Contractors, what has been your experience with Home Advisor - good or bad?

I’m in 2 networking groups that exchange business referrals.  I don’t spend a dime on lead sources like home adviser. Right I stay so booked up that I’m not going to waste my money on lead generation. Just do great work, and treat people well. 

We don't use any outside company's to get clients. Our reputation speaks for itself. We get calls all the time asking us to join their team and they will get us more work then we can handle, don't need their help and don't want their help. If we are going to pay someone to get us work, we will hire an inside salesman to do that. Online referral company's always want something for nothing, its an extra expense that we do not need to spend. If you have a good client base, you shouldn't need some else to find you work....its as simple as that!

I have used Home Advisor off and on for years.  We have received some good clients from, them.  HA only sets up the web portal for the public to make the request.  If you get someone that is bad, they likely anything else a person play on their computer and they do not know what they are doing.  The leads started off reasonable and over time they have increased.  I control when I want to receive leads.  It is good place to start if you just building your business and need leads.  You control the pace of the lead, and the area they will come from.  

I have found HA to be poor at best. 40% or more are bad leads that have nothing to do with my business services. You have to spend many man hours fighting with them to try to get credits. And, I have never been able to speak to any one in upper management. I have been with them for over 1 year but, will look to find a better company. 

most of our leads come from referrals.  i can usually close 50% or more.  it took 20 appointments to close one HA lead.  Not 20 leads, but 20 actual appointments.  About 30-50% of the leads are no good.  HA is good if you need practice being in sales, not if you need to sell a job.

The guys that tell that that they do not use out side leads sources that their reputations carry them I am happy for. I hope our reputation is fine but we can not work on that alone because we are a fairly new company. We use Home Advisor ,very limited, network groups, lead generators with landing pages, social media..... There are so many resources to use but as anything there are dogs and there are high flying Eagles. Experience is the better teacher for each companies as how they market and generate leads, and it can be a costly learning experience but every company has it's own unique context as how they get their best ROI for lead generation.

It seems to me when something has a catchy phase or color people are drawn to it.  Home Adviser sounds good but may not be good. Also the internet is flooded with this type of advertising and consumers are going to all of them.

But the bottom line is getting good customers from these advertisements and you must be a reputable contractor.

Like many of the others they will send out the same job to many other contractors, I found that people that use it are mainly looking for the lowest price,you will be bidding against cutthroats,if you do a good job at a fair price that should speak for itself and you won't have to pay Home Advisors absorbent prices. Also if they say they check the credibility of the contractors why do they get so many complaints.

I subscribed to Home advisor for about a year and there were so many dead-end leads. And trying to get credit on those leads was a battle. an example; My Son Andre' ran a lead and when he arrived at the house the homeowner told him he didn't really require any services but he was in fact paid by home advisor to solicit contractors and then rate them. We don't have time for such nonsense. I would never recommend using their service.  

Hoome Advisor when i started 2 years ago was a good source of leads however a year later I was receiving
expire leads left over from previews day or by the time i received a lead and call in less tha 30 sec the customer informed us that the already take care the problem.further we could get any one to pick up the phone within a month we are able to connect with the customers only 2  out of 10 leads and inform us that they already hire someone. the other 8 leads never answer back.Big difference from the year before that was the opposite only couple calls did not work.when I call some of other professionals the experience similar problems they concern that sending fake leads.Lately i hear from another competitor
that claims that work for home advisor that they send the leads to 6 or 7 different professional instead of 3 that they claim. i don't know if this is true and I don't care because i don't think I ever use them again