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I also don't like that 70% of ther revenue comes from advertising from the people on their list that results in them ranking higher on the referral list. Not to mention unscrupulous "reputation management" companies that can burry bad reviews buy posting positive ones for a fee.
I don't beleive everything I read so take it for what it's worth. At the end of the day, I'm not paying you or anybody else for a referral. My personal network serves me well. To each their own.
I also don't like that 70% of ther revenue comes from advertising from the people on their list that results in them ranking higher on the referral list.
That sounds to me like you have not used the service. There is no notion of ranked companies. The order in which the companies appear depends on how the user chooses to sort them.
There are "graded" companies but they are graded by users, not by ad revenue. But yes, there are advertisements, coupon deals, etc.
I'm glad their revenue comes more from that than high membership fees.
Quote:
Originally Posted by North_Raleigh_Guy
I don't beleive everything I read so take it for what it's worth. At the end of the day, I'm not paying you or anybody else for a referral. My personal network serves me well. To each their own.
They bug you for reviews of places you may have never gone...constantly...and I even got phone calls nagging me for reviews....
I haven't gotten any phone calls, that's bizarre.
But the website does prompt you to add reviews, even if its a company that you only searched for, and I don't know if there's a way to turn that off. It's a minor inconvenience though, especially if you're like me and you really only login to the site once in a while.
Well as I said, word of mouth referrals can be good too, as long as the person referring them had work done that is directly relevant to what you need done. That's not always the case. Because a guy can build a good deck does not necessarily mean he is necessarily the right one to remodel a bathroom and that his crew has equal experience in both.
Yet most word of mouth referrals are "this guy is great!" and folks assume that means he'll be great on their project too, even if he's never done it before.
Angie's List lets you see a lot of detail about customer experiences with the company. Orders of magnitude more than you'll get from friends or family.
So, you're a pro-Angie's List person; got it.
And just because it's on Angie's List doesn't mean you can rely on it - there are ways to rig that system easily enough. Now, if the Angie's List people went out into the field to verify what's being reported, sort of like what Consumer Reports does, I'd think it made more sense.
Fundamentally the service itself is flawed because the only people who use it are those who pay for it and that's representative of a very small percentage of people who have relevant opinions. I also don't consider contributing members to be qualified to professionally recommend a service person or company; how do I know they're not blithering idiots or generally hard to please people?
Finally, your point about understanding the relevance of a recommendation implies that people can't form an apples-to-apples comparison without a service such as Angie's List. I have never hired a contractor to do any work without properly vetting them, including checking references and having them display more than a basic competency for the job. I think that for most people the same is true, at least in my experiences.
As I said earlier, I'd rather rely on City-Data to find what I need locally as its proven itself to be quite reliable and completely free.
Well after all, the original poster was looking for folks who had used Angie's List, I don't think he was soliciting opinions from people who had never used it yet simultaneously had strong opinions about it's value. So maybe that's the point we should focus on getting.
Quote:
Originally Posted by NYC2RDU
And just because it's on Angie's List doesn't mean you can rely on it - there are ways to rig that system easily enough.
I agree with the first part, but the last part puts forth a "could be" scenario that indicates you've never used Angie's List. Go and read their official statements on their operational procedures. If they lied about those, they could face criminal charges for collecting money under false pretenses.
A lot of nonsense has been put forth here about AL, for example them taking bribes for "rankings", giving rank preference to advertisers, getting paid for removal, etc. I think people have confused them with Google because that exact kind of thing is part of Google's business model.
As I said before, if you have had success with friends/family recommendations I say if it's not broken then no need trying to fix it.
However, on some types of major or specialty jobs, it is helpful to get 4 or more quotes. It may be hard to find enough good referrals for those types of jobs, and its even harder to get deep detail on the actual results of those projects. With AL you can often read detailed follow-ups from dozens of customers, including updates on how the results are holding up long-term.
Implying that Angie's List is defrauding their customers by not distinguishing verified members from non-members deserves a little better evidence than what has been presented so far in this thread. I don't think that kind of fraud would ever fly at a company with a few hundred employees like AL.
Well after all, the original poster was looking for folks who had used Angie's List, I don't think he was soliciting opinions from people who had never used it yet simultaneously had strong opinions about it's value. So maybe that's the point we should focus on getting.
I agree with the first part, but the last part puts forth a "could be" scenario that indicates you've never used Angie's List. Go and read their official statements on their operational procedures. If they lied about those, they could face criminal charges for collecting money under false pretenses.
A lot of nonsense has been put forth here about AL, for example them taking bribes for "rankings", giving rank preference to advertisers, getting paid for removal, etc. I think people have confused them with Google because that exact kind of thing is part of Google's business model.
As I said before, if you have had success with friends/family recommendations I say if it's not broken then no need trying to fix it.
However, on some types of major or specialty jobs, it is helpful to get 4 or more quotes. It may be hard to find enough good referrals for those types of jobs, and its even harder to get deep detail on the actual results of those projects. With AL you can often read detailed follow-ups from dozens of customers, including updates on how the results are holding up long-term.
Implying that Angie's List is defrauding their customers by not distinguishing verified members from non-members deserves a little better evidence than what has been presented so far in this thread. I don't think that kind of fraud would ever fly at a company with a few hundred employees like AL.
I'll tip my hat to you, your responses are well thought out and written. I too don't much care for unsubstantiated accusations, that's poor form and makes for a weak argument (y'know, the "I was told" or, "I heard from someone" slant). And of course, I've defended unpopular positions myself based on my own experiences and so respect your doing it.
But your last line, well, it just sort of begged for a response. I think fraud flies at companies of all shapes and sizes, particularly the bigger ones.
All this is a moot point anyway because Angie's List will switch from a subscriber based revenue model to an advertising based one soon enough. Their subscriber rate isn't building in a healthy way (they keep dropping the price in an attempt to maintain subscriber levels all while claiming healthy growth), they have a pretty credible lawsuit in play against them by their shareholders and are being investigated for securities fraud. Their service concept is viable though and eventually they'll be acquired by a larger company who will make it free to join and generate their revenue from click-through ads. And once it's free, once more people are willing to join it's inherent value will only grow.
This is an anecdotal situation that describes one reason I like Angie's List.
I once had major some fairly major work done on a property by a guy and his team who came highly recommended to me through coworkers. He was the only guy they would do business with when it came to midsized construction projects. He often had a long backlog of work, but they told me he was worth it, so I agreed to his somewhat inflated quote (that's what happens with word of mouth people who are good, they get busy and their rates go up). I waited in line, he would not be able to start for months. Fine.
He did an excellent job on the project, as expected. Delivered everything he said he would and more, while staying with the quote he gave me. Later he did a smaller job, driving a long way to take care of a problem, and charged me very little for it. I just felt lucky to have such a skilled workman available to me.
A couple of years down the road, I called him about a job I needed done on a different property. Oddly, he was almost immediately available. He came out and took a look, and since we had a bit of a friendship from the prior projects we talked about a few personal items. Specifically he told me about the divorce he was going through.
The second project turned out to be a complete disaster. Long story short, he and I cut ties. I found out later that in addition to the divorce situation, he had developed a major alcohol problem and it had taken a huge toll on his quality of work and the trust he had previously built with clients.
So much for friend and family referrals.
What I learned from that is that despite the success anyone else has had with someone in the past, including my own successes, I need to reassess and get quotes for each project individually, and make the right decision as it applies to that point in time.
As an owner of several properties, I like the ability to quickly make contact with companies that care enough to maintain their reputation online, where a major life screwup such as the above would become visible pretty fast as the customer grades would start to decline and indicate there's a problem.
When they are on Angie's List, you have a metric of their track record. With word of mouth you do not. It doesn't mean word of mouth doesn't work, it just means that I've found a better solution for my needs.
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