Angies List

[knoxclean]

Is anyone that is using them experiencing any difficulties with their sales reps? This is my third year with them and they are pushing my patients to the limits. The monthly advertising has gone up 30% this year, last year it went up 25%. They refuse to work with me in any way. Their attitude is take it or leave it. They are forcing business to use special deals that they set the prices. They tell me "this is what we see working well nationally so you need to use these prices" If I counter offer it's take it or leave it. They are forcing business's to compete on price which brings in a lot of low ball companies and goes against their whole premise of providing quality referrals to their clients. I'd like to walk away but I do get some good customers from them. They are training highend clients that our services are priced at a low value. My fear is next time they need service they will use the next lowball price from another Angies List provider. After all the company is on Angies List so they must be good so I'll go with the cheap price and still get great service. They are heading down a dangerous road.

 

[The Great Oz]

Lots of people have the same story and have quit using or recommending Angie's list. The rep makes a commission based on how much you pay, and once you pay, the rep only makes a commission on how much more they can get you to pay. Walk away and I'll bet they'll let you continue at the current rate. Or better yet, just walk away.

 

[knoxclean]

I tried to bluff them and told them I would not be renewing and and all they said was sorry we hate to see you go but this is the best we can do.

 

[TomKing]

I am having lunch Monday with our area manager and communicated with the VP of sales last week.

They set the value on membership count.

They realize they need a better ecommerce plan for business.

3 departments sell to service providers
1. Big Deal - driven by price and much like Groupon. We also have cheap and non certified companies running crappy deals. People on this board are doing it. Drives me crazy.

2. Storefront - presold deals that are on your e profile. My rep told me they wanted me to discount my price and then they wanted 40%. We are not talking.

3. Gold or top 10 listing fees for positioning you in the top of the search in your category

Get beyond your rep you can make adjustments.

Remember the more A listings you have the more power you have with customers. We are approaching 550 A reviews.

Don't give up.

I will be talking to them about our margins and a more unified approach in working with service providers.

They tend to lump us in with plumbers, roofing companies and HVAC companies. They are having a hard time realizing we do not have big ticket sales like a furnace, roof or water heater to sell.

I have shared with them that our industry average sale is between $250-$275 for carpet cleaning.

I am also sharing that 10% to 15% is the most we can share with them.
I also am sharing that if we discount the price 20% we are taking the profit out of the cleaning service.

They seem to believe they can have two types of customers
1. The Big Deal people
2. The customer who wants top level service providers.

I have been over several times that they are training customers that our service is price driven and lowering their opportunity to earn more from us by doing this.

If you have illustrations of your interaction with a rep can you send it to me?

I would love to have a few illustration's for lunch Monday.

Please be very professional in your description of your interaction.
I will see what type of change we can implement.
Tom King

send it to my first and last name @sani-bright.com

 

[ruff]

The issue with "screened service providers" lists like Angie's List is hat they "level" the playing field.

As far as the consumer is concerned- Everyone passed the screening, therefore since all are "great" why not go with the lowest price. Works great for the high volume, large companies. Not so well for the small quality first owner operator.
In my opinion, sooner or later the consumers will figure it out.

There's an equivalent here to Angie's List, called "Diamond Certified". Their current top of the hill, totally awesome, most highly recommended service provider in San Francisco is Stanley Steemer

These places are loosing their credibility with the consumer and are becoming YP. Be interesting to see how long they can milk that cow.

Angie here kept calling me practically every week till I threatened to take them to court for violating the no call law.

 

[Russ T.]

I think your $ would be better spent elsewhere. We gave it a shot for a very short time and now I can't shake 'em. They need you more than you need them if they are the ones that keep calling. Or, as my sales minded wife would say, "drop the rope" and see what they will offer you.


The Clean Machine

 

[Ron Werner]

just saw an ad on tv for Angies List. Won't be long and they'll sell it for big $'s

 

[Goomer]

I signed up for them a while back.
I returned a while later to check my presence and was not able to find my listing on any of their searches at all.
I called them to ask about it, and was told that I would not be visible in their listings until I received a review or two.............so I would basically have to find someone who was an Angieslist subscriber, but found me in some other way, to leave me a review there.

I find this quite silly.

 

[ruff]

just saw an ad on tv for Angies List. Won't be long and they'll sell it for big $'s

What do you mean "sell it", Ron?

If you're referring to Angie's List, they're a publicly traded company. They've already been sold.
And it seems like now its their advertisers who are being 'sold'

 

[Ron Werner]

didn't know they already went public. Thought they were still building up to that. Don't have to worry about it up here, its only a US fad

 

[The Great Oz]

They set the value on membership count.

Yeah... that's why 8% membership growth equates to a 30% increase in listing fee costs. Love that you're trying to help them stop shooting themselves in the foot with businesses, but credibility doesn't come with a new e-commerce pricing plan.

 

[Vivers]

I am on there without paying them anything or running those monthly deals that they do insist upon for you to be in the top positions. I've always thought it was weird to insist on having a coupon.

I totally agree with you and if you don't get much work from them I would drop them in a heartbeat. I get periodic jobs from Angie's list but would never pay for it. But, I hear it works really well in Indiana and the surrounding areas.

 

[renegade_cowboy]

I am talking with an AL rep via email..

What should I expect to get hit up with and what works best for everyone?

 

[West]

Hey David,

Just this week, Angies List sales rep told me my market grew and my new price was close to a 75% rate/price increase if I wanted to stay with them! I have avery small market for them where I live. I told them no way, said I would be willing to stick with my current rate or I just won't stay on advertising my coupons with them. Less than 24 hours later, he got back to me after talking to his boss. And proposed a $3.00, yes I said $3.00 rate increase per month. I said I could handle that. I think bottom line is they will take as much or as little as they can get out of any customer. Good Luck!?

 

[Samson]

Dropped my Rate

I have advertised on AL for the past 3-4 years with good results. Last year I added carpet cleaning to my paid advertising but it has not worked nearly as well as other services. Last week my rep called to renew the carpet cleaning listing and I explained the poor results I had received and that I would not be renewing it. She begged and begged, offered more zip codes for free, then as a last ditch effort she even offered to drop the cost about $40/month. That surprised me that she actually offered to decrease the cost, but it still didn't make sense to continue so I cancelled.

Samson

 

[Chris A]

I just signed up with them for the two main counties I serve. I was able to beat them down a bit on the price and they seemed pretty eager to work with me.

 

[knoxclean]

I guess it depends on the market you live in and the amount of members they have. I tried to play hardball with them and they would not back down. I asked them to cut down the number of zip codes and take away all my services except carpet cleaning so I could drop my rate. They came back with a 15% rate drop and I took away 80% of my listing! Unreal. So I was forced to stay with the full listing because it wasn't worth it. They said I lose my discounts when I take away services and zip codes.

 

[Chris A]

yeah I dunno, they started doing heavy tv/radio here a couple years ago but I still.dont think they quite have the following that they do in some other markets.

 

[Beeks]

Works well for us. Was curious Tom King, have you tried the monthly "magazine" they send out? If so would you recommend it?

 

[tmdry]

I agree w/ what David has said, we're in 3-4 years now, and it just keeps getting more "groupon-ish", the quality of clients wanting to pay for a good company is now down to 50/50. We also do the storefront deals as I feel if I don't, than we'll get much less calls. I removed the deals right before summer time and the calls drop in less than half. There are now multiple companies doing deals, some w/ very bad reviews.

They will still let companies w/ bad reviews on there.

I have not tried the magazine yet, and would like to know if it's worth it. The main reason I have not done is because of cost. I always get the "we want to feature your company" but the cost for 10-20 miles radius is approx $800 or $1500 for the entire area (approx 35 miles) one time (one ad one issue), on top of my monthly ad w/ them which is more than I pay for my house here (or 2-3 home payments in other parts of the country).

In the last 2-3 weeks we've noticed a huge drop off in calls for whatever reason it may be. We're also an A rating 100+ plus, tripple SSA co.

 

[Samson]

Beeks - We have been in the monthly magazine for the past 3 years and just shrunk our ad this month because it does not seem to pull in clients as well as their web advertising does for us. We are lucky if we break even on the magazine portion our advertising with AL.

 

[knoxclean]

Frank, export your entire customer data base to Angies List. They have a program where they will cross reference your customers with their members. Chances are you have several clients that are members. They will contact them and ask them for reviews for you. There is a tab on the web site that explains this. I am surprised your rep didn't mention this