Allways keep me updated with new clients to approach

No one ever answers my emails. Most of the candidates are new college grads.

Leslee is fabulous. Very grateful to have found her

Price too much for small gardens also asked for LAVENDER PLANTS but BULBS planted told they are lavender buut friend says they sre not,price £850

These days no matter how many leads I buy on Bark, it takes aaaages to get a customer.

The workman ordered me new LEDLights and fitted them later when they arrived

I got jobs but never custumers respond back,just I spent money

Update following their response (read the review first —below the line—for context):

Although they say they can scrape testimonials in this response, they have never suggested that to me through multiple rounds with their email support. So, if that is true, it is a well-kept secret. If you read between the lines, they also hedge by saying the reviews must be "recent" which is undefined, and that it will take a long time and that they integrate with Yelp, etc. But they don't mention LinkedIn, the single site for most white collar professionals. That reveals their bias toward low-ticket and high volume transactions rather than professional services—which is a big problem (see my second point below).

The other point they make is about their automated lead review and return of credits. They do return credits if you make enough of a fuss. But you have to be able to prove that the lead is unqualified. On occasion I have succeeded. But to do so required finding the fake lead on LinkedIn and sending them the LinkedIn screenshot to prove that it was a competitor rather than a real prospect. Or, on one occasion, I spoke to the "lead" who told me he was a competitor and wanted to see how I used the service. They called him and confirmed that. But that's a lot of work to prove a lead is fake. And it only works if the fake lead provides accurate information, which mostly, they don't.

But most of the problems are with their lead collection system not their automation. For professional services, the lead capture form is simply too skeletal. And I have reported that to them over and over for 19 months—as, I'm sure, others have done too. The form is sufficient if you are selling take-away tacos or a manicure. A one-time, relatively short-term service or product. Buyers will take a chance when they're spending $15 or $150.

But the 5-6 question lead form is NOT enough if you are selling executive coaching, consulting, tax services, architecture, etc. They could improve it by asking leads to provide a budget, or asking them to promise to take a call or respond to the professionals who contact them, or by asking for a credit card with a $.50 (seriously, even 50 cents) deposit. Or, they could ask prospects to state what date they want to meet with their prospective professional, or how soon they want to start, etc. In other words, they could make it HARDER for shoppers to use their service. But instead, they want it to be utterly frictionless. But buying expensive professional services is NOT frictionless. It's expensive and intimate. Because they keep the form so scant, their prospects are often not really planning to buy. They're just slightly curious.

And that is the real issue. They want to be a lead service for everyone, but their systems are designed for a certain kind of business—a low-ticket, high volume transaction. Not a high-ticket, B2B service. But, they make tons of money selling leads to high-ticket professional services, even though they refuse to modify their basic model to improve the lead quality for those classes of businesses.

So, I stand by my review. They sacrifice quality to profiteering.
—————
The leads are completely unqualified. The most you ever know is that they have a verified phone number. So, 99% of the time, you spend money on buying a lead and never hear back from the prospect.

About 10% of the time the leads turned out to be competitors of mine who were shopping either their competition or the Bark platform.

The bigger problems are more subtle.

The only ways to make your profile stand out are more or less inaccessible. They only allow reviews to be added either directly by clients or through Facebook API.

Since I am in a B2B space, my reviews are on LinkedIn and on my own website--not on Facebook.

They have no API with LinkedIn, and they won't allow you to add them in any other way. In the absence of references, it's easy to appear to be a novice, or not to have any positive client feedback.

Their response when I asked about this was to have my clients provide their reviews on Bark. But, asking busy professionals to write a second review on yet another platform is ridiculous. And I am not going to do that. It violates my own values. If a client gives me a testimonial on any one platform. It is my responsibility to use it elsewhere--not their's to re-write it everywhere that I market.

They also have copious quantities of add-ons that all involve more cost for questionable "value". For example, you can become "verified". This sounded interesting to me. But, instead of entailing a background check or verification of corporate filings or something--it's primary method was to charge an additional $75/mo for the "checkmark".

They clearly lifted this directly from Musk's Twitter attempt at the same. It felt like a truly cyclical money-grab. (It was the last straw for me.)

They solicit feedback on the service, but never include it in the product roadmap. The only changes I've seen in the 14 months of use was more and different ways to charge more to businesses like me--those using their service. Subscriptions, special statuses, verification, etc.

But they have done nothing to improve either the volume or quality of leads. They could easily include a question about budget in their UI, or verify the person by having them sign-in through LinkedIn. That would make it easier to determine if a lead is even remotely appropriate.
But they prefer to keep the leads as skeletal as possible so as to manipulate businesses into paying for leads based on speculation and hope, rather than actual information.

As a business, you have a powerful interest in believing each lead is real, ready and able to buy. But it's actually a massive gamble. You have so little to go by that you may as well be throwing darts.

Part of how their business model works is that it relies on having zero barrier to entry for those interested in services. By making the ability to express interest so frictionless, all kinds of people fill in a form, and submit their interest as a real lead.

But they are not actually interested. They are less interested than window shoppers. Even a service like Fiverr requires MUCH more information.

Bark prefers the lack of any friction because they get more "leads" that way. It creates an appearance of abundance when they pitch their paying businesses (like me). But the abundance is an illusion. Most of the leads are not genuinely looking for the service.

I have not purchased any additional credits and will not be using them anymore. I got exactly one client from the service in the 14 months. During that time I must have replied to at least 200 leads. That's an appalling rate of effectiveness. If I had actually interacted with those leads I would be able to consider that my own sales ability had a role in that poor return on investment. But since the majority of leads NEVER respond to anything, it seems like a lead quality issue, not a sales issue.

The amount of time I wasted in responding to leads and following up, only to get no response or any interaction with the prospect at all is a huge cost. The leads themselves are also costly--increasingly so. I can't recommend this to any professional selling a service with a relatively high cost. It may be useful for lower priced services in which the transaction is an easy decision for the buyer. For example, it might be great for a hairdresser, car-detailing, graphic designer, etc. But if you sell consulting, professional services, coaching, or other business to business services, I would stay away.

I've responded to almost 1000 Bark leads, and paid Bark.com in excess of $10,000 over the past year and a half.

In the beginning, during 2022, my closing rate was maybe 5%, which is dismal, but still enough that I was earning more than I was spending.

Ever since the beginning of 2023, however, I have found that the leads on Bark simply ghost me even more often than they did in 2022. I went from perhaps a 5/100 closing rate to a less than 1/100 closing rate.

Their customer service is questionable as well. In most cases, if you can prove that a lead was bogus, they will refund your credits — but if you can't PROVE it — then they won't. They simply do not give the vendors the benefit of the doubt AT ALL. If you're a vendor and a lead was utter b.s., the burden of proof is entirely yours.

And "They are ghosting me" is never a good enough reason to get your credits back — because 99.9% of the leads on Bark are just kicking tires, window shopping, or looking for an impossible "bargain."

And that brings me to how Bark advertises. They basically train the incoming customers to mistreat the vendors.

For example, I saw one of Bark's ads on Facebook. It showed a stock photo of some goofy guy in a top hat, and the caption said, "Affordable magicians in your area."

Firstly, most magicians who are worthy of much respect don't dress like that. Some do, but most don't.

More importantly, by using the word "affordable," Bark is deliberately signaling to potential clients that vendors are more than happy to have a "race to the bottom" for tasteless bargain-bin shoppers who ask "How much?" before they even ask to see a video or website.

Furthermore, Bark does apparently NOTHING to signal to clients that vendors take a real financial risk in order to reply to them — so clients understandably feel no guilt or hesitation when they post a lead with absolutely no real intention of hiring anyone.

I've actually experienced an increasing percentage of leads expressing anger and consternation at me for the simple act of calling them on the phone LESS THAN ONE MINUTE after they posted their request and provided their phone number. The fact is, most of the leads on Bark are from people who have absolutely no idea what this website does, how it works, what they should reasonably expect in terms of pricing, or what are the ethical implications of posting without serious intent to hire.

And when the vendor gets burned by a phantom or scam client — which is increasingly the norm — there is little to no recourse unless the vendor can furnish smoking gun proof to customer service.

Admittedly, customer service at Bark will often refund credits as a pure "courtesy" in the absence of proof, but that is entirely at their discretion — and, once again, "This lead is ghosting me" will never be a good enough reason.

It would be much better if Bark screened out bogus leads by coaching the clients a lot more. For example, they should help the clients arrive at realistic expectations for pricing, because it is absolutely ludicrous to ask a full-time professional entertainer to do their job at your event for less than $300 — and even $300 is mighty cheap for someone who doesn't show up in clown shoes. For anyone you would trust at your company event in a hotel banquet room on a Saturday night, $1000 should be seen as the rock-bottom minimum.

All in all, Bark started off as "serviceable" or "good enough if your calendar is empty," but I think that was only because it was the early days. Now, something has clearly changed, and Bark is going the way of GigSalad and the Bash.

The odds are very low for getting a respectable gig from any of these services unless you "play the numbers" and catch those "fewer than 1% (and shrinking)" clients.

It is clear that the designers of these websites never even so much as consulted with any actual vendors during the design phase.

It's still better than the Bash, though, where you have to give the client a quote before you're even allowed to respond to them. That's so stupid I don't even know where to begin.

This was my second email to Bark as I am being robbed by Bark:

It is CLEAR how you avoid the topic Bark markets Bark will refund all the money if not 1 Project was closed. What is even more funny is how you get paid to scare Bark customers away to the point Bark will never see a new dollar from me ever again and is the reason why Thumbtack is better than Bark and is the reason why I will report Bark as fraudulent to any needed Government Source and Organization not to mention Better Business Bureau, Google Reviews, Yelp Reviews, TV, Radio, Trust Pilot and more which by the way will cost Bark more money and your position than the $277.20 Barks needs to refund me.

Also as soon you search in Google Bark Reviews the first Google Page under Better Business Bureau says this:

Bark is a terrible company that overcharges and is openly dishonest about their ability to provide services. They have a huge problem with scam artists

Which is making you loose a lot of money leading you to close down Bark Business you do not know how to run by illegally stealing money from other people.

Is very funny how you are still not fired and how you Antonino try to burn time by trying to explaing what you think Bark is and is not because I know what Bark is. Stop trying to avoid topics are issues need to be resolved. Stop lying. Stop being fake. My word of mouth will be nothing but the ugly truth about Bark and word of mouth is the metal fist knocks the most money out of your name "Spam Robbery Hack Bark"

I am glad I will post this email everywhere until your Company Bark closes down for illegal online activity like Payless. And trust me you will hear from my lawyer for your 3 weeks let me wait all illegal activity and fraudulent marketing on your website said you give all the money back if not 1 project out of 10 projects weekly did not close.

For now you try to make me eat your $#*! lie about let me explain you we are a 7 billion dollar company; of course because you steal from people like me. You think your fakeness will take you to a good place?

First of: I do not want any credit refund to my Bark Account. What I want is my full money refunded right back to my account and I want you to close my Bark Account. You will never see me put a foot again in Bark.

Nontheless to explain that I have outstanding excellent Royal Level Construction Services and I called all customers as soon customer information was provided. Out of 7 leads; 6 leads to be more specific clear did not ring therefor no answer; no response to emails or textes.

Conclusion I am not happy with your lies with your $#*! with your fake nasty poor quality service and I want you to give me all my money back and close my account. Bark is an Illegal Fraud and I will report it to the Authorities so the Authorities close down Bark and the heavy load of word of mouth will eventually help the Government close down Bark for illegal activity.

Below are screenshot pictures of my internal Bark Account and you can see how many times i called customers and emailed customer and left voice messages and 0 reply from customer. Once you pay the lead to Bark; Bark does not give customer's address.

Bark is an illegal Company and Global Government needs to shut down Bark Illegal Company.