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!!

I used ServiceMagic.com to locate a masonry contractor to do some work on my property in NJ. I used a recommendation from their website considering the plethora of positive reviews on their site. The contractor turned out to be far different than the glowing reviews on the site. Frankly it was a disaster. I then posted a negative review on ServiceMagic.com to ensure that truthful, factual information was available for anyone looking to use this contractor in the future. ServiceMagic.com touts their review capability to allow consumers to properly evaluate contractors on their site based upon actual work performed. A nice unbiased feature I thought.

After several weeks of my review not being posted I contact ServiceMagic.com to see what the hold up was. They told me it was still in the review process. I called them a week later, they said they don't have a record of it. I sent it again, waited a few weeks and after not hearing from them again I called them. They told me someone would contact me shortly to ensure that the review was accurate as they don't want to post negative reviews unless it's screened first. I never got a call.

ServiceMagic.com derives the lions share of their revenue from vendors who use their services such as web site creation/management and referrals. As such they are high incentives not to damage those relationships by posting negative feedback. It should be clear to anyone on the above sequence of events that this is the case. I've given up on trying to get the negative review posted and instead am going to tell everyone I know not to use service magic.com as you are getting a completely biased picture of vendors which is in direct opposition of what their stated purpose is. Shame on you ServiceMagic!

Sales man david reed claims to be able to hook your website for your business to hundreds of other pages and sites and promises that your website will be directly linked to service magics site free of charge as soon as you sign on. They list only the beneficial ratings of companies, and through 'direct match' wash there hands of bogus leads. Before you sign up for the service it is promised that they filter leads both coming in and also going to the contractors. Once your signed on they then claim its just advertising. Fraud comes to mind.

They claim they do checking and research for licenses in the areas you wish to serve, false claim and to prove it I was able to add Iowa for my line of work who requires contractor licenses for the state, but I wasn't able to add minnesota who does not require any licensing for my line of work. They offer there so called services in all 50 states of the United States, the goods or promises they make are vigerious 10 point screening. (more like 3 point screening)

What they call a Ten point inspection turns out to be a check for insurance to make it look good and a check on the contractors routing number along with the account numbers. Another false thing they do is tell you leads are direct match, but in fact they sent that same $30 to $60 lead to roughly 3 customers on average, equals about $180 per lead for them, and a piss off customer that go's with someone else completely do to being bombed with calls. Injury to my bank account and my reputation is on the line for buying into there sales pitch, empty fraudulent promises.

This company is immoral, unethical, oppressive, unscrupulous; and substantially can injure consumers and contractors alike by mismatching professionals the consumer believes to be qualified, contractor that is slow on work that is having a rough time, by being mismatch and potentially running there reputations.

End result, out of work contractor that may have been legit for there original field, an unhappy customer that has to pay more a second tine to have work done twice, and the people that run ServiceMagic a few dollars richer off this miss portion of others. They fail to disclose material fact at the time of sale of profiles to the consumers who later in the system are the contractors, also to the home owner slash consumer that hires these screened professionals.

They also speak against other lead companies saying how they can't do anything for anyone, (Product disparagement). The whole things built in bad faith.