Consumer Comments on Contractors

The Small Business Administration's Advertising Primer tells businessmen that "Nobody sells you better than a satisfied customer, so in your efforts to gain sales from new prospects, remember that you can build sales equally well through customer referrals" So in this era of great technology, you would think that finding a blog entry with someones' first hand account would be the best way to go to determine which contractor you should hire.

Perhaps, but you don't know if the person giving you the glowing referral isn't the contractor's brother-in-law. Also, Internet entries are hard to find and never expire although the tiling subcontractor hired by the pool builder might have been fired for that bad workmanship, or he might even have retired.

What would be good would be ratings from a large number of each contractor's clients. It really works for books and professors. Someday one of the following companies will be your trusted resource:

Kudzu Free. Several listings and reviews for local area. Not comprehensive. Links to other reviews by each reviewer. This cuts down on the likelihood of the brother-in-law writing a phony review.

Angie's list One year membership costs $50 in advance. No survey could be completed due to cost. There are many complaints that it is not satisfactory, however.

Service Magic Free. Looks very professional. No local listings found.

Insiderpages Free. Easy to use. Part of the IAC group which owns Ask.com and Expedia. Has many local listings and several reviews. Reviewers are ranked by number of reviews posted so you can see how many reviews they've written without clicking and seeing all of the person's other reviews.

Toolman Depot Free. Straight forward search strategy but at this point so few listings and reviews that it's hard to judge its value. Perhaps in a few years.