Servicemagic

[David K. Lee]

Has anyone had any experience with Servicemagic? It's a home service referral company. Got a call yesterday and wonder if anybody is on their list and what kind of response have you gotten?

[jkawas]

I've been with ServiceMagic for months. Not 1 job. Not a good sign.

[sfigert]

Get maybe 8 per yr. most people are just looking for local inspectors to check on & get prices. But when you are put in touch with them you are charged. If you don't get the inspection you have to go to thier site & request a credit. Which by the way is applied to your account.

[jlerch]

Asked for 60 days to review before paying. No referral, I don't participate.

[jmichalski]

It is pretty effective if you are quick (read: immediate) in responding to the lead, have a good to excellent phone presentation (1 minute or less), have competitive price (the higest price guys are very easy to beat on this system since the client knows they will get 3 or 4 quotes) and are generally a good communicator and/or sales person. If not, this is not going to work for you. If so, you will probably close a good deal of the leads you get.

[David P. Valley]

http://www.nachi.org/forum/showthread.php?t=21676

[nwagner]

Originally Posted by dlee2

Has anyone had any experience with Servicemagic? It's a home service referral company. Got a call yesterday and wonder if anybody is on their list and what kind of response have you gotten?

I was flirting with them months ago and decided no. No other inspectors within a 50 mile radius uses it and the salesperson ended up confirming my suspicions that the dinky two leads per month that occur in my area are primarily hard-headed individuals who insist we are all the same and consequently are only interested in the cheapest, rather than the best value or best quality. Nothing like paying a rediculously high $11 or $18 fee, ServiceMagic's choice depending upon the search method the prospective client used, just to be shopped out the majority of the time by a lowballer not using the service who "saved" them $50.

I'd gladly pay $11 or $18 for each inspection booked at my set fee. But not for every lead, especially when they have no convincing protections nor a no-hassle refund policy in place for fraudulant leads and aborted leads. I tried talking them down to $5 a lead, $15 for a confirmed booking- "our rates and terms are non-negotiable."

Good luck with those 2 leads a month that get turned away ...

[William J. Decker]

I have found out that Service Magic, Craigs list, Angies list and the printed Yellow Pages ads can be good or bad, depending on your area.

I am north of chicago and only got one response from a $1,400 yellow pages ad. A fellow NACHI inspector, south and west of Chicago, told me he gets about 40 - 50 calls a year.

Same thing with the others.

If you want, try it. It could work and you never know until you try.

[gporter]

no No

[tdietrich1]

I've been with SM for several months now. I've learned one thing. If you are sitting around doing nothing, then it works great. The client feels they are getting 'instant' service and you land a job. However, if you are backed up with work, and slow to return the call. You can be wasting money with them.

tom

[lfoster]

Tried them for a while. Didn't work for me.

The automated system sucks. It gives the name first off (computer generated) and it's hard to understand. The only good thing is it repeats the phone number at the of the message.

I had no luck with the 5 calls we received. I talked to one caller, she wanted the house and had the second in line contract. Others never returned phone calls, mostly were price looking, 'fishing'.

They give the price quote to 3 different inspectors at the same time. If you ask for a refund, they give you a credit on the next call.

Good luck if you try it.

[jmichalski]

Ditto what Will said. Works for me, but I don't mind setting an aggressive price on BASIC inspections to capture price shoppers....

[nwagner]

Originally Posted by jmichalski

Ditto what Will said. Works for me, but I don't mind setting an aggressive price on BASIC inspections to capture price shoppers....

Roughly, how many of your booked ServiceMagic leads are BASIC inspections?

[Martin Pasquinelli]

ServiceMagic is a waste of time, money and effort. This issue is constantly discussed on this board with the same conclusion - ServiceMagic sucks.

[Michael H. Butters]

I used SM for a while and didn't like the service, the bogus leads, the way they try to charge for bogus leads even when disputed. They did refund one lead, after a heated discussion. They have called back several times trying to get me back. I will not go back unless they negotiate a better deal. I wasn't getting very many leads anyway - about 3 to 4 per year. I didn't book all thoose either. Good Luck if you try them.