I've never done it on Angie's List, but I have blasted a plumber on Yelp who bungled a job. It turned out to be a good thing as he contacted me after my review posted and offered to try to remedy the situation.

i pay an Angie's List membership to get honest comments from ALL users of vendors and services. From them, I and many others make our subsequent decisions on who to use.

Are you saying I should cancel my membership?

Please post your comments.

I have posted a negative review on Angie's list...for a contractor who never showed for a quote....he did in fact put a reply that stated he called and we weren't home so he didn't come--(that never happened!)....unfortunately, you cannot respond back, but I guess it is what it is.....I would not be afraid to post. I too, look for honest feedback on Angie's list.

I'm not a member of angie's list, although I was briefly* ... reviews, bad and good, are why it's there.

I regularly post reviews on Amazon and any other place I buy things - good and bad. It's a service to others.

Stick to the facts, explain exactly what happened, and be polite. A business can blow off a rant, but when you are polite and factual you come off as believable.

*I canceled the membership because they claimed more businesses for my small town than there are buildings, and were returning results from businesses that wouldn't make the trip to do the work.

I was just wondering this too. The company came out to give us an estimate, so they never actually did any work, but I just didn't like the guy at all. They came very highly rated from Angie's List and the BBB.

He was here for less than 5 minutes, and barely even glanced at the problem area in question before he was recommending thousands of dollars of repairs and upgrades. When I commented that this was something that I'd have to discuss with my husband before I commited to any of it, he was pushing me to call him at work RIGHT NOW to make a decision.

This was not a critical situation, or any kind of emergency, so there was no need to decide or do anything at all any time soon. Whether or not we actually NEED to do any of the things he recommended is something we'll find out when we get other estimates, but I doubt we'd call that company back to do any of the work. I'll probably write a review, but not until after we get other estimates and opinions. The guy may have been right, I just didn't like him, didn't like the hard-sell attitude, and the cost of the repairs that he recommended seems exceptionally high.

Did your contractor do any work? Was the work satisfactory? Was it just a bad attitude problem or did they say something snarky? Was there a problem with their work that they weren't willing to fix?

I posted a bad review and was contacted via letter by the president of the company and he threatened to sue me. I explained to him that he couldn't sue me and win (you can certainly sue anyone for any reason) if what I said was truthful. He came out to my home and satisfied my most glaring complaint and I withdrew the review. I guess a person who wasn't familiar with the law or didn't want to risk getting sued would have folded and taken down the review without having the problems fixed. Therefore, I place very little value on their service.

I think AL is hit or miss. I have been happy with some, not happy with others. I have only written one positive review and that was for a the guy who put in new stair rails for us...he went above and beyond the call of duty and I even actually tipped him. It's almost a year later and I still have not written a bad review of the painting company we hired--which got very high marks on AL and the BM paint store. Not sure my bad review would make a difference among all the good ones. When you see 20 positive good reviews and 1 or 2 bad ones, the bad ones come across as just disgruntled, hard to please types. I have made a note on my calendar to cancel AL come January when it is due...I don't need it much anymore and A lot of the companies that pop up are far from us and I doubt they would trek out to my area. When we retire, I can see signing up for it for one year to get a list of trades people lined up...but you can probably accomplish the same thing with Yelp.

Yes I have. It was for someone who didn't actually do the work but was unresponsive in even providing a bid. Interestingly the contractor then contacted me and tried to get me to retract my negative review. That really made me suspect of AL in general if they can do that. I've had really good luck with AL though as long as it's someone with a lot of positive reviews. If they have just a few I'm not confident they'll be any good.

I canceled my AL membership because there was not much feedback for my area on small businesses and most reviewed companies had "A" ratings. Also, I was turned off by the fact that every bad bad review was rebutted by the business in question and always made the original review seem like a lie. I wasn't comfortable posting my reviews in that environment.

Basically, I like the concept of AL, but not the reality.

I can only believe that a contractor asking you to make an immediate commitment, even to the point of contacting your husband at work, is suspect.

I also cancelled my membership because of no feedback in my area. Angie's List is no longer owned by Angie and feedback is now questionable according to a review I recently read.

Thank you for this informative thread. I had no idea that AL contractors could contact the reviewer after a bad review! That seems really wrong.

I can only believe that a contractor asking you to make an immediate commitment, even to the point of contacting your husband at work, is suspect. - lovemrmewey

Agree. I had a similar situation with a termite inspector (national company) who, as he called en route to confirm our appointment, kept pushing for my husband to be there, to the point of "well, can we call him on the phone? ". Like I was either incapable of making a decision on my own, or unable to clearly communicate to my husband the pearls of wisdom this guy was going to drop on me during the inspection. I didn't do AL but you can betcha I called his home office and complained. I got a callback from a supervisor so I was able to vent fully.

In your situation, I'd be tempted to do an AL review with just the facts, no emotion. I read all the negative reviews to see common threads in complaints, and if the consistent thread is attitude, that company is off my list.

It's a long story, but the contractor's guy did the knockdown texture, and didn't do it well. Most of it I can live with or fix, but there were 2 areas that were so bad they just needed to be redone. When I texted the contractor to tell him the two areas weren't done right, he texted back that it would be the same price to come back and do it over as many times as I wanted to pay for it. When I asked if he didn't guarantee work that was done on an hourly rate, he replied:

"How do I know it was not don't (his typo) correctly when it could be just your perception that you did not like the way it turned out. Not being done correctly is a broad statement. I will not get inito this discussion with you. It is not a warranty issue it is an issue that you don't like the way it turned out. That is not work was not done correctly."

This was without even seeing the work, or saying he wanted to see it. And as many of you know, dh has been in the paint business since 1976, first as a painter and then in sales, and his father was a builder. Dh has seen A LOT of texture, both good and bad, and he thought this was really bad. The contractor also knew dh and knew that dh knows his stuff. So that text message blew me away. Dh was gone at the time I sent the message and received this one, and I was so taken aback that I didn't even respond to that text. The contractor's next text was to say he was coming over to look at it.

When he got here, and of course dh was gone, he admitted that both areas looked bad. Then he apologized. Sort of. He told me "I apologize for the tenor of my text message but I do not apologize for the reason I sent it." So I'm not sure what he was apologizing for. He thought I was one of those nit picky people who look for problems and didn't give me any credit for knowing what I was talking about. Very condescending attitude.

A lot of you have hit on the main reason I don't know if I want to post about it. He will blast me and I won't be able to counter, and he will make me look like I don't know what I'm talking about.

I don't know for sure, but I assume from the replies to comments that the contractor is given the name of the reviewer.

btw, after seeing all the work done, the contractor sounded surprised that I only wanted 2 places redone and he agreed to send someone out in the morning IF we would skim the walls and tape off everything so the worker only had to come in, shoot the texture and knock it down.

Dh bought a texture sprayer and did it himself. Not a great job, but better than the one we paid for, and not bad considering dh hasn't sprayed texture in over 10 years and this guy supposedly does it all the time. The crazy thing is that he kept talking about how great it looked.

p.s. I just checked one of my reviews on AL, and I can go back and change my review. So even if you can't respond to the contractor's reply, you can go back and change your initial comment.

Pictures on photobucket

This post was edited by marti8a on Fri, Oct 18, 13 at 20:30

If a contractor is able to contact a bad reviewer, it certainly would give me pause to write a bad review. How do I know I didn't just write a bad review for a "crazy creep" that might be out to get back at me - you know, like maybe my cat (if I had one) found dead on my doorstep or something. I definitely would want to be anonymous for a review like that. It's nuts that AL allows that!

I guess they want to stop competitors from posting fake bad reviews. I have to admit, I don't post bad reviews. I live in a smaller metro area, and yes, it could be a safety concern.

We had a horrible contractor who built DH's shop. DH liked him personally very much at first, but that reversed itself pretty quickly when it became obvious he didn't know what he was doing with the electrical. We found out later just how bad it was screwed up. I could have ripped him up on AL, but knowing that you could literally ruin someone's career with a really bad review -- I was scared to do so.

AL helped me find the contractor I am using now. DH said he didn't like him at first because he didn't seem friendly enough, but I reminded him of the "good old boy". We are pleased with everything. I don't expect the contractor to be my friend - just be professional.
Due to AL, their business has exploded, and he is having a hard time keeping up. He keeps forgetting details, doing 3 jobs at once, and I'm having to constantly remind him of things. I'm thinking I will include that information in my review, but do it in a non emotional, factual manner. If this is my only complaint, it's not much of one, considering the nightmare stories I read about here and other places! Everything else has been great.

Marti8a, your experience is one I would want to know about if I were using AL. Consider whether you would have hired this contractor for this job if you had known about his poor customer service in advance. I can understand reluctance about posting something negative, but without candid reviews a service like AL has no value to consumers.

I think that they are more responsive to fixing things that you are unhappy with if they know you are an Angies list member. I have never had something not fixed to my satisfaction from an AL reference. Read the comments more carefully than the grade to get the real story. For example if I have a project that wasn't entirely smooth but ended up well I will give an "A" but explain about glitches along the way. Another person might give the same experience a "B". If it goes perfectly smoothly I give a "Page of Happiness". I live in a major metropolitan area and AL is pretty good for this area.

This contractor knew I was an AL member. If AL wanted to, they could make the reviewer's ID hidden from everyone except moderators who could check out any complaints.

Yes, I would have wanted to know something like this about this guy, but after experiencing him, I don't know that I want to bring on any more from him. When he was here doing the estimate, he talked about another woman he was working for who was griping about the job done. I know she was unhappy with his work and as yet, there is no review from her either and I wonder if it is because he treated her like he treated me.

So I guess through posting and reading through this thread, I've made up my mind and that I won't review, unless it's just to post a grade only.

I did contact AL and tell them that if they ever decide to keep the ID hidden, let me know and I'll leave an honest review.

This post was edited by marti8a on Sat, Oct 19, 13 at 15:46

Yes, I've left bad reviews and good ones too. I do it because in order for something like AL to work, feedback both good and bad is necessary. The next person checking out reviews is that much further ahead because I posted mine.

I'm totally not worried about any fallout from telling the truth on a review site.
There is always pressure in life to keep one's head down and just go along, but I don't take kindly to pressure like that which might ultimately be bad for the next person who needs something done and without this kind of info, may pick the same person who just did a poor job for me.

It isn't like someone with a poor review didn't earn it.

I have submitted a negative review about a contractor who never finished a project where a deposit was made. Angi never published it. They claimed I couldn't be verified. Yet, they published all my positive reviews. Angi is not a consumer advocate. Don't trust it.