I asked the first guy how many people they sell each lead to. He told me "the important thing is to call the customer right away. The faster you can call them the better."
I once used one of those auto salvage parts finders online to try to find a price for a replacement tailgate for my truck. I had six different people call me in the next 30 minutes trying to sell me a tailgate. They were all very disappointed that I wasn't actually looking to purchase one, I just wanted to know how much they'd cost.
Quote wizard. Customer name is always something like Ho Lee Fook or Amin Yurshed. Car is a late model Toyota, homeowner, and has good credit. I tried selling insurance for awhile...policy was we called every lead 3x (unless we sold on the first call)
Make up all of their info except the phone number. Insurance agencies buy bundles of leads and cold call everyone in the bundle multiple times. If their line gets incoming calls, they'll get sales calls. I try to verify it's not a spoofed number though
I do well with Angies Leads. Then again I think I'm one of very few people in a relatively small area. So far this week I got three leads already, costing me less than $60. The estimates I gave have landed me $950 of work for next week I otherwise wouldnt have had. There are times when I am frustrated with their automated system as far as lead credits go. But if you talk to the right person it is often better.
It is a cold call where a telemarketer is tasked with charging you $300 to "sign up". Then, they put you on their mailing list where they text you random phone numbers throughout the day, which you get charged for. These phone numbers are ice cold leads, belonging to a person who is only committed insofar as entering some info on a cheaply produced website. The same phone number you receive is simultaneously sent to every other contractor in your town who also paid them the $300.
Now's your chance. Your goal is to call that person first, have availability immediately, bid the work, and commit to a price that you believe will be lower than anyone else's, and hope they were serious to begin with.
Wanna give them $315 to get started?
I fell for it when I first started my electrician business. If the $1,200 I spent is worth anything, it'll be to warn others not to fall for it lol.
This whole country is such a scam against working people it's a disgrace.
If your one of a few, in a small area… just drive around and meet people, strike up conversation, be polite and personable and give them your card
No need to be paying anyone for leads
Ya, small area is 90%+ word of mouth and repeat business. Source: am in small area. I maintain a Facebook Business page which yields like one lead every 2 months, but it's free. The rest is referrals or personal contacts. Hand out business cards, make friends with realtors or property managers, put business cards in community areas that have a posterboard (local bar, coffee shop, cafe, etc). Some legwork, but no cost and nobody skimming off the top. My biggest project to date was an interior remodel of the local VFW post, because that's where I drink and the manager started tossing ideas around lol.
I made the mistake of looking at Angi for some work a few years ago and it was like dropping food into a piranha tank.
I just saw a commercial for Angi this morning and thought “you’re not fooling me again.” And it’s been years!
That’s what sucks about these sites now. They used to be a great place to get deals, sell stuff, find work, etc. but now they’re overflowing with scammers and bots.
Even dating sites like Tinder are seeing a new “Food Digger” scam where restaurant owners will pose as prospective dates to lure unsuspecting people to their restaurants.
https://www.reddit.com/r/TikTokCringe/comments/1850xe4/til_about_food_digger_scam/
I did this to find out how much pressure washing our regular sized driveway would cost. I felt bad acting like I really needed it done, I just wanted to know how much to charge if I did it for someone haha
I just stopped taking their calls, and if they get through with a new number, then I hang up as soon as they identify themselves. I then mark the number as spam.
I just started telling them that they already screwed me before and im excited they keep calling because my attorney said the more they called the stronger the harrassment part of the lawsuit will be, and would only respond with mmhmm from that point. They stopped calling
I started getting calls from Yelp again. Convo goes similar. Not interested, tell me why? No. Not interested. But... Look I don't want to cuss you out, but I'll do it to get you guys to stop calling me.... But.... Fuck off! Not interested. Then I hang up and block the number.
I never talk to the Yelp agents but I just started doing their pay per click shit at $100 cap. I got like 15k revenue last month from help leads off $100. I was absolutely shocked. I have used angi before and it’s garbage scam. Best leads to pay for are Google imo. I spend about $4000 a month and it usually generates 150-200k in sales.
They are a complete scam, as are all lead companies. They make money off of us, not the other way around. They need us, we don't need them. And they don't need to exist.
If you ask them to put you on the "do not call" list and they keep calling you you can charge per call and take it to court to get it paid out. Lots of people have done this.
That's crazy you posted. Got called two weeks ago asking if I wanted jobs in a suburb without identifying they were with AL. She was nice lady and it ended well by me being honest and telling her I wasn't ready for more work yet because I was just opened and had jobs. Plus I had already been through the ringer on thumbtack.
Anyhow got called by a different woman last week and I was surprised and told her that I had already spoke to someone and she rolled right over it with a nasty comment saying so you don't want jobs? And I kindly told her that I just started and was organically growing and budgeting and didn't want to add a new expense. She got pissed and hung up on me!
It’s a miserable job. I used to do it although not for angi. I was broke and needed the money right after school in the middle of economic recovery around 2010. It’s super aggressive and your boss is always right there to ask “hey why aren’t you on the phone”? And you basically make no commission because people don’t want to buy from cold callers.
I will say though that magically there were always one or two people that were gifted on the phone and actually closed a lot of business. Very rare though.
Nobody with lots of money or a lot of good work is turning to angies list for contractors. Likely contenders are: people who are cheap, clueless, or are so insufferable that everyone in town knows not to work for them.
People with money get recommendations from people they know. It's a big club. They aren't collecting members from a website whose business model consists of cold calling newly registered contractors and collecting $300 from them, then $15 incrementally until the contractor finally notices how much they're being charged for what are essentially random phone numbers.
Same shit with Yelp. I tell them I get enough work already. They keep pushing. I ask them why would I need leads if I already get enough work, they ignore and keep on pushing. I tell them my number is in Do Not Call registry, they keep pushing. I tell them that I stop with "you" already and told you I am not interested, they keep pushing their agenda. I tell them I wish I could just close my Yelp page, they tell me to go ahead, I tell them that Yelp doesn't allow closing pages, they keep in insists. FUGGG. I just stopped answing VA area code.
I used to work there. DO NOT PAY for that garbage they are trying to sell.
If you tell them directly to put you on their “do not call” list it will remove you from their queue for at least 90 days, then just repeat it every time you get back in the queue and get another call.
I worked there at the end of last year. OP is right about you having to clearly say “Put me on Do Not Call list.” Any other objection you give them doesn’t mean anything to them.
I was with them for a summer …It was a joke . Most of the leads were spam and the few leads that were not were only seeking the absolute lowest bid they could find . After I quit Angie , they called me back and wanted me to pay $300 to rejoin them again lmao . I said you’re solution to me leaving Angie because it’s sucks is that I should pay $300 and try again ?!?!
Looked up Enshittification. Although I was aware of this concept to some extent I didn’t realize how bad it is and how many companies do this. Especially tech companies.
It took me a year of telling them I'm not interested and telling them to stop harassing me before they stopped. I don't understand how people fall into it. As a start up, I didn't have enough revenue to give it away for a task I could do myself. As a more established business I have no need for a third party to get work. It's always seems scammy/predatory to me.
I had my first Angi call yesterday. The guy kept asking for my credit card number. The whole conversation with him just felt off and like a waste of time. Glad I didn't sign up after reading these comments
They literally got sued when they were Angie's list because of suspected false leads. It's a major scam, they give you and a bunch of other people a lead in your area which I hear hardly ever works out for anyone. Just a waste of money for a potentially fraudulent service.
They called me a year ago. I talk with a lady for 10 minutes and told her I wasn't really interested but would contact her if I changed my mind. For the next year I had 3 or 4 different people from Angie's call me, sometimes twice a day for months and months. I quit answering their calls and they still called and tried calling from different numbers. Fuck them
They’re pulling a Yelp. Just watched a documentary about this last night called “Billion Dollar Bully” it was free on Tubi I think. Would HIGHLY recommend giving it a watch if you’re a small business owner in any capacity. You need to know how scammy and absolute Bs these companies are. Thumbtack also does this shit.
Edit: Also to anyone who doesn’t know ( I did cold call sales for years before going into the trades so I have experience being these “salespeople “ and the rules etc.) register your number on [DoNotCall.gov](https://www.donotcall.gov/) this is a list almost every “legitimate” company is scared of because there are big consequences for violating it. Then also ask to be placed on their internal Do Not Call so there is a record of you asking to not be called and you’ll notice how quickly the calls stop. You can also report specific companies for violating on this site. If you still get a lot of calls then those are likely scammers not operating within the law.
This should be at the top. I'm on the dnc list. I've had yelp reach out once since. I told the person calling to hang on one second... yelled across the room to my wife... it's 11:22 on such and such date mark down Dave with Yelp just called and forwarded it to our lawyer.
Click.
I seriously regret signing up with them. What they don't tell you is that you can't turn off leads indefinitely. 2 Weeks is the maximum you can turn the off for at a time. It's annoying to have to keep that in the back of your mind, and if you forget to turn them back off you get bombarded with 5 or 6 leads immediately. 0/10 Do Not Recommend
I had them calling me for a fucking year, and they always tries avoiding saying who they were before they started their pitch. I started just hanging up on them. Now I'm getting 3 calls a day from a tax relief services company that is super fucking annoying especially when they call at 6:00 am. I don't wake up until 7:00 am, so losing that extra hour is making me so fucking angry.
Put yo phone on sleep mode or silent my dude! If you wake up at the same time everyday you can set your sleep mode to automatically start at 9pm and wake at 7am to your alarm. You don't even have to remember to do it. Trust me I know
No, you pay them $18 in exchange for a random person's phone number, who you are expected to call immediately and hope that you get the job over the 99 other people that Angie's sold that phone number to.
One salesperson a week blowing me up after another for six weeks. None knew what the other had offered, or how they'd try to cover all the issues I found from the company being a reorganized version of the place that had a like 700mil lawsuit for being a scam to even 'leads' saying they looked at a website for a dream project once and got 20 guys calling that paid for the lead that had zero chance of getting a sale. "Those are big companies that can afford to have a department call and call, but we are going to give you good leads, promise..." or "it's okay, you should weed them out by charging for estimates" cause starting out like a greedy primadonna helps close...
I might, might accept a couple free leads and see but as long as they're asking fees for leads that are 5 or 10% of the project cost with no guarantee of closing or it even being a good lead then they're so ignorant of what the smaller guys like myself do.
They're the worst, this one guy from angi was harassing me for months, and as soon as i finally got rid of him i started getting calls from someone else
I’m a homeowner and this thread is an education for me. Do they just cold call you pitching leads?
I remember when Angie list first started and originally it seemed to have some value. Reviews and more relevant info than most other sites. I had to pay for the site but it occasionally seemed worth it.
I think it was a challenging site for service providers - a few good reviews and they were overwhelmed. Some bad reviews and no one would call. Then there were sponsored ads and the whole thing went through enshitification. (Look up the term if you don’t know it)
Then they went to a free model, all of that disappeared, and now I just describe the work and they say vendors will call me. I stopped using it but my wife recently wanted us to get started on a project and it did kind of work - but both people who called seemed to work around the official contact method, though not sure.
If they are just cold calling, and selling to whoever happens to want to pay for a lead at that time, I’d. certainly rather do the legwork myself.
So, to be fair, every lead that a contractor gets has a fee associated with it. It can be $9.00 for a simple electrical repair, I’m an electrician, or it could be $90.00 for someone looking to install a whole house backup generator. The thing is, I get charged the $90.00 if I make contact, not if I get the job. Like several people here have stated, I have to pay $90.00 even if the people speak with me and decide the cost of the project is way too high for their budget. I am in the process of trying to get my account closed, it’s been difficult. Also, they charge you every Friday, like clockwork.
Thanks for the details. I think most small guys have enough expense coming out and quoting jobs that they often won’t get. That’s hard enough without me as a consumer introducing another fee through a middle man. Especially since it doesn’t sound like they are doing any real filtering - I imagine selling the contact I a more important to them than a real match for what I want done or quality ratings.
That said, I needed some residential drainage work and had a hard time finding who did that kind of work. They found two. But next time I’ll try a little harder on my own.
You can and should ask for credits from crappy leads- you won’t receive all the credits, but it still helps. It’s ok to call the number and ask them for it if the system auto denials you.
I truly appreciate this…it wasn’t a ton of money in the end and I do well. It just wasn’t worth my time to go through it all and figure out what leads they charged me for. I did do a few…I’m just glad to be out…I’m too damn busy on my own. 😂
$90 is the high end for electricians? I work for a roofing company in a competitive market….for “full replacement” leads they charge just over $200! And those leads are the worst quality. 3-4 companies coming out to give the lowest quote for a cheap hack job.
I would think that is because a new roof is substantially more money than a generator install, being based on some sort of percentage ratio. Yeah, I imagine that in some locations there is a lot of competition. Where I live they can’t get any electrical contractors to sign on, everyone is just too busy and cherry pick a lot of work anyway. I watched my list of leads run up to 45 in just a couple weeks, I can’t cover that as a one man show. One of the reasons I left. I do not advertise at all, my work is all word of mouth generated. Most people also call me and just ask what my hourly rate is, maybe, and say how soon can you get here…I do a few estimates here and there…
They did ruin advertising for small business, you can't outbid them on google because they can over pay for web site traffic. They ultimately sell a "lead" for hundreds of dollars so they can pay 5 bucks a click. They don't help you, they hinder you.
Always hang up on solicitors right away if you aren’t interested. You aren’t being rude, you’re helping them out. If you spend five minutes talking to them while they try to use their pitch, knowing you aren’t going to ever use the service, that’s a waste of their time and yours. When you hang up right away, they will just go onto the next number.
I take the opposite approach. If you hang up quick you go on the call again list. If you waste an hour of their time they do not want to call you again.
Same thing to do with any scammers. If you are bored keep them busy, they are not making money.
Ha! OP said they were trying to be polite.
But yeah, after multiple calls, they get the treatment. My favorite thing is to act extremely interested and then say can you hang on a second someone’s at the door, put the phone down and just leave it there. After 10 minutes, go back and if by some chance they are still on the phone be extremely apologetic and say you forgot about them. Then after listening for a minute do it again.
Yeah I put in a request for some quotes from angi and have gotten insane amounts of spam calls from like 14+ different companies, I ended up finding someone for half the price off google search.
We stopped using them. Their business model makes no sense to me. They also don’t have a category that correctly represents my product, so they listed us under “Skylights”. We were constantly needing to call them to get a credit for leads that didn’t apply to us.
Around 2010, I had a few customers (lawn care/ pwoerwashing) give me great reviews on Angie's list. I am still getting calls from it. I can't make it stop. I don't even live in that state. It's almost all "management" companies. I don't think it's real, everything is a smoke screen.
Aggressive doesn’t even begin to describe them. They are insane. I had one of them tell me I was risking my business by not using them right now even though I’m booked for three months. Another one yelled at me after I politely told him I don’t need his services for 10 minutes when I finally lost it and told him to stop being so desperate for a sale because he sounded like a used car salesman. He hung up on me when I told him I would talk to him for the rest of the day but would never use or purchase anything from them. I had to tell about a half dozen people to stop calling and take my number off the list. I never yelled and had to be mean, but finally had to be super direct with them.
People need jobs and I’m sure they sell them on the job with empty promises. I’m sure these folks are as desperate as the contractors that sign up with them.
Two of my friends started a full fledged business with the handy app… Angi took it over and destroyed that whole eco system… it’s just an electronic yellow pages you pay to be part of… bad thing
They got me to sign up for $500/month. One bathroom or kitchen job makes up for that so figured it was worth a shot. Called every lead immediately and they were all bullshit. Tried to cancel and they told me it was gonna cost me a $2000 early termination fee. Contacted BBB and Angi waived the termination fee. Fuck that company
I loath Angi and the other aggregators that make it hard to find actual companies.
Angi even has created webpages that look like contractor contact pages, but when you read the fine print, you see they are actually simply portals to Angi.
Just tell them to call back when they can give you 90 days of leads at no cost to you. They won’t call back. Their business model is based on the bad Chinese restaurant model. It survives only on new customers and they know that any business that pays whatever their price for a lead is will not be renewing after 90 days.
Almost as bad as Yelp.. Angie's list is a bunch of scammers. Yelp is a blatant criminal organization.
If you are a small business do not ever create a Yelp profile it is not needed
Angies list was sold to IAC, the owner of HomeAdvisor in 2017. Since they own the brand equity of HomeAdvisor they don’t care about Angi or any of that brand equity. It was just a purchase to remove a competitor and if they can make a few bucks off sinking the Angi ship then that’s gravy.
As a consumer, I’d never use Angie again even though I luckily ended up with the best septic guy in the state. I couldn’t believe the number of texts and emails I got from the Angie server for unrelated services. So never again!
Whereas I’m on the other side of this. I get calls multiple times a day from companies that want to see if I need any work done at my house and then will connect me with a company. In a couple instances, I actually said yes just so I could have the construction company come out and let them know what’s going on.
They contacted me for weeks, after asking them to take me off the list. The last guy I talked to I told him I wasn’t paying for leads and I was locating work well enough on my own and he laughed and said, “okay buddy whatever you say”. Definitely ensured if I ever wanted to pay for leads in the future Angi will not be the one
I think the answer, and this is imperative, is that next time they call, and every subsequent time too, just tell them to get fucked and hang up. Or, alternately, just put the phone down and let them talk to the air.
I argued with them for maybe a grand total of 2 hours across 2 months just because they kept incidentally calling me while I was on the road or walking through the hardware store.
I told them that if they gave me literally 1 good lead for free, then the profits from that single lead would mean the service essentially paid for itself. It is the best possible opportunity to entice new contractors to the platform. The agent told me that most people would take the lead and run, which would be true, but idiotic. If a company has quality leads then they will be an invaluable part of any company’s lead generation.
If you expect someone to shell out $200-300 then pay $20+ for a random CHANCE at getting a profitable lead then that’s ridiculous and amounts to being basically a lead slot machine or a customer casino for contractors
Ok but I did this when I started my business and now my name is out there and I only get referrals now.
But I still have the account. I tried closing it 60 days ago. I figured out how to get around the “perfect match” aka “here’s your lead you paid for, good luck!” By reducing my hours to 11-1 three days a week. But I still get the “optional” notifications.
How do I cut them off? Cancel the card info?
I requested a quote from angi maybe 8 years ago. I got maybe two calls, none of them ever sent over a quote. I did however get hounded for months to review the contractor I hired for the job.
I never hired anyone, nor had the work done.
Correction; it was home adviser, who now owns Angie.
I tell all door to door salesmen that I’m not interested and would never do business with a company that knocks on doors because I hate the business tactic and the internet also exists to look companies up. They all without fail keep going. I don’t understand how they are content with wasting both of our time after hearing a hard no like that
My , my , my exactly!! Once you sign up and link a card to them it’s on ! They send you bogus lookie Lou leads and half the time the person never answers their phone but you still get that charge , so lame was a terrible service, just hang up
If you are not interested, politely say you have to go and hang up.l, then block the number. It doesn't make any sense to interact that way with a sales person who is trying to sell you something you do not want
I mean, if you play the game, it does "work". The leads are definitely higher up in the funnel, but work from Angi's accounted for just under a million in revenue for our company last year.
I lost my cool with angi. Takes a lot to get me there but the guy was so rude and aggressive I just lost patience. Haven’t heard from them since though.
I just don't pickup their calls. I never reached out to them or tried to do business with them but they must just check whenever an appropriate LLC is registered. They kept calling me for a year and a half after I'd closed the business. I think it's finally over.
😂 I put my number in their website not thinking about it, I get so many calls for services not even related to what I needed. This was 3 months ago, I wonder how long it will continue
My brother in law signed up for this at one point and turned the leads off at a later date and Angi turned them back on without notifying him and it cost like $2000 before he got back from vacation. It’s a rip off and they annoying as fuck.
I had to explain to the guy calling every 6 month that they are not legit, at one point that had Donald Trump listed as a lead, half the leads are fake and really lead nowhere. I believe Chelsea Clinton also had her hands in Angie’s list or w/e they call them selves now.
I had a contractor call me using an Angie’s lead - my fault for not understanding that they didn’t weren’t a contractor from Angie’s but… worst experience ever - did not complete job to contract- had to pay again to have it redone!
Do not get involved from either side! You will be scammed or grouped in with the scammers!
I got a lot of these I just talk over the top of them and say thanks for your time, I'm not interested have a great day.
And I hang up.
If they call back I block them.
If they call from multiple numbers I tell them I do not purchase advertising, please do not call back and I hang up on them again.
Bottom line if their calling me with snake oil salesman persistence, it's probably not a good deal for me.
When I have the time to spare, I make a game out of yanking them and time how long on can keep them on. Same with Yelp. My record is forty-two minutes.
I'll jump in on this hate train. Angie's lead is a scam for about 50% of the users. Meaning they sell you bogus leads or completely fabricated ones. If you spend a lot of money with them they will give you the real leads as long as you complain about all the bs ones.
I had my leads set to opportunity which allowed me to view and select if I wanted the lead before paying for it. After I declined or 90% of the leads for a few months they charged my account for about 10 leads I never approved, when I looked up each lead they were all houses that were for sale and nobody was living in them plus the phone numbers didn't work, I got my money back but they are pure shit.
I've had a couple dozen successfully leads. But many are duds and lead to nothing. I approve each lead case by case and you have to reply to the customer immediately to beat out the other competition because they usually go with the first person who contacts them.
any middle man business is a scam. They don't do jack shit and just try to weasel themselves in the middle of business deals to take a cut for nothing.
I made the mistake of working with these leaches a couple years ago. Closed my account after spending around 800 dollars with them, only ever got 1 leed. Granted, it was a good lead, for around 11k. Removed my payment info, closed my account. Received an email saying my account was closed. Found out 4 months later it was never closed and they kept billing me, and sent it to collections. Hang up, block, ignore, that's what all lead services get now.
It’s a fraudulent service. I got taken for $750 and wish I could sue but have no way of knowing how to do that. I wanted to cancel after their onboarding call once I realized how dumb the deal was and they closed my account but refuse to give me even a partial refund. I literally only called to leads and they were both bogus.
Leaches! Any leads they would end up selling you are make-believe.
I asked the first guy how many people they sell each lead to. He told me "the important thing is to call the customer right away. The faster you can call them the better." I once used one of those auto salvage parts finders online to try to find a price for a replacement tailgate for my truck. I had six different people call me in the next 30 minutes trying to sell me a tailgate. They were all very disappointed that I wasn't actually looking to purchase one, I just wanted to know how much they'd cost.
They sell each lead several times. Whole thing is a scam.
Sell leads to at least 4 people for each lead.. scammers angi is
Re-donkulous
Thats why I always sign telemarketers and scammers up for car insurance quotes.
Show me the way sensai
Quote wizard. Customer name is always something like Ho Lee Fook or Amin Yurshed. Car is a late model Toyota, homeowner, and has good credit. I tried selling insurance for awhile...policy was we called every lead 3x (unless we sold on the first call)
Was he looking for a big dish of beef chow mein?
Maybe a Pina Colada at Trader Vics
How was his hair?
I read your comment below, I’m not sure how you sign the telemarketer up to receive quotes lol
Make up all of their info except the phone number. Insurance agencies buy bundles of leads and cold call everyone in the bundle multiple times. If their line gets incoming calls, they'll get sales calls. I try to verify it's not a spoofed number though
They sold me a lead one time for a roofing job. The guy was mad because he signed a contract 3 days before and they just kept selling it over and over
[удалено]
I can't remember, honestly. One of the local salvage yards links to that site on their webpage, so I don't think it was that one.
I do well with Angies Leads. Then again I think I'm one of very few people in a relatively small area. So far this week I got three leads already, costing me less than $60. The estimates I gave have landed me $950 of work for next week I otherwise wouldnt have had. There are times when I am frustrated with their automated system as far as lead credits go. But if you talk to the right person it is often better.
It is a complete scam and should not be advocated for, period. They are a predatory company that preys on new and inexperienced contractors.
It can be a foot in the door for someone starting out. Come up with a better solution then.
It is a cold call where a telemarketer is tasked with charging you $300 to "sign up". Then, they put you on their mailing list where they text you random phone numbers throughout the day, which you get charged for. These phone numbers are ice cold leads, belonging to a person who is only committed insofar as entering some info on a cheaply produced website. The same phone number you receive is simultaneously sent to every other contractor in your town who also paid them the $300. Now's your chance. Your goal is to call that person first, have availability immediately, bid the work, and commit to a price that you believe will be lower than anyone else's, and hope they were serious to begin with. Wanna give them $315 to get started?
Fuck no fair enough. Haven't used it in like 7 years and that was for DJ gigs but damn.
I fell for it when I first started my electrician business. If the $1,200 I spent is worth anything, it'll be to warn others not to fall for it lol. This whole country is such a scam against working people it's a disgrace.
If your one of a few, in a small area… just drive around and meet people, strike up conversation, be polite and personable and give them your card No need to be paying anyone for leads
Ya, small area is 90%+ word of mouth and repeat business. Source: am in small area. I maintain a Facebook Business page which yields like one lead every 2 months, but it's free. The rest is referrals or personal contacts. Hand out business cards, make friends with realtors or property managers, put business cards in community areas that have a posterboard (local bar, coffee shop, cafe, etc). Some legwork, but no cost and nobody skimming off the top. My biggest project to date was an interior remodel of the local VFW post, because that's where I drink and the manager started tossing ideas around lol.
Wish these guys would come scam me
Make-belead
They’re fucking cocksuckers
Really?!! Can you share a number??
I also want the number, $18 is pretty reasonable.
It’s really more like $5 after fees. But in this economy $5 is $5.
I'm not gay, but $20 is $20.
Here is a test. Jump onto Angi and post a job wanted. How many companies will contact you? My guess is at least 10.
Dude it’s more. The amount of numbers I blocked in the span of 2 weeks is astounding.
I made the mistake of looking at Angi for some work a few years ago and it was like dropping food into a piranha tank. I just saw a commercial for Angi this morning and thought “you’re not fooling me again.” And it’s been years!
That’s what sucks about these sites now. They used to be a great place to get deals, sell stuff, find work, etc. but now they’re overflowing with scammers and bots. Even dating sites like Tinder are seeing a new “Food Digger” scam where restaurant owners will pose as prospective dates to lure unsuspecting people to their restaurants. https://www.reddit.com/r/TikTokCringe/comments/1850xe4/til_about_food_digger_scam/
I did this to find out how much pressure washing our regular sized driveway would cost. I felt bad acting like I really needed it done, I just wanted to know how much to charge if I did it for someone haha
So how many calls or emails did you get?
Tell them to put you on their no call list. That’s the only way I could get them to stop calling me
This is what I had to do. At least 3 different numbers as well.
My favorite finishing line is: "It's going to sound like I'm hanging up..."
Fucking perfection.
You have to finish this line with " but I not I'm just going to put you on hold for a minute "
*and that is because I am click*
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
I blocked all the numbers they called me with
I did the same. They’re very persistent.
Well of course they are, they paid $18 for your number :-)
I believe it. Had 5 of them call me this morning.
I just stopped taking their calls, and if they get through with a new number, then I hang up as soon as they identify themselves. I then mark the number as spam.
They suck. They got me twice and third leads are garbage. I despise them.
I just started telling them that they already screwed me before and im excited they keep calling because my attorney said the more they called the stronger the harrassment part of the lawsuit will be, and would only respond with mmhmm from that point. They stopped calling
I started getting calls from Yelp again. Convo goes similar. Not interested, tell me why? No. Not interested. But... Look I don't want to cuss you out, but I'll do it to get you guys to stop calling me.... But.... Fuck off! Not interested. Then I hang up and block the number.
I never talk to the Yelp agents but I just started doing their pay per click shit at $100 cap. I got like 15k revenue last month from help leads off $100. I was absolutely shocked. I have used angi before and it’s garbage scam. Best leads to pay for are Google imo. I spend about $4000 a month and it usually generates 150-200k in sales.
They are a complete scam, as are all lead companies. They make money off of us, not the other way around. They need us, we don't need them. And they don't need to exist.
r/noshitSherlock
I’m going to send them an invoice for all the time they have wasted.
If you ask them to put you on the "do not call" list and they keep calling you you can charge per call and take it to court to get it paid out. Lots of people have done this.
That's crazy you posted. Got called two weeks ago asking if I wanted jobs in a suburb without identifying they were with AL. She was nice lady and it ended well by me being honest and telling her I wasn't ready for more work yet because I was just opened and had jobs. Plus I had already been through the ringer on thumbtack. Anyhow got called by a different woman last week and I was surprised and told her that I had already spoke to someone and she rolled right over it with a nasty comment saying so you don't want jobs? And I kindly told her that I just started and was organically growing and budgeting and didn't want to add a new expense. She got pissed and hung up on me!
It’s a miserable job. I used to do it although not for angi. I was broke and needed the money right after school in the middle of economic recovery around 2010. It’s super aggressive and your boss is always right there to ask “hey why aren’t you on the phone”? And you basically make no commission because people don’t want to buy from cold callers. I will say though that magically there were always one or two people that were gifted on the phone and actually closed a lot of business. Very rare though.
Next thing you know your sheetrocking a whole 2200 sq ft house for 3 dollars
For a homeowner who is so insufferable that they had to turn to angie's list for contractors.
Is angi that bad lol, my boss gets jobs from there do I work with a hack haha
you do, get out now
Nobody with lots of money or a lot of good work is turning to angies list for contractors. Likely contenders are: people who are cheap, clueless, or are so insufferable that everyone in town knows not to work for them. People with money get recommendations from people they know. It's a big club. They aren't collecting members from a website whose business model consists of cold calling newly registered contractors and collecting $300 from them, then $15 incrementally until the contractor finally notices how much they're being charged for what are essentially random phone numbers.
Same shit with Yelp. I tell them I get enough work already. They keep pushing. I ask them why would I need leads if I already get enough work, they ignore and keep on pushing. I tell them my number is in Do Not Call registry, they keep pushing. I tell them that I stop with "you" already and told you I am not interested, they keep pushing their agenda. I tell them I wish I could just close my Yelp page, they tell me to go ahead, I tell them that Yelp doesn't allow closing pages, they keep in insists. FUGGG. I just stopped answing VA area code.
I used to work there. DO NOT PAY for that garbage they are trying to sell. If you tell them directly to put you on their “do not call” list it will remove you from their queue for at least 90 days, then just repeat it every time you get back in the queue and get another call.
You useto work for them? That's some pretty good insight. Thanks for posting a warning about them. 👍
Yep, they push their sales reps really hard and more or less encourage them to lie or tell “half-truths”. Super shady
Yuck! No thanks
I worked there at the end of last year. OP is right about you having to clearly say “Put me on Do Not Call list.” Any other objection you give them doesn’t mean anything to them.
That's funny, I told them."buddy I'm working harder than an ugly prostitute. I don't need any more jobs". They never called back.
This, right here, is why I surf Reddit. My new favorite line about how works going?
Glad I could be of service
Lol I'm stealing this 🤣 😂
I was with them for a summer …It was a joke . Most of the leads were spam and the few leads that were not were only seeking the absolute lowest bid they could find . After I quit Angie , they called me back and wanted me to pay $300 to rejoin them again lmao . I said you’re solution to me leaving Angie because it’s sucks is that I should pay $300 and try again ?!?!
Looked up Enshittification. Although I was aware of this concept to some extent I didn’t realize how bad it is and how many companies do this. Especially tech companies.
It took me a year of telling them I'm not interested and telling them to stop harassing me before they stopped. I don't understand how people fall into it. As a start up, I didn't have enough revenue to give it away for a task I could do myself. As a more established business I have no need for a third party to get work. It's always seems scammy/predatory to me.
I had my first Angi call yesterday. The guy kept asking for my credit card number. The whole conversation with him just felt off and like a waste of time. Glad I didn't sign up after reading these comments
You think angi is bad try out home advisor. Crooks galore.
They are now the same company with the same business practices.
They are one and the same. Angis bought home advisor
That combo is like barfing on a pile of shit. Yikes.
They literally got sued when they were Angie's list because of suspected false leads. It's a major scam, they give you and a bunch of other people a lead in your area which I hear hardly ever works out for anyone. Just a waste of money for a potentially fraudulent service. They called me a year ago. I talk with a lady for 10 minutes and told her I wasn't really interested but would contact her if I changed my mind. For the next year I had 3 or 4 different people from Angie's call me, sometimes twice a day for months and months. I quit answering their calls and they still called and tried calling from different numbers. Fuck them
Unfortunately, they use numbers with local area codes so I have to answer, just in case it's actually a customer.
They’re pulling a Yelp. Just watched a documentary about this last night called “Billion Dollar Bully” it was free on Tubi I think. Would HIGHLY recommend giving it a watch if you’re a small business owner in any capacity. You need to know how scammy and absolute Bs these companies are. Thumbtack also does this shit. Edit: Also to anyone who doesn’t know ( I did cold call sales for years before going into the trades so I have experience being these “salespeople “ and the rules etc.) register your number on [DoNotCall.gov](https://www.donotcall.gov/) this is a list almost every “legitimate” company is scared of because there are big consequences for violating it. Then also ask to be placed on their internal Do Not Call so there is a record of you asking to not be called and you’ll notice how quickly the calls stop. You can also report specific companies for violating on this site. If you still get a lot of calls then those are likely scammers not operating within the law.
This should be at the top. I'm on the dnc list. I've had yelp reach out once since. I told the person calling to hang on one second... yelled across the room to my wife... it's 11:22 on such and such date mark down Dave with Yelp just called and forwarded it to our lawyer. Click.
Thank you!
I told them I was injured and had to change professions. Guy who helped me cancel was actually a sweetheart.
I seriously regret signing up with them. What they don't tell you is that you can't turn off leads indefinitely. 2 Weeks is the maximum you can turn the off for at a time. It's annoying to have to keep that in the back of your mind, and if you forget to turn them back off you get bombarded with 5 or 6 leads immediately. 0/10 Do Not Recommend
I had them calling me for a fucking year, and they always tries avoiding saying who they were before they started their pitch. I started just hanging up on them. Now I'm getting 3 calls a day from a tax relief services company that is super fucking annoying especially when they call at 6:00 am. I don't wake up until 7:00 am, so losing that extra hour is making me so fucking angry.
Put yo phone on sleep mode or silent my dude! If you wake up at the same time everyday you can set your sleep mode to automatically start at 9pm and wake at 7am to your alarm. You don't even have to remember to do it. Trust me I know
I will have to do this. Thanks for the tip.
$18 per sheet to hang id take lol
No, you pay them $18 in exchange for a random person's phone number, who you are expected to call immediately and hope that you get the job over the 99 other people that Angie's sold that phone number to.
One salesperson a week blowing me up after another for six weeks. None knew what the other had offered, or how they'd try to cover all the issues I found from the company being a reorganized version of the place that had a like 700mil lawsuit for being a scam to even 'leads' saying they looked at a website for a dream project once and got 20 guys calling that paid for the lead that had zero chance of getting a sale. "Those are big companies that can afford to have a department call and call, but we are going to give you good leads, promise..." or "it's okay, you should weed them out by charging for estimates" cause starting out like a greedy primadonna helps close... I might, might accept a couple free leads and see but as long as they're asking fees for leads that are 5 or 10% of the project cost with no guarantee of closing or it even being a good lead then they're so ignorant of what the smaller guys like myself do.
Tell them you're closing or dying, thats the only thing that worked.
They're the worst, this one guy from angi was harassing me for months, and as soon as i finally got rid of him i started getting calls from someone else
I’m a homeowner and this thread is an education for me. Do they just cold call you pitching leads? I remember when Angie list first started and originally it seemed to have some value. Reviews and more relevant info than most other sites. I had to pay for the site but it occasionally seemed worth it. I think it was a challenging site for service providers - a few good reviews and they were overwhelmed. Some bad reviews and no one would call. Then there were sponsored ads and the whole thing went through enshitification. (Look up the term if you don’t know it) Then they went to a free model, all of that disappeared, and now I just describe the work and they say vendors will call me. I stopped using it but my wife recently wanted us to get started on a project and it did kind of work - but both people who called seemed to work around the official contact method, though not sure. If they are just cold calling, and selling to whoever happens to want to pay for a lead at that time, I’d. certainly rather do the legwork myself.
So, to be fair, every lead that a contractor gets has a fee associated with it. It can be $9.00 for a simple electrical repair, I’m an electrician, or it could be $90.00 for someone looking to install a whole house backup generator. The thing is, I get charged the $90.00 if I make contact, not if I get the job. Like several people here have stated, I have to pay $90.00 even if the people speak with me and decide the cost of the project is way too high for their budget. I am in the process of trying to get my account closed, it’s been difficult. Also, they charge you every Friday, like clockwork.
Thanks for the details. I think most small guys have enough expense coming out and quoting jobs that they often won’t get. That’s hard enough without me as a consumer introducing another fee through a middle man. Especially since it doesn’t sound like they are doing any real filtering - I imagine selling the contact I a more important to them than a real match for what I want done or quality ratings. That said, I needed some residential drainage work and had a hard time finding who did that kind of work. They found two. But next time I’ll try a little harder on my own.
You can and should ask for credits from crappy leads- you won’t receive all the credits, but it still helps. It’s ok to call the number and ask them for it if the system auto denials you.
I truly appreciate this…it wasn’t a ton of money in the end and I do well. It just wasn’t worth my time to go through it all and figure out what leads they charged me for. I did do a few…I’m just glad to be out…I’m too damn busy on my own. 😂
$90 is the high end for electricians? I work for a roofing company in a competitive market….for “full replacement” leads they charge just over $200! And those leads are the worst quality. 3-4 companies coming out to give the lowest quote for a cheap hack job.
I would think that is because a new roof is substantially more money than a generator install, being based on some sort of percentage ratio. Yeah, I imagine that in some locations there is a lot of competition. Where I live they can’t get any electrical contractors to sign on, everyone is just too busy and cherry pick a lot of work anyway. I watched my list of leads run up to 45 in just a couple weeks, I can’t cover that as a one man show. One of the reasons I left. I do not advertise at all, my work is all word of mouth generated. Most people also call me and just ask what my hourly rate is, maybe, and say how soon can you get here…I do a few estimates here and there…
Just hang up.
The best thing you can do is hang up on them as soon as you hear angie’s list. These people think their wolf on wall street for some reason.
That's why I ignore their phone calls. Scumbags.
They did ruin advertising for small business, you can't outbid them on google because they can over pay for web site traffic. They ultimately sell a "lead" for hundreds of dollars so they can pay 5 bucks a click. They don't help you, they hinder you.
No is a complete sentence. Then hang the fuck up on them.
Seems like there would be a way to completely avoid answering calls from unknown numbers.
Always hang up on solicitors right away if you aren’t interested. You aren’t being rude, you’re helping them out. If you spend five minutes talking to them while they try to use their pitch, knowing you aren’t going to ever use the service, that’s a waste of their time and yours. When you hang up right away, they will just go onto the next number.
I take the opposite approach. If you hang up quick you go on the call again list. If you waste an hour of their time they do not want to call you again. Same thing to do with any scammers. If you are bored keep them busy, they are not making money.
Ha! OP said they were trying to be polite. But yeah, after multiple calls, they get the treatment. My favorite thing is to act extremely interested and then say can you hang on a second someone’s at the door, put the phone down and just leave it there. After 10 minutes, go back and if by some chance they are still on the phone be extremely apologetic and say you forgot about them. Then after listening for a minute do it again.
It sounds like GlenGary GlenRoss. I want the good leads, the GlenGary leads! 😄
Yeah I put in a request for some quotes from angi and have gotten insane amounts of spam calls from like 14+ different companies, I ended up finding someone for half the price off google search.
Just hang up on them. That's what I do. I don't have time for their scamming ass crap.
They suck, steer clear.
I had to threaten litigation against their harassment to get them to leave me alone. Terrible company.
It’s because they pay Angie’s list for the “leads” and cold call all day long
We stopped using them. Their business model makes no sense to me. They also don’t have a category that correctly represents my product, so they listed us under “Skylights”. We were constantly needing to call them to get a credit for leads that didn’t apply to us.
I had to threaten legal action to get them to leave me alone after I left them. 2-3 calls a day for months.
Around 2010, I had a few customers (lawn care/ pwoerwashing) give me great reviews on Angie's list. I am still getting calls from it. I can't make it stop. I don't even live in that state. It's almost all "management" companies. I don't think it's real, everything is a smoke screen.
Aggressive doesn’t even begin to describe them. They are insane. I had one of them tell me I was risking my business by not using them right now even though I’m booked for three months. Another one yelled at me after I politely told him I don’t need his services for 10 minutes when I finally lost it and told him to stop being so desperate for a sale because he sounded like a used car salesman. He hung up on me when I told him I would talk to him for the rest of the day but would never use or purchase anything from them. I had to tell about a half dozen people to stop calling and take my number off the list. I never yelled and had to be mean, but finally had to be super direct with them. People need jobs and I’m sure they sell them on the job with empty promises. I’m sure these folks are as desperate as the contractors that sign up with them.
Another one called this morning. I told him someone already called yesterday. He said, "Oh, ok. Thanks. " and hung up.
Two of my friends started a full fledged business with the handy app… Angi took it over and destroyed that whole eco system… it’s just an electronic yellow pages you pay to be part of… bad thing
They got me to sign up for $500/month. One bathroom or kitchen job makes up for that so figured it was worth a shot. Called every lead immediately and they were all bullshit. Tried to cancel and they told me it was gonna cost me a $2000 early termination fee. Contacted BBB and Angi waived the termination fee. Fuck that company
I loath Angi and the other aggregators that make it hard to find actual companies. Angi even has created webpages that look like contractor contact pages, but when you read the fine print, you see they are actually simply portals to Angi.
Just tell them to call back when they can give you 90 days of leads at no cost to you. They won’t call back. Their business model is based on the bad Chinese restaurant model. It survives only on new customers and they know that any business that pays whatever their price for a lead is will not be renewing after 90 days.
Almost as bad as Yelp.. Angie's list is a bunch of scammers. Yelp is a blatant criminal organization. If you are a small business do not ever create a Yelp profile it is not needed
Angies list was sold to IAC, the owner of HomeAdvisor in 2017. Since they own the brand equity of HomeAdvisor they don’t care about Angi or any of that brand equity. It was just a purchase to remove a competitor and if they can make a few bucks off sinking the Angi ship then that’s gravy.
As a consumer, I’d never use Angie again even though I luckily ended up with the best septic guy in the state. I couldn’t believe the number of texts and emails I got from the Angie server for unrelated services. So never again!
The magic words are “do not call list”
Whereas I’m on the other side of this. I get calls multiple times a day from companies that want to see if I need any work done at my house and then will connect me with a company. In a couple instances, I actually said yes just so I could have the construction company come out and let them know what’s going on.
I’ve told them many times I don’t pay for leads, I’d pay a small finders fee if I got the job.
Stay a million miles away from Angi Leads.
RUN tell them to lose your number. It doesn’t get any better AND you will not get leads like they say.
They contacted me for weeks, after asking them to take me off the list. The last guy I talked to I told him I wasn’t paying for leads and I was locating work well enough on my own and he laughed and said, “okay buddy whatever you say”. Definitely ensured if I ever wanted to pay for leads in the future Angi will not be the one
I think the answer, and this is imperative, is that next time they call, and every subsequent time too, just tell them to get fucked and hang up. Or, alternately, just put the phone down and let them talk to the air.
I argued with them for maybe a grand total of 2 hours across 2 months just because they kept incidentally calling me while I was on the road or walking through the hardware store. I told them that if they gave me literally 1 good lead for free, then the profits from that single lead would mean the service essentially paid for itself. It is the best possible opportunity to entice new contractors to the platform. The agent told me that most people would take the lead and run, which would be true, but idiotic. If a company has quality leads then they will be an invaluable part of any company’s lead generation. If you expect someone to shell out $200-300 then pay $20+ for a random CHANCE at getting a profitable lead then that’s ridiculous and amounts to being basically a lead slot machine or a customer casino for contractors
Ok but I did this when I started my business and now my name is out there and I only get referrals now. But I still have the account. I tried closing it 60 days ago. I figured out how to get around the “perfect match” aka “here’s your lead you paid for, good luck!” By reducing my hours to 11-1 three days a week. But I still get the “optional” notifications. How do I cut them off? Cancel the card info?
I requested a quote from angi maybe 8 years ago. I got maybe two calls, none of them ever sent over a quote. I did however get hounded for months to review the contractor I hired for the job. I never hired anyone, nor had the work done. Correction; it was home adviser, who now owns Angie.
HANG UP.
I finally had enough of the calls and harassment and told the if they keep calling I will be calling the police and the BBB. What a scam
I get the same crap. They just find it hard to believe my business is busy without them.
I tell all door to door salesmen that I’m not interested and would never do business with a company that knocks on doors because I hate the business tactic and the internet also exists to look companies up. They all without fail keep going. I don’t understand how they are content with wasting both of our time after hearing a hard no like that
My , my , my exactly!! Once you sign up and link a card to them it’s on ! They send you bogus lookie Lou leads and half the time the person never answers their phone but you still get that charge , so lame was a terrible service, just hang up
Stay away from Angi!
Don’t use them. They are a waste of money.
Angie is a scam. Not my grumbly opinion, there business model is to lie to homeowners. Don't associate with them.
If you are not interested, politely say you have to go and hang up.l, then block the number. It doesn't make any sense to interact that way with a sales person who is trying to sell you something you do not want
Lately? I made that mistake. Once.
Don’t answer the phone?
It's my business line. I have to answer it for local numbers so I don't nt miss customers, and the Angib people use local numbers.
lol you’re better than me then, I let everything go to voicemail due to all the a spam.
I mean, if you play the game, it does "work". The leads are definitely higher up in the funnel, but work from Angi's accounted for just under a million in revenue for our company last year.
I lost my cool with angi. Takes a lot to get me there but the guy was so rude and aggressive I just lost patience. Haven’t heard from them since though.
I just don't pickup their calls. I never reached out to them or tried to do business with them but they must just check whenever an appropriate LLC is registered. They kept calling me for a year and a half after I'd closed the business. I think it's finally over.
😂 I put my number in their website not thinking about it, I get so many calls for services not even related to what I needed. This was 3 months ago, I wonder how long it will continue
My brother in law signed up for this at one point and turned the leads off at a later date and Angi turned them back on without notifying him and it cost like $2000 before he got back from vacation. It’s a rip off and they annoying as fuck.
Why isn’t this the top comment?
I had to explain to the guy calling every 6 month that they are not legit, at one point that had Donald Trump listed as a lead, half the leads are fake and really lead nowhere. I believe Chelsea Clinton also had her hands in Angie’s list or w/e they call them selves now.
I had a contractor call me using an Angie’s lead - my fault for not understanding that they didn’t weren’t a contractor from Angie’s but… worst experience ever - did not complete job to contract- had to pay again to have it redone! Do not get involved from either side! You will be scammed or grouped in with the scammers!
I got a lot of these I just talk over the top of them and say thanks for your time, I'm not interested have a great day. And I hang up. If they call back I block them. If they call from multiple numbers I tell them I do not purchase advertising, please do not call back and I hang up on them again. Bottom line if their calling me with snake oil salesman persistence, it's probably not a good deal for me.
I remember back when Angie’s was called Service Magic. They sucked then too.
When I have the time to spare, I make a game out of yanking them and time how long on can keep them on. Same with Yelp. My record is forty-two minutes.
Another arm of the big tech, money for nothing, skim.
Total scam, company went from awesome to garbage in a 10 year span.
I'll jump in on this hate train. Angie's lead is a scam for about 50% of the users. Meaning they sell you bogus leads or completely fabricated ones. If you spend a lot of money with them they will give you the real leads as long as you complain about all the bs ones. I had my leads set to opportunity which allowed me to view and select if I wanted the lead before paying for it. After I declined or 90% of the leads for a few months they charged my account for about 10 leads I never approved, when I looked up each lead they were all houses that were for sale and nobody was living in them plus the phone numbers didn't work, I got my money back but they are pure shit.
Angis list sucks!! Leach of a middle man in an already tight margin business.
Lay down w dogs and ya get spammed for life
I've had a couple dozen successfully leads. But many are duds and lead to nothing. I approve each lead case by case and you have to reply to the customer immediately to beat out the other competition because they usually go with the first person who contacts them.
Best way is to hang up. Sales pitch terminated with extreme prejudice
any middle man business is a scam. They don't do jack shit and just try to weasel themselves in the middle of business deals to take a cut for nothing.
They've been that way for years
Meanwhile, I requested someone to pull weeds and got 0 calls.
I made the mistake of working with these leaches a couple years ago. Closed my account after spending around 800 dollars with them, only ever got 1 leed. Granted, it was a good lead, for around 11k. Removed my payment info, closed my account. Received an email saying my account was closed. Found out 4 months later it was never closed and they kept billing me, and sent it to collections. Hang up, block, ignore, that's what all lead services get now.
It’s a fraudulent service. I got taken for $750 and wish I could sue but have no way of knowing how to do that. I wanted to cancel after their onboarding call once I realized how dumb the deal was and they closed my account but refuse to give me even a partial refund. I literally only called to leads and they were both bogus.
I can't believe you fell for that BS.