The homeadvisor scam

#1

The home advisor / homeadvisor type scam company lead gens company.

They are a lead generation company. They have no services in house to sell anywhere. Its all you call n they take your info n sell it to the highest bidder.

These service companies pay lead generators / HA for your info. If they are the only company stupid or new enough for that service. Then thats the only business(es) that will call. Good, bad, or fraudulent.

Tho actually a legit form of business. They way lead gens like HA acts is dishonest. To both their customer and you.

Lets start with businesses. Locked in with a contract high priced leads. Auto renew turned on / left on even when told it was off. HA itself/employees calling in bogus leads to exhaust your reserves so you need to buy more. Refusing to give credit when competitors call you to check your prices.

Lead generations like HA spams YOUR name n their phone number all over the internet (or def use to anyways). Then when your previous customer finds your name on the internet and asks specifically for you. This is known as a special direct lead. Which usually costs about 10% of what the businesses avg ticket would be.

On average your name gets sold to 5 competitors at the same time (im speaking in certain industries thats 100% true). That means for each lead a business will increase the amount they were charged by ha type lead gen companies right back to the customer. So the end user is very shortly paying for those leads in their bills. Not to mention a lot of businesses that cannot understand math will be out of business long before you will need warranty work.

Those are just some of they unethical things HA type companies do.

I was going to reply in that other back from the dead thread. But really it needs to be its own topic.

Tried to stay outta court. But this is my opinion based on hundreds of threads from fellow businesses owners.

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#2

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#3

Nothing you described is fraud. What is the point of your post?

#4

Oh you are one of those. :+1::+1:
Ok. Bye.

"Auto renew turned on / left on even when told it was off. HA itself/employees calling in bogus leads to exhaust your reserves so you need to buy more. "
This is 100% unlawful. Its fraud n a scam.
But carry on with your war on ignoring obvious violations of the law to call other people out on the internet.

#5

So the scam is that they are selling bad leads? This is some new sort of scam specific to Home Advisor?

#6

Quick Google search on HA returns the following about their business model (circa 2020):

Contractors who sign up to receive leads from HomeAdvisor not only pay an annual listing fee, they also pay a fee for each new lead, usually ranging from $15 to $50 per lead up to as high as $80 to $100 per lead in some markets.

I can see how contractors would be upset if they get these false leads.

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#7

You’re not following what I am saying. Businesses paying for bad leads from scummy sales people is a tale as old as time. I’m trying to figure out the point of your post. Are you just trying to advise the home improvement/contractor business owners on this board that they need to do their research before they buy leads from Home Advisor?

#8

Not offering advise to anybody, or contradicting your point. Only mentioning that OP is frustrated because of the evidently scamming, albeit legal, HA’s business model.

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#9

Hes (assumes gender) is just a nit picker.

You will note the lack of quote where i listed actual fraud that they do.

I made this post because of the previous back from the dead thread recommending HA.

If any of us use HA you either get a new company OR end up paying more for your quote by going thru HA rather than just calling ppl in your local area.

Its a net negative for all involved.

#10

I understand your frustration and, if it were me, anger at HA. I think @meed18’s reply may have been a bit blunt, but I think it was accurate.

Whoa! I didn’t see that the first time around. If you’ve got proof of actual fraud, just contact your local DA or state AG. They will be able to advise as to how to proceed with criminal charges. Good luck!

#11

I literally posted actual fraud.

But that would curtail his snide internet based attack on me.

So it was ignored. Obviously.

I see you are doing the same thing.
Any person who uses HA or internet lead companies will either pay more to do so. Or … will engage with a company likely to go out of business. As companies who dont know their numbers are apt to do.

I posted this thread out of my desire to pass on years of hearing about HA n internet lead gen companies scams n shady practices. But im met with attacks.

Im curious why that is ? Is it because i just responded in the abortion debate ? Therefore im free game to be attacked ?

#12

Exactly how did I “attack” you? And my memory is so short that I have no idea what your views on abortion are, nor would they influence my response to a totally unrelated subject.

#13

I didn’t make the connection. Sorry.

I found your OP really hard to follow. I know what Home Advisor, Angie’s List, and other sites like that do. But it’s fair to say other people don’t, so I’m not against a thread explaining it and why it isn’t necessarily a good way to find home improvement services for a consumer. But you didn’t allege any fraud perpetrated on the consumer. You claimed HA sells fake leads. That’s a completely separate issue that conflates the thread. If your thread focused on the consumer side, I would have been less likely to ask what the point of it was.

Now that I see what you were trying to point out, I retract my original view that this was an unnecessary thread aimed at helping businesses avoid contracting with home advisor. I see that it was meant more as a buyer beware for the consumer and I take no issue with that except that it was hard to follow.

#14

Their consumer is the businesses that buy the leads.
Which i did in fact state.

#15

The OP is copy-pasta. If you’d at least re-read it and introduce or fix punctuation before pasta-ing, you’d probably have a better reaction.

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#16

Its most def not copied.
Any of those mistakes are all mine !!!

As peter quill once said.
"“Don’t forget, I’m half human. So that 50% of me that’s stupid that’s 100% you.”

#17

Indeed is another for sending false leads to employers. Out of 100 employees they send 1 will respond… This costs the employer a lot

Free to use model for one side (employee in indeed or homeowner in homeadvisor) suffers the same flaw of false positives. But it is cheaper than the alternative ways to get referred at the right time