HomeAdvisor
reviews and complaints

I have been a client of Home Advisors for quite some time, and received many leads from them, some good, some bad. I have some crazy stories from the places they have sent me after I paid for a lead to bid for work, including a drug addict single mom offering me sexual favors in exchange for work. I still had to pay for that lead.
Today really frustrated me though. I received at least 10 leads today for small jobs, which I paid for as I received the lead. I then contacted each homeowner to see when I could schedule a time to look at the work and give them a bid. One of the customers told me she had received 25 calls today from other construction workers, and she never even requested the work.
Apparently she saw some link on facebook for a free gift, being offered by Home Advisors, but never asking for anyone to perform any work at her home. I chatted online with someone from their customer service dept. and was told they were not able to refund the money since they received a request for work and I accepted the job. I told them the hole facebook thing, but they wouldn't budge. I am now waiting for a manager to respond, but if this is not refunded I will never work with them again.
As far as I am concerned it is fraud, and very deceptive to the customer, who never wanted to be a customer.

I tried this service magic to get leads, and I told them not to take money out of my account for leads to work I never got. well they told me i would get free leads and not have to pay, so i carefully never took more than the free leads. they lied and took almost 300.00 out of my account that i could not afford since i am on social security disability and only receive 924.00 a month. they wont credit my account, and i had to put a stop to their taking more money out of my account since they lied and said they would not again, and changed my debit card with my bank, and now today i got an automated message if i dont pay by friday september 14th it would be sold to a 3rd party collection agency. i am afraid to pay them on the phone or online for fear they will take more money out of my account..please help me.

I am very disappointed in the contractors I have gotten through Service Magic, and I no longer use this service as a source for referrals. The contractors pay to be included on the site, so there is no real screening done to ensure that qualified professionals are coming to your home. During the course of a kitchen remodel I had everyone from experienced contractors to outright frauds call me from my Service Magic request for referrals. I would not recommend anyone use this service, but would particularly caution women to be very wary of the contractors coming from this site.

They give you the name of 3 contractors in your area for whatever job it is that you need done. They say they have a guarantee that if the project isn't right they will contribute up to $500 to make it right. We hired one of the companies they recommended - paid the company half ($750) up front - job was barely started and never finished. We sent Service Magic all the documentation they requested - pictures, estimates to get the job finished, receipt from company we eventually hired to complete the job - then Service Magic says they have determined the request for a refund was not considered fair or reasonable! They never had any intention of helping make the project right by giving us some of our money back. They are completely dishonest - this is such a scam! Avoid Service Magic like the plague! They should be put out of business! When they leave this world they will all be rotting in hell!

I know first hand that ServiceMagic is a scam and if all the businesses got together they overcharged for bad leads there could be a class action lawsuit. ServiceMagic currently show 483 complaints filed against them with the BBB and the majority is for billing/collections issues. They never gave me credit for all the wrong leads they sent us, which was 99% of all the leads they sent us, so we disputed the charges with our credit card company. ServiceMagic never responded to their request to show proof the charges were legitimate so they credited our account. Now they have sent us to collection almost a year later 3 times. Incredible, that a company that does business this way is allowed to do so. I'm calling every tv station in our area that has an investigation team and beg for them to look into this. Does anyone smell SCAM spelled ServiceMagic?

There is a big lawsuit against ServiceMagic for numerous criminal and civil violations due to overcharging contractors, unlawfully charging canceled accounts, creating false websites under the names of contracting companies, and more. They do no real screening of contractors, so customer experiences are fairly random from contractors, but when there are problems, Service Magic is rarely of any help, despite guarantees. We are not alone in having been massively overcharged by them with no recourse other than to take them to court.

I had a dispute with a customer over service that I provided. Customer called Service Magic and complained, and SM, without even talking to me at all, cancelled my account. Until then I had nothing but outstanding feedback from all of my customers. Never had a complaint. I had paid over $5000 over several years for leads and had built up a very good reputation in my field. Without notice, SM cancelled my account. They later called and admitted that they had made a mistake, and asked me to come back. Contractors, stay away. They do not care about you. And they will continue to use your company name and even your website long after your account is closed (see lawsuit in above comments) to point people toward their website and away from yours.

I have been a roofing contractor for over 28 years. After trying ServiceMagic for just a couple of weeks, I found that only one out of 10 leads were legitimate. The first lead I received was a non-working number. The second was a hoax performed by kids. The third lead wouldn't call us back. We received two leads that had already signed with other companies when we promptly called them. One customer refused to allow us to come out because they were looking for a remodeler, not a roofer. Five following leads could not be reached and would not call us back. After complaining to ServiceMagic, I was informed that they would e-mail these last five that would not call us back and see if these customer's would respond. They did not. In the mean time, ServiceMagic debited my account $550.00. I was very upset because I notified them a 9 days before they took the money out of my account that I had several leads that were no good. The original salesman, Andy Johnson just disappeared and wouldn't call me back after I signed up even though he said all I need to do was notify him with any bad leads and he would credit me. He lied. It is very difficult to get a hold of anyone at ServiceMagic. When you finally do reach someone it is obvious that they are well versed on how to refuse a bad lead credit. This is a well rehearsed scam. Stay as far away from this company as you can. I spent many wasted hours trying to contact these bogus leads and trying to get my money back. I finally had to cancel my debit card and report a claim to Visa. ServiceMagic had the nerve to tell me that they were scheduled to take another $165.00 out of my account the following week for yet even more bad leads. This should be criminal and probably is.

A civil lawsuit was filed on October 19, 2011 in United States Federal Court against ServiceMagic, Inc., their subsidiary, Market Hardware, and Market Hardware's CEO Brian Kraff for bad faith business practices, unfair and deceptive trade practices, unfair competition, cyber squatting, and other serious violations of law.

Account with service magic was cancled over 2 months ago. Service Magic is still advertsing using my business name, Address & their phone number.

Leading to loss of revenue
Possible complaints
defamation of character

I just got a customer who sent an email to her WARRANTY SERVICE AT NICOR! Guess who got the call? NO, GUESS! ... ME! I have to pay $15 for a lead that was generated by a customer emailing Nicor for warranty work! How in the world does ServiceMagic get that info?! Because of this, I am no longer a ServiceMagic Customer. I saw a post, Google phishes for info. I didn't believe it. How would that be possible for SM to contact someone over a private email? The customer must have emailed him behind his back! Nope, its true.

Also, every other lead has been garbage.

Now, watch for the generic construction company to post below saying how this has never happened to them. Or for ServiceMagic attempt to explain why it cant happen:. How they caaaaant read private emails.. How I should try to reeeeeeeach them to sort this out:. How theyre soooooo concerrrrned". Hahaha! Peace out ServiceMagic! Your time is up! GOOD JOB, Pissed Off Customer of getting service-magic/.pissedconsumer'.com and thwarting ServiceMagics attempts to control the search engine results of their company?. Google Service Magic Reviews and voila! YOU GET THE TRUTH!

Service Magic offers a lead service that contractors pay for. This month I paid service magic $300 for leads for work that I preform. Out of the $300.00 $182.00 were junk leads leads. Some of these lead you could not get a hold of the customers, 2 were real estate agents the just wanted bids for bargain tool tho promote the sale of a home. Several were for people that want repair work on project that needed replace. they would not refund or credit my account. These are not honest lead source and is a rip off. They do not educate the people on the sites in what kind of services they need. I want fix a job that needs to be replaced I will not rip someone, if they are suggesting a repair on an item that needed to be replace it is that can't afford it. So now I waste my time & money to tell these people not to waste their money because it will not hold up, so now I am the one who is being ripped off. They deduct money for your account as you receive lead so after they have my money they have the power. They are miss lead committing fraud & are harassing people.

Called a phone number for a contractor and was linked to Service Magic. After working with them to send people out so i can get quotes on a siding job, windows, deck, and many others. That same night my wife got a call from a person that couldn't speak English and was claiming he was from Service Magic, Or maybe Service Magic gave him our number to call us for a job. Well after about a minute or so my wife was feed up b/c she had no clue what Service Magic was and what this guy was trying to sell her. Since the ph# was unavailable on caller id. This gentleman just couldn't speak a word of English.. So that just set her off. After I explained to my wife what Service Magic is about. She got pissed that service magic gave our number to this type of company...How can we have work done, if we can't understand what they are selling? Just doesn't make any sense...It's like they gave our number to anybody.

Then we had a siding company come today and explain to me after he was 30 minutes late that the estimate he's giving me will cost $100.00. When I spoke to the contractor the day before they said it was free. And Service Magic was told I was looking for companies that provide free estimates.. So today was a waste having contractors from service magic spend 2 hours at my house and not give me a written estimate and wanted to charge me for it..

Also, I'm having problems with the contractors complaining to me when the show up and ask how many other contractors came out for bids on this job b/c i used Service Magic. I don't think they should even ask that type of question.

So after about 4 contractors that i spoke with that Service Magic provided. Only one of them has been professional and I would even consider giving the job. Since when I asked for his credentials he was more than willing to give me them and several references.. Others just got mad, and said look at their website on the work they do and about their company.

Hope this helps you all out! And if you use this company you get better results.. I will say the girl from Service Magic is very helpful, goes above and beyond getting me the contractors, But I just don't feel that the contractors they are sending are top-notch and I think most of what they are sending is anybody who is willing to pay Service Magics fees..

I used ServiceMagic for a couple of years! My disappoint comes from the fact that consumers cannot contact me directly and being apart of ServiceMagic does not promote my website! I paid a lot of money and only received 2 jobs in a couple of years. They ate away at my profits monthly! I tried Angies List and got a few jobs, but the money issue again. Also, homeowners could not find me unless they paid! A friend told me about another company, Contractor Community. I signed up with them and it did not cost me anything. So I figured I had nothing to lose. I got a free website that they host and the leads were free. I have to admit I have not received a lot of calls, but I have a free website and I did get a couple of jobs. They were smaller, but what the heck it is free. I am also in the Yellow Pages. That is very expensive but I do get a few calls from that. I guess you should be in multiple areas. I recommend Contractor Community.

They sent out my number which I did not give them. Along came some contractors and supposedly did some work on a leak on my roof, but would show me NO proof. They wanted to charge me again to come out and take pictures for Directv to reimburse me. They would not take my calls. They are a complete rip off. Stay away from Springfield Roofing, total rip off. Showed up at my door without an appointment and proceeded to check my roof at my request. Took pics of the damage but not the repair as a "courtesy" and wanted to charge to see what I paid for. Rip off!

Was a Service magic professional for 2 yrs. I had great reviews, and I even got them another contractor buddy of mine to sign up w them. Recently owed them some money, and I made sure i paid it back only to be told that they needed to do a background check. When they did the background check it revealed a bankruptcy from 2yrs ago...the same month I signed up. I was open and honest with the sales lady and told her I was going through it and she said it wouldn't be a problem. I was one of the highest rated contractors on there but because of something in my personal life I am not eligible until 2/12 to re join them. Service Magic doesn't do what they say, they only care about there money and keep contractors with bad reviews on their site and just kicked off a good one. So CONTRACTORS BEWARE!

Buyer beware! Why would you even consider buying a service from a company that sells the same leads to other companies in your area. It promotes compitition for your products and services. It appears that "service magic" is only concerned about their bottom line!
Clearly there are other means to promote your company!

Service Magic is a joke. They do not screen their contractors. I used a drywall installer tehy recommended as a licensed contractor. This clown hung the drywall backwards and then proceeded to mud and tape it.
They just caused me to have to get someone else from Only Licensed Contractors.com and pay the guy $500 just to correct this mess. Don't believe service magic when they say these people have licenses even if they have the license number listed. The clown has a license number lsited, but when I checked after he destroyed the drywall, the license did not to belong to him. I would have done better looking in the yellow pages.

I signed up to get leads... I am a small local contractor and have 28 years experience in my local community.

I gave servicemagic all of my information...

they stole my online traffic by taking over all of my google page, yahoo, aol, and other search engine info. They changed all of my SEO work to their contact info. And then sold it to my competitors! and me. Think about paying someone for your own repeat business! and sharing it with your competitors too. and profiting from your very demise!