We’re going to remodel our bathrooms and we’re looking for a contractor to do it. Angie’s List has been advertising on TV A LOT recently and I’m considering joining to get their reviews (I’m in San Jose, CA). However, in looking at their website, I couldn’t find out how much it cost to join (red flag #1). You apparently have to start the “joining” process and give them your name and email FIRST before they tell you the cost.
Before doing this, I did some web searching and there appears to be a lot of diverse opinion about Angie’s list:
The Good:
While there is some small possibility of gaming the system, the reviews will mostly be from actual customers.
Many people say they got good recommendations from Angie’s list.
The Bad:
They apparently charge different amounts depending on where you live and you can’t know how much the cost is until you give them your personal information.
They claim a money-back guarantee, but there are a lot of horror stories about people being continually charged for a subscription they don’t want.
There are many complaints of email and text spam from Angie’s List. Some report daily spam from them.
Companies that get some good reviews can then pay for additional advertising on the site.
So what do the teeming masses say? Is Angie’s List the best review site in the world and all the negative comments are from disgruntled companies that have gotten negative reviews? Or is Angie’s List a massive money-making and spam machine that does more harm than good to its patsie…, er, its subscribers?
My husband joined Angie’s List last year, and while I don’t know any specifics, he did find us a treasure. I will loan you Shelby. He did our floors last year, and, although he doesn’t know it yet, will be getting a call about our bathroom soon.
Where i was at, it was free to join the first year because of “limited users” in my area. Bugged me to no end at the end of the year to pay, but it wasn’t any better -there wasn’t really anything on there for my area. Seems to suffer from a chicken and egg problem in some areas - being a pay site what incentive is there for users to sign up and post reviews in the first place to get it going ?
I’ve been in the same boat. It’s the kind of thing I’ve thought would be very useful from time to time, but having to join just to poke around is a dealbreaker for me. Maybe I’m just spoiled from how the internet is these days, but I’m amazed there’s not a good free site doing the same thing.
I used angie’s list to find someone to do my windows last year and then posted a review myself. I found it helpful in narrowing down my choices but felt like I still had to do soe due diligence as well. I let my subscription lapse, because we don’t do enough work on the house that I want to pay every year just in case.
Also, note that if you are movcing from one site to another you have to pay 2X, you can’t use one membership for multiple places. I think that is lame.
I joined several years ago right before a major re-model of our floors and countertops in the kitchen. Ultimately I found the reviews helpful and the places I dealt with honest and trustworthy. I posted a thread a few months ago about whether the reviews on Angie’s List might be shills like they sometimes are on Yelp. The same bad English, grammar, and writing style between seemingly different reviews is always a dead giveaway. That said, I would note the following:
You are just as likely to find good contractors off of Yelp if they have a lot of reviews. If there aren’t a lot and you’re not sure if the reviews are real or not, see what else the people reviewed. Shill reviewers who work for the company are generally too lazy to review lots of other things.
Lots of contractors are only as good as the particular people doing the job, which are often independent subcontractors. When I asked for references from the people I used, I got the specific names of the installers and asked for them by name to do the job as a condition of the work. Otherwise it doesn’t matter if you pick Contractor #1 or Contractor #2 to do the job, because Gus Johnson may be the actual installer who works independently for both companies and is the only one who knows what he is doing, whereas Frank Garcia also works for both companies and may do a mediocre job.
One thing you could try is to put out a request to your friends on Facebook and find someone in your area already signed up and have them do the search for you. Once you have the names of the highly rated people, you don’t really need the service.
I joined a few months ago, since I’m going through a period in which I’m in need of several types of service I hadn’t previously needed. So far, it seems to be worth it.
I don’t think it’s worth it. In our experience it is better to find one person you respect and have them refer the others. For a major remodel, we found a carpenter who would rebuild and do the finish work. He liked a plumbing company and an electrician. (We’d interviewed several ourselves from Angie’s list but weren’t too impressed and couldn’t get them to commit to timing.) The plumber recommended the dry-waller adn the electrician the floor company.
A company I worked for did fantastic work in high end stone work. We had a customer try to blackmail us into discounting an installed job that they hadn’t finished paying for by threatening a bad Angie’s list review.
After we refused, they posted the bad review. We had notified AL in advance about the customer and then issued a complaint when the review went up.
Angie’s list basically told us, “you don’t pay for advertising on our site so all reviews of your company will stand. If you were to spend $XXXXX.XX (yes that’s five figures) per year on an advertising package, I am sure we’d be able to help you with that review”
There are good places on Angie’s List but I won’t use them.
My daughter joined AL in North Carolina ($40 fee) to find a vet who specialized in a particular surgery for her dog. After searching the site for 25 minutes, she discovered no reviews. So she call AL, explained the situation, and they gave her the fee back, but asked her that if she did find a vet that fit that category, to please come back and post a review to help others.
I’ve used my carpenter 4 times and the electrician 3 times, and recommended them to friends for several things. The tree guy has come a few times as well.
I’m not sure if I get my money’s worth…but I don’t have anyone to recommend me workers from the area, so it’s proven valuable. I KNOW plenty of people in the area but I was one of the first to own a home. My parents live in the area but dad has always been a DIY guy.
If you don’t know anyone in the area, it’s incredibly useful. If you know people in the area who already have it and will search for you, use them. Or use their recommendations.
Personally, I would think it worthwhile for a 1-year subscription for a very large project.
I’m in Indianapolis, where it was founded and is still headquartered. It’s a fantastic service here - it’s very much the defacto place to go to get a good reference. It’s $7.50/month here.
Oooh, I’m in San Jose too and I happen to know a great contractor! He did all our baths and our next door neighbors’ master bath too. He also did all the recovery from a flood we had (including a new staircase) and is in the process of re-doing our kitchen (we’re doing it in phases for various reasons). Plus there have been various other small projects over the years. He’s practically family now, we’re even FB friends.
If you PM me, I’ll give you his name, number and website. Heck, you can even come over and check out his work. He’s a general contractor but has a trusted group of guys he works with and his own particular specialty is custom cabinetry.
Join for a month, dig around and get lists of all the contractors you may ever need (plumbers, electricians, landscapers, etc…), then quit after a month.
I found a lot of good names that way. But to keep paying every month is very expensive and pointless.
I second this suggestion - a good, reputable professional will be able to find you more of the same. If you don’t have even one guy you like and trust because you’re new to the area, then maybe try asking neighbors, or try Angie’s list for research and then drop the subscription.
I checked into Angie’s List a few times, but each time I ended up objecting to the model: that I have to pay for the privilege of providing them content that they then sell to others.
I use primarily Kudzu, and it has worked well as a starting point. Still, by far the best experiences have been with personal referrals.