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Have you ever looked for a contractor to perform some type work on your home?
If you’ve found it frightening to painstakingly screen contractors for your specific project,
you might not be alone.
The initial search typically involves obtaining references
from friends and family members or a quick skim of the local yellow pages.
Craig's List has become a great resource,
but you are bombarded with so many choices and are not given adequate information on quality
of completed work.
There are some Web sites such as
ServiceMaster.com and
ServiceMagic.com that allow you to post your project
needs and have contractors contact you. Professionals in their network pay for the leads that are
driven by the site. At best, you can assume they are legitimate companies. Unfortunately, however,
you have no way of knowing what past customers have said about the service contractors.
A great site that offers helpful customer reviews is Angie's List.
Obviously, the name is a knock-off of Craig's List, but the content is much different. Customers post reviews
of previous work they’ve had done and they note the company that performed the work, plus the price they paid.
They also rate the overall performance of the contractor. The contractor is rated on an A-F scale.
Some contractors also offer promotions. The site does charge a fee of either $5.95/month or $51/year
(plus a $10 sign up fee), but this is worth the cost if you plan on hiring a contractor for important
real estate improvements.
There are a few other sites that offer reviews for free, but they
are not nearly as robust in the area of contractors. Yelp.com,
Judysbook.com, and Insiderpages.com
to name a few.
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