What is home advisor?
Home Advisor is an online match making service that connects service providers (contractors) with those in need of services (homeowners). As it relates to our business, that service was flooring.
Their business model is simple enough. They solicit contractors to participate in their site and supposedly perform background checks and screening processes. They then help the contractors set up profiles to showcase their work and reviews from other Home Advisor users.
Then they they solicit homeowners to visit their site (or the site of an affiliate) to enter their personal information and information about their service needs. Since this is a free service to the homeowner, Home Advisor makes their money by charging the service providers for each introduction made. In some cases, these charges exceed $100 per introduction.
If you've ever used their service and been bombarded with contractors calling you, that's why. All those contractors just paid good $ to get your information and they all want to be first and get you scheduled for service or an estimate before you reach your limit
Why we left
First to be clear, we chose not to renew our relationship with Home Advisor in early 2020 just as we were about to be charged yet another annual fee. Home Advisor made several attempts to get us to stay active.
The main reasons we chose not to renew were money and ethics. Paying to get customers is nothing new. Most businesses do it. Any time a business pays for advertising, they are hoping it increases their business. The idea of paying for customers rather than paying for advertising "impressions that may lead to customers" is certainly appealing. However when we compared what Home Advisor was charging compared to the value received, it wasn't in our best interest.
That leads to the second reason; ethics. Relative to the promises Home Advisor makes to homeowners, and to contractors, we noticed that our ethical compasses did not align.
- Leads purchased had bad contact information and when brought to the attention of Home Advisor they would not resolve.
- Leads were recycled or old. Several customers we connected with indicated that they made the request days, weeks and in some cases months prior.
- Leads were of homeowners that did not realize what they had signed up for. Home Advisor receives customer information from sources other than their main website. For example, sources could be, look-alike websites, or small city and service specific webpages or classified websites, or other sites that may seem like competitors to Home Advisor but work together in a behind the scenes network.
- When Home Advisor cannot deliver a specific number of contractors for a homeowner's request, they "wholesale" the customer's information to other networks that can. Some of those other networks doe even LESS or NO screening of contractors. This not only leads to screened/insured contractors from competing with non-screened or non-insured companies, it can give a homeowner a false sense of security because they may believe everyone calling them is from Home Advisor and has been screened.
Badges
On this page are a few of the badges and reviews we earned while working with Home Advisor. If you click them they'll go to a page not found area. When we chose not to renew our relationship, we were told our business profile and reviews would continue to be displayed. That turned out to not be the case. In fact, we would not even have created this page if they let our history and info remain active But when we realized we needed to remove links from other parts of our website, we thought an explanation as in order.
If anyone from Home Advisor has an issue w/ the badges or anything else on this page, we welcome them to call us to discuss.