Find a Contractor Services

[Willyou]

Have any of you ever used porch.com to find a local contractor for some type of home repair or construction? They were recommended to me by Lowes. They provide an online listing of local contractors of most any type that are licensed and have a good BBB rating. They also provide a "satisfaction" guarantee that will "make it right" if there is a problem. Any thoughts or experience?

[blackhat]

A free referral service provides a warranty ??????

[Willyou]

Well. That's what they say. That's one reason I'm looking for someone with experience using them. Maybe they have some leverage with the contractors that register with the service??

[Phil Thien]

blackhat said:

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A free referral service provides a warranty ??????

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Well if you (the homeowner) aren't paying a fee, then you're the product.

That is, if Porch.com doesn't charge homeowners, they're selling homeowners to contractors.

Someone is paying, someone is always paying.

Edit to add: In the case of Angie's List, they're now charging homeowners _and_ the contractors (for advertising). And if you don't advertise, they drop you to the bottom of the list (no matter what your ratings, the non-advertising contractors are not presented to homeowners w/o homeowners knowing how to find them). I find this particularly distasteful.

[Willyou]

So. In the past, I have gone to the yellow pages and based on gut feelings, I've chosen several names to get estimates from. Then again, based on my gut feelings about our discussion concerning the project (I usually know a little about what needs to be done), I choose one to do the work. I may check with some references, but I don't totally trust that either because they are not going to give you the name of a dissatisfied customer.

I haven't gotten totally burned with this process, but haven't had 100% success either (I guess 100% is too much to hope for). I like the independent feedback that sites like Angies List provide. Those reviews can help if you don't give them too much weight. I was originally impressed that Lowes would recommend the porch.com site. However, they have such an emphatic disclaimer on the site that I wonder why they even bother.

I would be interested in reading about similar experiences/methods others here have had with finding good contractors.

[who]

Porch is a dishonest system, and when trying to get answers from them, they just give shady responses. When they first started out, they created web pages for thousands of contractors across the country and put their own phone number on the page instead of the contractors.

I discovered Porch when I googled my own company and their listing for me came up first page in the search. When I called the number under my company name it goes right to a porch representative who was willing to connect me to a competitor of mine because the competitor had signed up with Porch and were paying the fee.

After a few weeks of back and forth, which eventually led to yelling and screaming and threats of lawsuits, I got them to remove my page from their site.

A porch rep showed up on a contractor forum I participate in, to try to save a little face in the anti-porch thread they had going on. Plenty of valid questions were asked... Few worthy answers were received.

Id steer clear of porch. They'll recommend anyone who will pay their fee...

[clockman]

sounds like the same services HD provides.

[JosephP]

Somewhere I got the impression Porch was a Lowes thing???

Home advisor is another option...they charge contractors per lead.

[Snipe Hunter]

I got my tree guy from Home Advisor. He told me that he pays $30 a lead (maybe $20). I got responses from about 4 companies. One guy spoke almost no English.

Home Advisor is a lead generator. Every lead doesn't go out to all the contractors. It depends on their deal with Home Advisor. The more they pay for leads, the more leads they get. If the contractor doesn't tell Home Advisor that he got the deal, the lead goes back out again and other contractors get the lead. One guy flipped out when he found out the guy I hired was already on the job.

I'm not sure if I'd hire this guy again. He was the cheapest but it took him twice as long as he quoted and only showed up about half the times he said he would. His equipment was always breaking. On the other hand, he cut down 9 very large trees that were hanging over the house, front and back with no crane and nothing hit the house. His pulleys and rigging were amazing. Pretty impressive from a couple old bikers who smelled like a bar room floor.