Angie's List in Chicago (Oak Park, Prospect Heights: how much, home, contractors)

[Gemini1963]

Hi.

I've read that Angie's List's value seems to vary from city to city. Does anyone here have an opinion they'd like to share about Angie's List for Chicago? We've just moved back to Chicago and will be looking for all sorts of services in the next year or so (various types of home maintenance, and also doctors, dentists, vets).

Thank you!

[Gunner0325]

I love it....I think it's totally worth the annual fee. Instead of guessing on a contractor, doctor, dentist, etc., you can look up and see all the good or bad reports on them in Angie's list. Angie's list is the first place I go if I need any work done. It's great too because you can see what people paid for the service to get an idea of what a project might cost and stuff like that...highly recommend it

[chet everett]

In my experience the entire metro region is just TOO BIG for Angie's List to have decent coverage. I mean if some carpentry project went well for somebody in Sauganash and I expect that same contractor to be comfortable driving fromm their homebase in Prospect Heights to someplace like Pilsen or even Oak Park I am NOT being realistic....

[Gemini1963]

Thanks for both replies. I know what you mean about the bigness of the area, and that is sort of why I am interested in the list, actually. So many recommendations seem to show up on-line (on free searches like Yelp, etc.) for services oriented to the north side, but we are in Beverly, so that makes me have the travel-time concerns that you're talking about. I believe you can narrow the Angie's List searches to be within x miles of your zip code, which may help (but it's only helpful if the list feedback itself is generally reliable).

Thanks again.

[chet everett]

And in my experience with Angie's List in Chicago there is definate bias toward the north side, and W /NW suburbs in terms of who is using these interwebs...

[Suburban Mom of 2 Kids]

For what I was looking for. It's a great concept, but never completely fulfilled its objectives. The depth of contractors wasn't there.

AND, in my opinion, they will market you to death to try and get you to return, which is a definite no-no from my perspective.

[paytonc]

Originally Posted by Suburban Mom of 2 Kids

AND, in my opinion, they will market you to death to try and get you to return, which is a definite no-no from my perspective.

My experience as well. I'm highly suspicious of any business that makes it impossible to cancel, or requires that you go through some ridiculously complicated process to opt out of things like "Angie's Classic Cars" (I mean, really, how much cross-selling do they even do?).

Never, ever again.