No service magic - Page 4 - Contractor Talk - Professional Construction and Remodeling Forum

SMsupport · 05-04-2009, 01:15 PM

Danno – I’m sorry to hear we lost your business. Would you be available to spend a few minutes with me and discuss what went wrong?

Martin Co · 05-04-2009, 01:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Danno6102

I just canceled my account with them Friday. Pretty sad when one of your main menu options is, "If you would like cancel your account, press 5".

That's funny!!! I canceled mine last Friday too!! What a bunch of ripoffs! My website has brought me excellent leads - none SM could even match.

A W Smith · 05-04-2009, 01:40 PM

what went wrong? do some googlevestigating.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q...service+magic+

The first time you decided to re-sell old leads to other online lead companies, That's where it went wrong

The first time you took a web site owners hard work, and redirected his own leads to your own site and had the balls to charge the contractor for his own leads, that's where it went wrong.

The first time you dragged your feet giving refunds for bad leads, that's where it went wrong.

The first time your callers posed as a lead to snare unsuspecting contractors into your web of deceit, That's where it went wrong.

The first time you had your employees pose as contractors to post one post blunders on contractor discussion sites, That's where it went wrong.

Your business model is disingenuous at best, and reeks of a Bernie Madoff scheme at worst.

what the hell happened to honesty? WTF are they teaching in business school these days? do you think we are stupid? In my over 30 years in this industry I am thankfull that I have met a lot of people. And can spot a dishonest person by the first two sentences we echange.or the handshake. I have to laugh at my ex partner who would fall for every one. even after I warned him. Im also thankfull that in our short partnership he didnt sign me up to any of these lead services.

SMsupport · 05-04-2009, 01:46 PM

David - When SM issues credit for a bad lead, SM issues lead replacement dollars (the dollar amount of the lead). There isn’t a particular lead that replaces another lead being credited. The dollar amount of the replaced lead is applied towards the balance on the current billing cycle. If there isn’t a balance, the dollar amount is good for six months. Rarely does an account go inactive for that long of a period.

Jason W · 05-04-2009, 01:52 PM

It's funny now, but when I asked SM to remove my name from the search engines that redirected my customers to their site it took about a week. A few days after the request I called the toll free # and asked if I could get New Venture to come out and give me a price on a siding job ( I had also canceled my siding leads at this time). The SM rep told me that New Venture dosn't do siding anymore but she had a full list of other contractors that would be glad to look at it. lol

You could have heard a pin drop when I told her who I really was. I wonder how many companies out there are loosing business because they have no idea this happens?

Jason W · 05-04-2009, 01:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SMsupport

David - When SM issues credit for a bad lead, SM issues lead replacement dollars (the dollar amount of the lead). There isn’t a particular lead that replaces another lead being credited. The dollar amount of the replaced lead is applied towards the balance on the current billing cycle. If there isn’t a balance, the dollar amount is good for six months. Rarely does an account go inactive for that long of a period.

I think David is referring to the alternative way that you give back. Many times after being denied for a refund they would offer a free lead or two depending on the circumstance. These expire in 30 days.

DavidC · 05-04-2009, 02:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SMsupport

David - When SM issues credit for a bad lead, SM issues lead replacement dollars (the dollar amount of the lead). There isn’t a particular lead that replaces another lead being credited. The dollar amount of the replaced lead is applied towards the balance on the current billing cycle. If there isn’t a balance, the dollar amount is good for six months. Rarely does an account go inactive for that long of a period.

I'll be the first to admit that my info could be wrong. The way it was explained to me however was a lead credit is issued and the next similar lead would replace the bad one. Kitchen lead begets a kitchen lead for example.

This may be potato/potata. Bottom line is once you hit my account for the lead cost the money is gone for me. If you agree the lead is bad, give the money back. No lines, no waiting.

Good Luck
Dave

rbsremodeling · 05-04-2009, 02:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by A W Smith

what went wrong? do some googlevestigating.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q...service+magic+

The first time you decided to re-sell old leads to other online lead companies, That's where it went wrong

The first time you took a web site owners hard work, and redirected his own leads to your own site and had the balls to charge the contractor for his own leads, that's where it went wrong.

The first time you dragged your feet giving refunds for bad leads, that's where it went wrong.

The first time your callers posed as a lead to snare unsuspecting contractors into your web of deceit, That's where it went wrong.

The first time you had your employees pose as contractors to post one post blunders on contractor discussion sites, That's where it went wrong.

Your business model is disingenuous at best, and reeks of a Bernie Madoff scheme at worst.

what the hell happened to honesty? WTF are they teaching in business school these days? do you think we are stupid? In my over 30 years in this industry I am thankfull that I have met a lot of people. And can spot a dishonest person by the first two sentences we echange.or the handshake. I have to laugh at my ex partner who would fall for every one. even after I warned him. Im also thankfull that in our short partnership he didnt sign me up to any of these lead services.

This basically sums up most of what is bad with them. I need to copy and paste this to another forum where we are having this same discussion.

SMsupport · 05-04-2009, 02:30 PM

Jason – Thank you for your feedback, I appreciate your time and responses. You are correct about the free leads expiring in 30 days. Those rarely expire as well, but when they do we can re-issue the free lead. To address the issue of you calling in and asking for your service, understand this happens when you cancel your XM leads and a homeowner calls in via the XM advertising. In your previous post you mentioned the ROI not being there. Do you have the numbers on what your exact ROI or cost per customer?

I’m glad to hear about the brighter future for your company and the residential job you and your crews are working.

Jason W · 05-04-2009, 02:45 PM

My numbers are fairly close to being exact, but I calculate them differently than you would. Even thought you replaced leads with other bad leads this just caused more of my time running around, burning gas, getting nowhere. That is where you guys miss the boat because my time has got to be calculated in the investment, my time is not free nor is it worthless. I don't want to be bothered with a bushel full of leads just to close 1. I no longer have the full list of customers and leads so I won't point out what I think the actual % of lead to close was. I will say from what I can remember it was WAY under 25%. I close at around 80% with other forms of marketing. I value my time much more these days.

SMsupport · 05-04-2009, 02:59 PM

In response to a few posts, I'd like to clear something up in regards to how we market on search engines. We dedicate a tremendous amount of time and money to generate consumer leads for our member professionals. We have expertise in this area, and it comes from a group of smart, dedicated employees who focus on this all day, every day (just like you do on your business). Specific to the complaint that we bid directly against some companies for their own company name; this is not the full picture.

We can bid on a generic term like "plumbing" and our advertisement will show up in results for any search that includes that keyword. Additionally, search engines offer a feature called "Keyword Insertion". When an advertiser uses Keyword Insertion, the title of the ad that displays on the search results will display as whatever the user typed in the search box. So for example, when a consumer searches for a term like "Joe's Plumbing", search engines may decide that the results should include our advertisements because it included the term "plumbing". This can lead to it looking as though we're bidding against companies for their own company name, which isn't the case. At the end of the day, if you are bidding for keywords within the home improvement industry, you’ll likely find ServiceMagic in the results.

After you account for the various combinations of keywords and the various search engines where we advertise, we literally bid on over a million terms, so it should not be surprising that we come up in just about anything you search for within the realm of home improvement. I hope this helps to clear up any confusion about our practices as it relates to our search engine marketing.

Jason W · 05-04-2009, 03:03 PM

Shawn,

I think you guys are trying to do a service to contractors, I really do. But SM, like other lead generating services are trying to hard to come up with too many, thereby diluting then whole system. There is only "x" amount of good prospects out there. You can't just use catchy slogans, push the "what will it hurt to find out" thing, or even give away free ipods to create jobs. All you're going to achieve is more traffic to your site from bogas clients. This is NOT what we are looking for. How to change that? I have no idea.

Scribbles · 05-04-2009, 03:06 PM

SMsupport, You can give me a call if you like I own Sacramento Millworks, I am in your database, afternoons after 1pm before 5pm, I am usally in my shop.

Jason W · 05-04-2009, 03:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SMsupport

In response to a few posts, I'd like to clear something up in regards to how we market on search engines. We dedicate a tremendous amount of time and money to generate consumer leads for our member professionals. We have expertise in this area, and it comes from a group of smart, dedicated employees who focus on this all day, every day (just like you do on your business). Specific to the complaint that we bid directly against some companies for their own company name; this is not the full picture.

We can bid on a generic term like "plumbing" and our advertisement will show up in results for any search that includes that keyword. Additionally, search engines offer a feature called "Keyword Insertion". When an advertiser uses Keyword Insertion, the title of the ad that displays on the search results will display as whatever the user typed in the search box. So for example, when a consumer searches for a term like "Joe's Plumbing", search engines may decide that the results should include our advertisements because it included the term "plumbing". This can lead to it looking as though we're bidding against companies for their own company name, which isn't the case. At the end of the day, if you are bidding for keywords within the home improvement industry, you’ll likely find ServiceMagic in the results.

After you account for the various combinations of keywords and the various search engines where we advertise, we literally bid on over a million terms, so it should not be surprising that we come up in just about anything you search for within the realm of home improvement. I hope this helps to clear up any confusion about our practices as it relates to our search engine marketing.

Lets not forget that your advertisement also include (or at least did) company names in them and when a person searches for that company your ads also come up. Also, the average small business can not afford to bid these terms like SM can so you essentially beat out the guy you claim to help by stepping in front of him on the internet with his own company name.

A W Smith · 05-04-2009, 03:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jason W

Lets not forget that your advertisement also include (or at least did) company names in them and when a person searches for that company your ads also come up. Also, the average small business can not afford to bid these terms like SM can so you essentially beat out the guy you claim to help by stepping in front of him on the internet with his own company name.

Kind of ironic that those dollars they bid with come from contractors they have fleeced.

Martin Co · 05-04-2009, 03:39 PM

One thing that really bothered me with SM, was google local. They hotlinked all of my work photo's with their website links. Also, the fact that they were listed under my details page of google local with their "get a free quote" from this contractor.

So check your google local page, I just deleted mine. I wonder how many customers I let go since then, when they were looking for me -not twenty other arseholes to compete with!!!

Martin Co · 05-04-2009, 03:41 PM

Just to think, I had a good position for a lot of key searches in local! Live and let learn!

Jason W · 05-04-2009, 03:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Martin Co

Just to think, I had a good position for a lot of key searches in local! Live and let learn!

It's not over yet

Wait until you see these little f'd up looking tags in the script of your web site!

They showed up in my site on some of the written material that I had also put into my SM site. We had to change a few things on it to get it to go away

That could be because we copied and pasted from the site before it was turned off, I'm not sure if thats what happened so keep an eye out for it.

Martin Co · 05-04-2009, 04:04 PM

I tried having it removed through google and nothing happened. It really pissed me off! Service Magic shouldn't be stealing work from me by hotlinks and such.

Jason W · 05-04-2009, 04:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Martin Co

I tried having it removed through google and nothing happened. It really pissed me off! Service Magic shouldn't be stealing work from me by hotlinks and such.

Pull the pictures!