Service Magic

I received a call from Service Magic wanting me to join. I’m looking for any pro’s or con’s.

I just joined as they waived their start up fees for NACHI members (Thanx Nick). We will see. I figured the extra web exposure could not hurt.

Most inspectors I know do not do well with Service Magic. If you join, you need to make sure you have email accessibility at all times, as most of those calls go to the first responder.

Wow.

Garlic works.

Or, try Holy Water

Service Magic is a big scam. They charge you to join ($100.00 to $150.00) and then they charge for every lead you get. What I mean by every lead is if someone fills out an inquiry on the internet for an inspection, in your area, they send the lead to you and to every other home inspector in your area and they still charge you ($12.00) whether you get the job or not or whether you ever get to speak or email the person. Usually the person is unavailable almost like they don’t exist. After i joined I was getting some leads and they were all bogus. When I called the prospect they gave me some kind of runaround. To me it sounded like a big scam. How do I know Service Magic isn’t the ones making the inquires and then charging just the same??? I called them and form a big stink and after talking to about ten different people they finally said they would give me a “in house” credit on the bad lead. I also taked to several other people that use Service Magic and they had similar or even worse experiences. In the end we all had to cancel our credit cards so we wouldn’t be incurring further charges and lost money on the deal. My advice is stay away. If you have similar complaints please file it with the better business of your area and of Colorado where they are incorporated.

I joined SM about a year ago and have made great $$ with their leads.
If you think the leads are bogus they will research and credit promptly.
Obviously Morgan you haven’t participated in a lead program before.You have to be quick on the draw, know what to say and take the good with the bad, most of mine have been good folks here in Ohio.
I also sell health insurance online and have shelled out $400 TO $600 a month for leads !! You need to calculate ROI.
Regards, Darrell

Bump

I had a very similar run in with SM with my old remodeling business.
Leads were mainly tire-kickers
Out of the $500+ for “leads” we net’ed $0 in return.
My experience is that they promise Big to get you in and deliever poorly.
We were told that the customer had to go through extensive quailifaction pages before they were submitted to us as a lead.

We found out the the extensive quailifactions was one page where you selected the type of service you wanted, added a comment, address, phone number, and email address- Not exactly what the sales rep told us happened.

Now, that was remodeling services, so you might get a better return on HI service requests. I do not know.

I can just say my experience with SM was not good and I would strongly caution anyone from using their service.

service magic=voltures!!!

They are in the business of processing information via the Internet, not in inspecting homes. This is something you must be prepared for and have a monthly budget to cover the expense and be able to track your lead to sales ratio, don’t sign up for it unless you have this in place or it will not work.

Thanks to all who responded…it appears the mass’s have spoken. It does not take many to be had, before the word gets around.

I was thinking why if NACHI acts as our referral service when a homeowner needs an inspection why do I need to pay some else $12.00 for their service.