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I have spent in total £147.84 for getting only one reply from a customer which have not led to any job. So basically I've sponsored bark and received nothing in return. It's true what other person said that they lure potential buyers with a ridiculously low budget estimates, which mean at best you would earn £2-3 per hour. But the thing is I even didn't get to the stage of discussing the budget, as people just simply not replying to any messages, emails or phone calls. If I would've spent this money on platforms where they charge 20% for completed work, offering, for example, some discounts to clients I would earn at least something or even decent money. Here I've just thrown money for nothing. Their sales team calls promising they improved their service to get you accurate leads and ensuring of 30 to 50% conversion rate. In reality, you're lucky if you get 3% and 0% ROI. The reality is I have now £150 less on my bank account. There is plenty of bad opinions of this service on other sites, especially from photographers and videographers so sellers don't repeat mistakes of others and don't waste your money. I've contacted bark asking for a refund they informed me they don't offer any refunds.
Marcin R.'s review of Bark earned 5 Very Helpful votes
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Not the best site out there, in fact pretty poor, spent money on this site hoping to get further...
Barks is the biggest scam and thief out there people please keep your selves away and when we...
Hi Marcin,
We're sorry to hear you've been unsuccessful so far. Many Sellers are successful from their initial pack purchase, but some take a little longer to get used to how our platform works. This is why we offer a credit back guarantee on the first pack purchased so, if you don't get hired from the first pack, we can help you understand why and let you have another go without spending anything more.
To respond to your comments:
- Low budgets of £2-3/hour. We don't state this anywhere I can find. It's not on our PPC Ads and not on the public pages of our site. Where we do give Buyers an idea of cost when placing a Bark, this always comes from recent quotes to similar Barks in the same area from other professionals, like yourself. It is, of course, possible that the Buyer may ask for that, but we'd always advise them that more often than not you get what you pay for. If you have genuinely seen this pricing from us, then please send details to team@bark.com so we can investigate.
- Bark is a pay per response service, not commission based. We do this as we think it's most likely for Sellers to get hired if they can communicate with the Buyer in a way that works for them. For this reason, we provide full contact details on every request. If we adopted a commission-based model, we'd have to ensure all communication was through the platform up to the point of hire - which would mean fewer hires taking place. We don't think this is good for our Sellers, or our business - so we've avoided that approach.
- We don't refund. As stated above, we return credits for a 2nd chance if you don't get hired first time. We also return credits where it would not have been possible to contact the Buyer - for example if the email address bounces (we test this before the Bark is issued, so it's very rare), the phone number doesn't ring, of the phone number is for the wrong person. It is true that we don't provide a refund if a Seller is unsuccessful in securing the business - but neither does any other advertising platform (Google, Bing, Yellow Pages, Radio, TV, Newspaper etc.). We consider this entirely fair and reasonable and are clear at the point of purchase that we will return credits if a user isn't hired first time round.
- Poor return on investment - We generally find this is where Sellers aren't following our response tips. They may, for example, have no reviews, not have a profile picture, have spelling and/or grammar errors in their response, respond slowly, not give a quote etc. When Sellers follow our guidelines, we know they get hired something like 1 in 3 to 1 in 5 times they respond. It often takes a while to get used to this way of working though, as it's not the same as someone coming to your website and contacting you specifically. The best Sellers make themselves stand out, and get hired more as a result.
If you haven't done so already, I'd invite you to ask for your credits back under the Credit Back Guarantee, then ask the Support team for some tips to help you get hired. We're sure this will work for you and that we'll be able to change your mind on Bark.com.