Verified Contractors is a project born out of frustration. Over and over again, we have seen homeowners and contractors used and abused by third-party marketing companies. Right now, if you as a homeowner seek out a contractor, a basic Google search will likely take you one of two places: Angie’s List or HomeAdvisor. Similarly, if you as a contractor are looking for a place to advertise your services, you will also be brought to Angie’s List and HomeAdvisor.
Crucially, Angie’s List and HomeAdvisor share a parent company – Angi Inc. – and have managed to corner the market when it comes to third-party web-based advertising for service providers. Unfortunately, neither website wields its power and influence responsibly and their business model has caused a lot of problems both for homeowners and for contractors. It is a broken system that we want to fix.
Verified Contractors is a local alternative to these bigger websites that seeks to remedy the endless string of complaints we regularly hear from homeowners and contractors alike. In what follows, we will present the current industry standard – which we view as broken – and explain to you what Verified Contractors does differently.
Right now, both contractors and homeowners are being taken advantage of by web-based third-party marketers. Let’s start with the contractor’s point of view.
To be a part of a website like Angie’s List or HomeAdvisor, the contractor must pay a fee for every lead they receive. For those of you who don’t own a business, a “lead” is just an industry term which essentially means an interested customer. As a business owner, sometimes you will “convert” a lead – aka make a sale – and sometimes you won’t.
In other words, contractors on HomeAdvisor are regularly paying into the system and not getting anything in return. And, to be clear, this is not necessarily because they are bad at what they do. Instead, it is because these big third-party websites will sell the same lead to multiple contractors, none of whom are guaranteed anything.
In fact, here is a direct quote from HomeAdvisor’s website: “HomeAdvisor does not provide or guarantee jobs. You will be charged for each lead you receive, whether or not you ultimately win the job, and regardless of whether the customer hires any pro to complete the job.”
This system creates a rat-race for contractors and unfortunately, the system rewards the companies who are willing to play dirty. This is where the customer’s point of view comes in.
Let’s say you are looking for someone to fix your roof, so you do a quick Google search and end up on HomeAdvisor. Once you’re there, HomeAdvisor will have you enter your personal information which they will then sell to a number of different contractors. Before long, you’ll likely be bombarded with calls and emails from different contractors, all of whom are hoping to get your business.
This creates two issues. 1. It is often annoying and frustrating. This system encourages contractors to be aggressive and they can be because they’ve just been sold your information. 2. It is difficult to know who to trust. Of course, you can do your own research, but that renders the service HomeAdvisor provides completely useless.
Essentially, these sites ask contractors to pay and promise them nothing. The product they sell is the customer’s personal information. Similarly, that customer is guaranteed nothing.
Before we go any further, we want to acknowledge the fact that there are thousands of amazing contractors to be found on these third-party websites. Customers can undoubtedly find top of the line service providers through these sites, and we don’t want to diminish that fact. However, it is our view that both the homeowners and contractors are being treated unfairly and this is what we want to change it.
Here is how our system will work instead. Contractors will have to submit an application to be part of our network. We will require all of our contractors to be licensed and they will have to prove that they have a good reputation in their community. Furthermore, they will be required to maintain that reputation if they wish to remain part of the network. We will enforce a two-strike policy, meaning that if we get more than one complaint about a contractor, they will be removed from our network.
We want to incentivize and reward talented contractors that are beloved by the people they serve which is why our network is completely free to join. Service providers do not have to pay anything to be a part of Verified Contractors, nor are they charged for leads.
Instead, we only make money when a project actually happens. We feel an ethical responsibility toward homeowners and contractors, and if homeowners don’t find a contractor they are happy with and if contractors don’t get paid, then we shouldn’t get paid either. We believe this model incentivizes good behavior all around because it is built on trust first and profit second.
In addition, when we provide a lead to a contractor, we give it to one contractor and one contractor only. That means, as a customer, your personal information will only get sent to one place and we will always get your consent before doing so. You won’t be bombarded with calls or emails from our contractors because there will be no reason for them to do so, nor would we work with someone who utilizes those tactics in the first place.
As a contractor, you will get to interact with customers one on one and not have to worry about another company coming in and scooping up your lead. Ultimately, you may not end up working with a particular lead, but that’s okay both because we believe it is best to find customers and contractors who are a good fit for one another and because you won’t have invested any money into getting that lead.
One last thing to note that is a benefit for both homeowners and contractors is that we want to emphasize that no one is paying extra to use our website. Hypothetically, homeowners can find a contractor on our website and then go seek that contractor out on their own without giving us a dime or any of their information. Of course, we would prefer you use our website to get in touch with contractors, but you do not have to.
Essentially, we are betting on the good will of everyone involved. We want to create a service that is mutually beneficial for both homeowners and contractors. We think we have made a product that is valuable to those communities, and we believe we will be rewarded for that work.
One slightly tangential but important element of our business model that should be emphasized is that we want to be a source of information for the people who use our service. This blog is one example and as we continue to grow, we want to find more and more ways that we can be of use to both homeowners and contractors.
As such, be sure to keep up with our website. We plan to post a lot of information using a multimedia approach that we think will be of value to everyone who uses our service.
Hopefully it is clear by now, but one of our major goals is to make sure we are creating a product that is valued by both contractors and homeowners. We want to continue to grow, but we want to do so ethically and with the people who use our service in mind.
As such, we encourage feedback from contractors and homeowners. Tell us what we can do to make our service useful to you. We promise to take your comments into account and do everything we can to address them.
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