Looking for reviews for Home Advisor from Contractors

[Christopher Reynolds]

Hello everyone! I’m looking for advice from people who have used Home Advisor from the contractor’s side of the business. I am a small contractor who is looking to solicit more business, and Home Advisor seems to be a good way for customers to find me. I’m not sure about the costs (I think it’s a couple hundred dollars a year, plus I’d pay for leads sent my way.  It’s difficult to find reviews for HA because most of them seem to be customers looking for reviews of the contractors themselves. I’d love a contractor’s perspective here. 

 I read one review where the contractor said he was on a job and received several leads that he was unable to respond to immediately, he had to pay for them, and he would have been unable to take on those jobs anyway. He also said HA’s sales tactics make it difficult to cancel their service. Being a small contractor, I likely would not be able to take on every job that comes my way. Depending on the number of leads I'd receive, I might need to turn away most of them, or at book them out several months.  

I have a couple large competitors in the area, and while those competitors have marketing budgets that reflect the size of their business, I am a lot smaller and more affordable. This wouldn’t be my only source of advertising, as I will be branching out with Facebook/Instagram advertising, targeted mailings, Craigslist, and other options.

Has anyone used Home Advisor to connect their business with customers? I’d love to hear your honest positive and negative experiences. Thanks very much!

[Aaron McGinnis]

I spent about a year and a half using Home advisor. Spent well north of $15k on it. 

Now, I run a design build firm, so we look for a pretty rare customer. If you're, say, a roofer your results might be better.

We spent a lot of time tailoring our profile and on the phone with our rep zeroing in the zip codes we wanted. (Atlanta is heavily balkanized, so zeroing in zip codes was crucial)

Here's what we got -

* People calling from Homeadvisor are looking for bargain prices, period. They look at it almost like Craigslist.

* They always seem to come from the most marginal neighborhoods in the zip code

* They're usually ******* nuts

* We cycled through several hundred leads to get one or two that was worth talking to (Very bad static to signal ratio)

* Oftentimes leads would just be duds, disconnected numbers or people who were "just messing around on the internet and put their information into a form" - you will not get reimbursed by Homeadvisor for these leads.

* Once we started being very selective about what leads we accepted, Homeadvisor throttled back the number and quality of leads they sent us. Do not expect to be able to cherry pick what leads you take and get good leads.

* Do not use the instant connect feature (Where they call you with a 'live lead')... it's terrible and unpredictable, and you can't see how much the lead is going to cost before you pick up the phone.

Ultimately, I realized we were much better off paying for a good website and SEO/Google adwords than we were with Homeadvisor.