"I received a recommendation for a local well maintenance company from home advisor.
The company was Pruitt and associates.
The people who are involved with this company made me feel reassured I had made a great choice in choosing them for the service I needed. They were concerned and dedicated to helping me and my kids get the help we needed! I can not say how great of a company the have and how glad I stumbled onto home advisor and found Pruitt and associates!!! "
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Class Action Filed Against HomeAdvisor & IAC/Interactive
Class Action Filed Against HomeAdvisor & IAC/Interactive
Chimicles & Tikellis has filed a class action lawsuit against Defendants, IAC/Interactive, a media and Internet conglomerate, and its operating business, HomeAdvisor (formerly ServiceMagic), for deceptive, coercive and unfair business practices related to HomeAdvisor’s lead generation services and purported benefits of Membership Programs.
HomeAdvisor is a nationwide home services digital marketplace that claims to help connect homeowners with persons and businesses in the HomeAdvisor network who provide home improvement services (the “Home Service Professionals”). While the service is free to homeowners, Home Service Professionals are required to purchase an annual membership in order to join the HomeAdvisor network, plus pay an additional fee for each lead. Defendants market HomeAdvisor’s lead generation services as providing Home Service Professionals with qualified business opportunities; however, C&T has alleged on behalf of Plaintiff and a class of Home Service Professionals that Defendants acquire, generate and charge Home Service Professionals for leads that are not from targeted, serious, qualified and/or project-ready homeowners. As a result, Home Service Professionals paid an annual fee to join a HomeAdvisor Membership Program and paid hundreds and thousands of dollars for leads comprised of: wrong or disconnected phone numbers and contact information; persons who never even heard of HomeAdvisor; stale leads; contacts for homes that were listed for sale; and contacts for vacant or non-existent residences.
Defendants’ deceptive and fraudulent practices do not end with the sale of bogus leads. In addition to maintaining and employing systemically flawed and deficient processes to generate leads, the complaint alleges that Defendants have adopted fundamentally unfair business practices in dealing with Plaintiff and the class of Home Service Professionals including, but not limited to, the following: (1) using heavy-handed and coercive means to solicit new members for Membership Programs; (2) concealing and omitting material information about substantial monthly fees for mHelpDesk, a startup, cloud-based field service software; (3) blatantly disregarding Home Service Professionals’ lead parameters and budgets; (4) distributing the same lead to more than four Home Service Professionals; and (5) adopting uniform internal procedures intended to deny and discourage refunds and/or lead credits.
If you or someone you know purchased a Membership Program from HomeAdvisor and have experienced any of the problems described above or in the complaint linked below, please complete the form below or contact the attorneys for this case.
Complaint-As-Filed
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Attorneys for this case:
Nicholas E. Chimicles
Kimberly Donaldson Smith
Stephanie E. Saunders
Haverford Office
361 West Lancaster Ave
One Haverford Centre
Haverford, Pennsylvania 19041
Toll Free: ***-***-****
Voice: ***-***-****
Fax: ***-***-****
HERE IS THE LINK : https://chimicles.com/class-action-filed-homeadvisor-iacinteractive/
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"I am part of a franchise system and they recommend using home advisor. I guess because HA gives them a lot of money. They are experts at ripping people off. They say that they will not bill you for bad leads but when I have called leads and their system does not work, or the telephone number is disconnected, or the customer says that they did not place a request, those are not valid reasons for not getting credit for a lead. BS. The contractors that stay on HA are the shady ones that do things under the table and are not as legit as it seams."
"This is the biggest scam ever!! Fake phone numbers, and dead end leads. They charge the contractor for leads that lead nowhere. Do yourself a favor and avoid this company at all cost. Ask a friend, pick up the phone book, call the chamber of commerce to find a contractor.do not use Home advisor!!"
"over priced and completely unprofessional...
A rep called, didn't introduce himself as a home advisor rep, just his first name. I had never spoke to this person previously and he left me a voicemail that, "he was 'cutting me loose' because he hadn't heard back from me." (word for word quote)
We're in 2 states and do high 6 figures... so, thanks, but I'll be cutting you loose.
Disgusting biz practices."
"I open an account with Home Advisor twice, and both times was unsatisfied with their policies. They charge me several times for not existing customers in total $250. When I ask them to return me money back, they said that they will deposit them on their account for me. I asked them to deposit on my account because it is my money, but they did not do it. After many hours of conversation with many representatives I canceled service with them. Also, they send me many leads with not existing customers."
"Seriously... this is not a joke. If you go into nearly any major US town on Craigslist and look for a flood of ads in all the home advisor categories - painting, plumbing, electrical, roofing, etc., and look for you will find a bunch using random 800 and 8xx numbers. All the ads are very non descript but pretend to be a local company and says things you would expect such as we are licensed, insured, bonded and various years of experience. Call any of those 800 numbers and you end up at the Home Advisor switchboard. Here is an example
Call us now ***-***-****
Our company established in 1999 remodeling residential and commercial building remodel to kitchen, bathroom, room addition, interior and exterior painting, roofing roof replacement and repair, plumbing, electrical electric upgrades, plumbing repipe, all masonry, water extraction, flooding, termite and fire repair remediation, insurance company negotiation, remodeling to all remodel.
The tell tale sign is they always have almost the same words in the title of the ad, the licensing section and the location (town) fields. Copy any of those into Google and you see hundreds across the country all on Craigslist.
DO NOT DO BUSINESS WITH HOME ADVISOR. Just put your own ad on Craigslist. That's all they do. Screen cap those ads because the company needs a class action filed on it because I guarantee anyone who paid them money to find out they troll craigslist for leads deserves their money back."
"Chris, Matt and their team were excellent. They arrived when they said they would, completed the job and cleaned up the entire area. We would highly recommend them."
"I signed on with HomeAdvisor, looking for a cheaper way to advertise for my company. I spoke with Fern from HomeAdvisor several times in the process of signing up. She guaranteed that I would only be charged for the leads that I accepted, and would NOT be charged for phone calls I did not answer. I asked her several times during the recorded conversations if this was true. She assured me again and again that I would not be charged for these unanswered calls. So I decided to give it a try. Immediately, I started getting overly inundated with phone calls. I was even scheduled onto jobs that I knew nothing about. Because of this, I decided to put the account on hold for a month. Once the month pause ended, I asked to only be given 3 leads per week. This did not happen and the phone calls continued to pour in. Over the course of the 3 months I was with them, I answered only two calls, assuming that I was not going to be charged for any of the other leads. After receiving my credit card bill at the end of three months with HomeAdvisor, I was astonished to find that they had charged me for every single call that came in, regardless of whether I answered them or not. This total came to $2,167.90. I called them to find out what was going on and they told me I should have known about this. I was shocked and angry. I asked for a copy of the taped conversations with Fern and was told that I would only be able to get it through a subpoena in court. Fern also told me that the customer was aware of a trip charge for estimates. The commercials for HomeAdvisor even state that it is totally free for customers to use. During the first estimate I went on, I asked the customer if this was true. She said she was completely unaware of any trip charge. This company is a sham. Don't ever use it. Any business owner or contractor looking to advertise for their company should go with Angie's List. It is reliable and MUCH more affordable."
"I would not recommend Home Advisors to people who want to hire quality people to do work or jobs in their homes.
I do not believe Home Advisors properly screens contractors or people they recommend to consumers who want to hire honest, quality semi-professionals or professionals to do work in their homes. It puts consumers at risk. I am speaking on a personal basis from people I have interviewed or hired from Home Advisors and they have not met my expectations on honest quality people. Then if you try to put an honest, review of your experience with someone you hired or interviewed and you do not give a 4 or 5 star review, Home Advisors will not post it. therefore others consumers can not read honest experiences from other people who have used Home Advisors so-called experts. Home advisor does not allow negative reviews on their site. They will tell you that your review does not meet their guidelines. Also, they contact the person or business you are reviewing. and if you post anything negative the business will threaten you and Home Advisor allows this."
"as business owner I join home advisor to grow my business, from beginning I ask the sales person if the customers that you send us does not answer the phone what we should do, she said you can request for credit on that leads. after 3 weeks working with them we start to receive 3 leads a day that non of them answer us, we called the leads, message them and email them but still have not got any respond. 2 weeks later after getting many lead I got really disappointed I called home advisor customer service and ask them why I should pay money for leads that we could not reach the customers, he answer me this is how we are doing business. this is the home advisor company logic. Imagine they send each lead to 4 companies and they charge us $52 each but non of us able to call them, this is the way they generate money by scamming business owner. I am really sorry for my self to waste my money and time with this terrible company.
hopefully all the business owner see this before deciding to become member with them."
"I am part owner of a roofing company. We were contacted by HomeAdvisor to be a Contractor in their system. They sold us on the fact, that they had hundreds of monthly leads in our service-coverage area that would convert at a 40% to 70% rate. Over the course of 3 weeks, we received 70 leads, and we paid an average of $20 per lead. Of those 70 leads, 60% of the so-called homeowners never returned our calls. Of those 70 leads we only gave out 10 estimates, with ZERO conversions. The remainder of the leads were in service areas that we didn't even cover nor for repairs that we even do - we asked for refunds for these leads from HomeAdvisor and they denied our request for refunds. This was the same type of lead system set up by Servicemagic which was before HomeAdvisor. We saw the writing on the wall immediately on stopped our participation in this system. If you are a Service Contractor - beware of this company, I have heard of many small contractors, who get sold on paying for these leads due to lack of business, and they are worse off. We are far better off advertising on Craigslist with free ad posting. HomeAdvisor was proven to be a worthless source of leads for what we do. "
"I went to the site about a roof repair was contacted by who they gave my name to. I talked to the man told him I wanted a quote on the repair. He send his man up on my roof and has him start the repair not giving me a quote like I asked. I called the man on the phone instead of answering the phone with saying the name company he saids hello. I told the man I needed a receipt for the work he did he told me they would email it well never got it. So I went to the website and called a different number and come to find out that the person that did my work was using there name and website on his card. I blame home advisor for sending someone out like this. The man that I talked to when I called the rear company said the he gets a call from home advisor 2 times a month and also told me that the back ground check is fake. Well after all that has happened I think he was right saying that home advisor will take anyone that will pay their fee. Don't ever use home advisor and get someone like I did."
"I dreamed of a beautiful my own bedroom since I was a child. Today my dreams comes true. Really good design and service. I told them my requirement, and they tried their best to meet my expectation."
"I am canceled my account with Home Advisor since February 2016 after many bogus leads. They still charging me almost $300.- for some advertising fee. Call them twice no change get refund and they lying and lying. They did not send any cancellation email since February but they told me I can't cancel account on the phone but with email only. They are scammer. "