ServiceMagic

There is a big lawsuit against ServiceMagic for numerous criminal and civil violations due to overcharging contractors, unlawfully charging cancelled accounts, creating false websites under the names of contracting companies, and more. They do no real screening of contractors, so customer experiences are fairly random from contractors, but when there are problems, Service Magic is rarely of any help, despite guarantees. We are not alone in having been massively overcharged by them with no recourse other than to take them to court.

JLP, supposedly a local, family-owned cleaning and yard-service business since 2006, was given a 5/5 rating, based on supposedly 40 ratings. We hired them based on those recommendations. Jorge, the owner, arrived, covered in muddy clothes, with two non-English speaking Latinos who evidently had never cleaned windows before. Most of the outside windows were done by them. Jorge did take his muddy shoes off when he came into the house to clean the upper inside windows - but his socks were just as wet and muddy and left the worst footprints all over our wooden floors.
Needless to say, the windows are not clean, the floors were a mess, and he charged $100 more than our previous cleaners (who were not good either, but at least came in clean socks!)

Of course, Jorge, supposedly LLC, did not give us a receipt, so we have no proof of purchase for his service,

I am very disappointed in the contractors I have gotten through Service Magic, and I no longer use this service as a source for referrals. The contractors pay to be included on the site, so there is no real screening done to ensure that qualified professionals are coming to your home. During the course of a kitchen remodel I had everyone from experienced contractors to outright frauds call me from my Service Magic request for referrals. I would not recommend anyone use this service, but would particularly caution women to be very wary of the contractors coming from this site.

I had a dispute with a customer over service that I provided. Customer called Service Magic and complained, and SM, without even talking to me at all, cancelled my account. Until then I had nothing but outstanding feedback from all of my customers. Never had a complaint. I had paid over $5000 over several years for leads and had built up a very good reputation in my field. Without notice, SM cancelled my account. They later called and admitted that they had made a mistake, and asked me to come back. Contractors, stay away. They do not care about you. And they will continue to use your company name and even your website long after your account is closed (see lawsuit in above comments) to point people toward their website and away from yours.

They suck. I am a carpet cleaning company. Perhaps for other companies they may work better but for us, well they suck. It is a money hole and the leads they charge you for just aren't always very relevant. The service might be worth it if they cut the lead prices in half, maybe. As it is I spend much more than I put in and they just cut the requirement for liability insurance for cleaning firms which is, well, really stupid.

Don't waist your money.

They stole money from me and removed my business phone number and stole my company name from me put service magic number instead and put it on the internet till I caught them I did file but I have not gotten anywhere with it I went to the governor's office attorney general's office soon after more complaint from consumers contractors how they got ripped off I got ripped off from service magic law suit was pilling up name change still the same old game with people lives they need to pay up

I used db fasciad thtough service magic
First they ridded my roof of moss and cleaned and sealed it it now looks like brand new roof
Then they replaced guttering and fascias for myself and my neighbour it looks brilliant
They were fast efficient and cleaned up afterwards would recommend them

A civil lawsuit was filed on October 19,2011 in United States Federal Court against ServiceMagic, Inc., their subsidiary, Market Hardware, and Market Hardware's CEO Brian Kraff for bad faith business practices, unfair and deceptive trade practices, unfair competition, cyber squatting, and other serious violations of law.

The lawsuit was accepted for trial by the Federal Court. Google the case number for details: 8:11-cv-*******-RWT

After repeated calls from Service Magic asking us to sign up for their service, I finally agreed to give it a try in January 2011. They were offering no sign up fees, the only requirement was that we have valid liability insurance. The way the service works is there is a charge for every contractor that receives a "lead" and I was told that each lead would go to three contractors in our area. Leads that were determined to be "exact match leads" were charged a much higher rate. On February 14th, we received our first and only lead and it turned out to be an "exact match". I called the customer immediately and again tried to contact him later but he never returned my calls. I called SM to report the issue and told them I did not expect to be charged. They sent the customer an e-mail and I received a reply that he had found someone else. I told SM this was not going to work for me and that I had plenty of work on my own anyway so I wanted to cancel. One week later, I was searching out various location on the web and found they had hijacked my Yahoo Local ad where we had great customer reviews dating much earlier than my January 7th sign up date. They had changed my phone number to their toll free number and changed my website link to their own. I have since found other places where I had my company registered that they had changed my original information. I could not believe this had happened. I still have not gotten the situation totally corrected. I have spent several hours on the phone with Yahoo, had to agree to pay a monthly fee so no one can get into my ad again and am still waiting for them to try to get our company customer reviews from the site SM hijacked to my paid for submission. I wonder how many other companies they do this to and they don't even know it. I suppose if you are a new company and do not have good web presence, SM may be a good match for that company but not a company who already has a good business. I am still not sure how they managed to do what they have done, can not believe it is legal and can not imagine how much business we have lost as a result