Have you hired a contractor based on Yelp or houzz reviews? How did it go?
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Anonymous
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What the title says. If you hired a contractor based on reviews, did it actually work out for you.
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Anonymous
| Don't trust houzz reviews if they are all positive. Contractors can get negative reviews removed or not posted very easily. I don't know about yelp. |
Anonymous
What about those Houzz awards? Are they also paid for? I see some contractors with awards for various years and all positive reviews. |
Anonymous
| That would be the stupidest qualification point for hiring a contractor |
Anonymous
| I hired a floor refinisher based on Houzz/Yelp reviews. It worked out great. I interviewed a ton of companies though but the Houzz reviews helped convince me. |
Anonymous
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My Contractor boasted about great Houzz scores - told me about how all their clients get a chance to share info etc.
I got an "anonymous" survey to complete when they were not responding to my calls. I provided feedback and I am not kidding you when I say that the time between when I hit send and when they called me to yell at me about my survey was less than 30 minutes. I also know that there is a contractor that does a lot of work in VA who in the contract states you can not post any negative comments on social media or public review sites. |
Anonymous
Don’t know. But I do know that when you do a review on houzz, it doesn’t post right away. It goes into a review cycle and the contractor gets to look at it if they pay houzz. If they don’t like it, they can come up with reasons to get houzz to not post it. |
Anonymous
| I hired a wallpaper guy based on google reviews - they were all positive, detailed and included pics. There were hundreds and each different with details- so it wasn't bots. |
Anonymous
| Trust Yelp more than Houzz. Yelp does not allow the company to control things. Yelp also filters out reviews from people that have no track record. You can still see the reviews but they are not part of their score. This typically filters out when a customer goes to yelp to complain about a contractor and they never done a review before. This will also filter out good reviews for the same reason. Yelp also has a policy that companies can not try to influence reviews via discounts or make agreements that restrict a customer from doing reviews. I was presented with a settlement agreement with a clause that said I could not do any reviews and when I shared that with Yelp they put up a big message saying the company was trying to influence reviews. The only issue is that it only lasted for 90 days. See the "Warning for those looking for a contractor" thread if you want to know more about this contractor. Also look at the dates of reviews. This same contractor reached out to friends and family to do reviews. The problem is that they all did it at the same time - hahahaha... |
Anonymous
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We've had both good and bad from Yelp. I use Houzz to double check, but not exclusively since they don't seem to ever have bad reviews there. You have to really read the Yelp reviews - all of them. Sometimes a company will get a couple of people to write good reviews and manage to get those to the top of the page, and the overall scoring is kind of weird and not always reflective of the comments.
If you look through all the reviews, you can read the bad ones and see what they say and if there is substance there and a lot of the same thing repeated. When I haven't been careful enough, I've ended up with bad experiences that were actually in the reviews, but I didn't check carefully enough. I've gotten my best recommendations from Nextdoor. |
Anonymous
| Don't trust bluebook or home advisor. That was the biggest mistake I have ever made in my life. From now on I will only work with contractors that have worked with people I know in real life. Atleast base on the yelp reviews they were right about the company that we ended up with and I wished we had done further research into the company.... |
Anonymous
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Washington Consumer Checkbook, which requires a paid subscription, is far more reliable and useful than free, ad-supported sites of no particular reliability or trustworthiness.
You'll find you refer to it for a great many service provider types, making the cost well worthwhile. https://www.checkbook.org/ |
Anonymous
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I would only ever use a contractor where I have spoken to multiple real life people who used them start to finish and recently.
If they can't provide you names, it's a red flag. Also drive around and find people with their signs if you can and approach the homeowner. Go on next door and ask friends if they know anyone who used them. You have to talk to real people. |
Anonymous
| I don't trust Yelp reviews. Yelp hides real reviews and leaves fake ones up. Yelp is a scam. |
Anonymous
| Checkbook.org is best |