COLORADO SPRINGS
IS HOMEADVISOR WORTH USING?
is homeadvisor/Angi the best Painter option?
is homeadvisor/Angi the best Painter option?
HomeAdvisor/Angi can be very useful, but are the services offered the best for Colorado Springs consumers and painting companies? Finding a contractor is made easy with a large directory of services and specialties, each professional has been approved via onboarding process, and it can all be mostly handled online. However, there have been legal issues concerning data handling, sales practices and lead quality for professionals looking to market a local business.
Seems like, on one hand there’s a lot of upside to an organized website offering to help conduct home improvement services. Manage the process from your phone, get semi-transparent pricing, lots of info to look at and reviews to read, etc.
The other hand, it’s not local (profits go elsewhere), professionals are being misrepresented, services are being misaligned with skill sets, data/info isn’t being quality checked, the fees are added to the bottomline in the end, and ultimately the customer pays for a service that should be offered my most professional painting companies for free – basic customer service.
(BBB gives them an F rating) – to be fair they’re not a member of the BBB
Maybe in some painting markets HomeAdvisor/Angi provides a professional, customer-facing service to help ‘Chuck-in-a-truck‘ look and operate more like a mature business. ‘Chuck‘ pays a fee to look professional with: a profile, reviews, company bio, digital sales/lead flow, piggy-backs HA’s SEO, takes payments, manages the business from a smartphone, etc.
This approach/positioning is attractive for smaller painting businesses who are just getting started with low cash reserves and potentially a one-man company. But, does this market positioning help everyone in the market? What about the homeowner? Or from our viewpoint, an actual painting company?
Is HomeAdvisor/Angi the best option for everyone involved?
What are the benefits and detriments of working with them as a consumer, company, solo business owner?
In the beginning (1998), HomeAdvisor was developed to fill a gap in the home improvement market between retail consumers and construction-based service providers. At that period in time – the construction industry as a whole was terrible at most anything online. The idea of marketing, let alone the technical process of marketing online has always been a sore spot for construction companies. This was a great market opportunity for HomeAdvisor to take advantage of.
Marketing directly to specific consumers (tv, radio, digital media), inserting the HomeAdvisor brand into search engines above local service providers, and creating a captive market of businesses who can’t outspend a national company made the HomeAdvisor concept valid and very profitable.
HomeAdvisor started to develop robust online services, creating a massive funnel of consumers looking for home improvements, a national funnel of active leads for any professional contractor to purchase. It was a great strategy, by connecting supply with demand – the HomeAdvisor team had leveraged online software for massive profits. Now, HomeAdvisor/Angi is one of the best known online brands for home improvement.
It worked. Good or bad at this juncture in 2023. HomeAdvisor/Angi is on top of the online home improvement services industry.
Pro tip: Almost all services, warranties, availability certifications vary by professional with HomeAdvisor. Make sure to specify everything you need before submitting your information to them. Or you’ll get flooded by calls from contractors you don’t really want to speak with.
Available 365 Days Online
Available in All 50 States
Semi-cost Transparent
“Individual experiences may vary”
Most likely, there are lots of HomeAdvisor fans and happy customers. They have been in business over 20-years, provide coverage for numerous countries, continue to lead the online marketing within the North American construction/home improvement industry. The stories can be off-putting, but that doesn’t mean everything about them is inherently bad. Sometimes there are flaws in a design that can be exploited by others, sometimes regulations follow a disruptive company to ensure consumer protection simply because the market is brand new.
That said, Gardiner Painting does not work with HomeAdvisor. We believe we can offer a better overall experience to the customer without a middle man.
Pro-Tip: Check pricing outside of HomeAdvisor as well. Many times, local businesses don’t use services like HomeAdvisor in order to keep costs low for the consumer. HomeAdvisor can add hundreds of dollars in cost to a single invoice once the professional is charged for their online services.
The preparation for exterior painting is a detail-oriented process. Depending on the size of the project, many hands can make light work of getting the outside ready for a new coat. Our crews have decades of experience getting homes ready to paint and applying finish coat. Leaving you with high-quality result that is ready for Colorado weather.
FTC Orders HomeAdvisor to Pay Millions
FTC Order Requires HomeAdvisor to Pay Up To $7.2 Million and Stop Deceptively Marketing its Leads for Home Improvement Projects
Money will be used to compensate defrauded home service providers
Every city has professional home improvement businesses that are capable of servicing customers directly without the involvement of HomeAdvisor. Gardiner Painting believes we are one of those companies. Without a middleman, Gardiner Painting can provide detailed information on our services, company, reviews, products, service areas, and promotions. Our website is designed for an informational and transactional interactions with visitors to provide more information or a free painting estimate. Customers will get top-of-class service with Gardiner Painting for free up to the estimate. No strings. The only thing we charge for is the invoice you approved.
Depending on the ‘lead type‘, industry, time of year, and other contributing data points HomeAdvisor has a sliding scale for lead pricing. Some leads are worth tens of dollars, others may be worth hundreds of dollars – either way that cost is passed along for the customer to pay in the end. The contractor using HomeAdvisor will always be paying additional fees to gain business; looking into HomeAdvisor online/legal history, quite a bit of the consumer data provided to contractors was illegitimate, consumer data was rarely respected and pricing for buying leads was hardly transparent.
Now that HomeAdvisor has paid and continues to pay lawsuits and legal costs, surely the bottomline for their home improvement lead services will rise. Again, Gardiner Painting doesn’t use these services because we can lower our costs to the customer by ultimately cutting out expenses and running our business as lean as possible.
Call a local, Colorado Springs painter. Don’t use multi-national services to find services that exist with a little more scrolling. Saving money starts with putting in a little extra effort.
We are a full-service painting company specializing in interior and exterior painting for residential, commercial and multi-family housing units in the Colorado Springs, El Paso County area.
Call or text
(719) 247-1960
info@gardinerpaint.com