on with them. The nice thing about them is you can choose to turn your leads off if you want for a period of two weeks at a time. When I was busy last summer, I would turn off the leads every two weeks if needed.
 
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Haha, I am also doubtful but I need some leads. At least you should get more leads because you're in a metro area. I have been a member for almost 2 weeks and have gotten exactly one lead... an "exact match" lead which was some tire-kicking price shopper. (There was a well-beaten path through the fresh snow from the driveway to the tree and back...)

Homeadvisor says it's due to the slow winter season and also says I am not getting many leads because of my service area and specialized trade ("Are you SURE you don't cut grass?"), but I have to wonder why my own company site is ranking above them in the organic google results for tree service? And very rarely do I see one of their famous adwords ads.

I will also warn you, check your profile when it goes live. They crapped up most of my info and it took a decent headache on my part to get it all corrected.

Hopefully you will have better luck with them.
 
If you want leads, go hire a marketing pro to do mailers in areas you target. You'll get leads.
 
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Hmm.. marketing pro sounds expensive. I was thinking of doing my own targeted mailings at some point, but the thing is alot of second homeowners here only have PO Boxes. So I guess I would have to include all PO Boxes in that zip code?
 
No. Just cover the ground you can with the funds/time available. You can't get your name in front of them all. A great deal of mailing cards get thrown away the instant the HO realizes its "junk mail". I believe a lot of them don't even get a thorough glance. But there's always those few that look them over and make contact.

I've never done mailers. But people in the industry that I'm close with have all said they are a good tool and have their place in the arsenal.
 
I'm out already. I've had home advisor for not even 2 weeks. I already can't stand them. I emailed them why. Here's a list from that email....


1- Setting up the profile was a major pain. I spent about 12-16 hours, spent way too long with chat and phone support to set up my service area and STILL have errors (like I’m being listed as having no insurance though I’ve given you guys all my workers comp, vehicle insurance, general liabilty and bonding insurance AND there are still cities listed on our profiile that are cities that we do NOT work in). One of my concerns was how do we express to your customers that our company does not do free estimates. You said that there is an easy way to get that info to customers. There wasn’t. The people that have found us through your website have been surprised that we don’t do free estimates. This was one of the features I was most adamant about and it turned out there ISN’T a way for people to clearly see if we do free estimates or not.

1a- product brands: Why do you even have this section if I can only show the brand of ONE product that we can use?
1b- I asked several times for my address to NOT be listed on my profile. It has not been taken off yet. That is my home. I don’t need people showing up here. You guys are not respecting privacy to a level that I cannot believe
1c-Areas of expertise: why am I only allowed 5 of them?
1d- memberships and affiliations: Only 2 items allowed?
WHY DO YOU HAVE ALL THESE SECTIONS IF WE CAN’T EVEN USE THEM TO SHOW OFF WHO WE ARE AND WHAT WE KNOW?

2- Good vs. Bad leads- when I asked about refunds for bad leads, you expressed that if we get something that turns out to be a bad lead, we just call it in and it would not be charged to our account. We got 2 official leads so far. On the first one, the lady never called us back and never answered our call or HomeAdvisor message and the second guy was appalled that we charge a fee for an estimate. In my mind, both of these are bum leads, but the operator I talked to said that these are legit leads and Home Advisor can’t control whether or not people actually READ the profile (to see we don’t do free est) nor can you control whether or not they pick up the phone when I call, therefore these are legit leads and I WILL be charged for them. This seemed quite surprising to me. Frankly, it’s a ripoff.

3- Finally, cancelling: I’ve had enough. I called yesterday and asked to be cancelled. I had to spend WAY to much time on the phone with a guy who tried to not let me cancel. After it was all said in done, he said he would follow through, shut down all my profile pages on all your variety of websites and would send an email in a few minutes verifying that my account has been closed and no charges would be made to my account. it’s been 24 hours and I do not have an email verification yet.



love
nick
 
Glad I read this! They have been leaving voicemails, emails and mailers for weeks. Was going to check them out, thought it was some sort of gimmick like that. Sounds like they should put as much effort into their current customers as they do into trying to get new ones! There needs to be a good website for homeowners to find competent, reliable contractors. Any one have experience with angies? A certain contractor around here did landscape work for a bunch of years started attempting tree work, advertised a rated on angies for trees, and is all over spiking all prunes, topping, black ants are killing all the trees that are declining, etc. etc. Customers think they are getting the best work done, and get angry when you attempt to educate them otherwise. Would think it would be easy these days to Google it and see they are doing wrong, but it seems like tree care is the only thing people don't look up. Would be nice for a website to actually promote good practice, proper ins and certs for what is being done, and regulate the reviews so the uneducated homeowner gives the hack a great review because some limbs were cut, they removed the debris, were less than half the cost of any other estimates, and did not charge tax for giving them cash, I got a great deal and need to let everyone know to use these guys! From the website owners perspective though, probably get more revenue from the hacks in any field, they are the ones who constantly need more leads as the company name, phone and what they attempt to do change often. They probably don't want too much on the profile pages to make it seem like a more even playing field to sell to prospective advertisers who don't come close in education, certs, experience, etc. Don't want to lose their revenue stream because their page looks inferior to the others. All about the bottom line, at the cost of ethics!
 
That's great info to know. Thanks for sharing Nick. Vharrison has a good point. Would you mind sharing costs if its something you feel comfortable doing?
 
Someone at otcc comp brought it up, it was late, and some adult beverages were involved so don't remember who. Prob Rich Hattier or Rick Den beau or Greg Manning, bit foggy. It was a long cold day and we were warming up.
 
This lead fee part is dumb. I can find my list, but it's varying prices. It's $20-30 per lead in my area!! It like 21.49 for stump grinding, tree trimming is 23.82, tree removal 25.75....all weird prices like that.

Either way, the prices are EXTREMELY high. For a $20 lead, they better at least call me back when I leave a voicemail.


love
nick
 
If it worked I'd keep trying. If I've ever spoken to anyone in the world that uses it, I'd maybe continue. But thus far the only people that I know that have heard of it are the home advisor sales people and other contractors that were solicited by the home advisor sales people.

I've gotten more leads since I've supposedly cancelled. They don't even know how to cancel properly.

I've followed up with those leads with no good coming of it.


love
nick
 
That seems crazy for lots of possible dead ends or price shoppers, what about multiple work ie.two. prunes and three removals at one property(lead)? Seems if you added those fees up for a season for all the regular estimates we do, you would have one great advertising budget for next year instead of dead leads.
 
I feel bad because when I was checking out HA, I went on there and pretended I was looking for a painter. I called a bunch of the companies, emailed them and I know that I just cost them a lot of money for work they were never going to get - Sorry about that, paint guys!


love
nick
 
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