Internet Lead Service Busted Red-handed--gotta Read!!

morganexteriors

Alright guys,...As much as we all tend to speculate about the shady business these internet lead generating companies tend to do...I HAVE PROOF that in fact these guys are bottom-feeding, scum-sucking parasites.

I was contacted by a "NEW" internet lead generation company called "myconstructionleads.com. The gentleman initially sounded like any solicitor that calls the office, but being that we're in the business of scheduling estimates i figured what the heck..I'll give these guys a listen to.

The leads were dirt cheap. $60.00 for 5 leads. Hell of a bargain. (NOT)

Set one of the leads as an appointment.

2 others said that they've already contracted to do the work.

The remaining 2 never answer their phones or respond to emails.

I contacted myconstructionleads.com, and the gentleman I initially spoke with said "we don't give credits". I explained the circumstances with the leads I purchased, and he said "I'll talk to my manager and get back to you". He surprisingly did, but here's the kicker...I just happen to be walking by another phone here in my office,..a phone with caller i.d. I looked at the phone, and it said "myfreeestimates"....I answered the phone,...told the guy "I thought you weren't affiliated with any other lead service"....at which point he attempted to do the lamest back-peddle attempt I've witnessed to date. After listening to his line of b.s.,....I figured I'd speak to our acct. rep at Myfreeestimates (tara, or alyssa)-no one initially wanted to admit they were "double-dipping"....But after realizing they were busted red-handed, it was explained to me that they were trying a new venture...My response? NEW VENTURE MY A$$....these greedy pigs are now selling the same contact information from myfreeestimates for $45-$60 a pop (supposedly to only 3-4 contractors). So, after they make $180 (at 45 per lead, going to 4 different contractors) they dump the contact information to their "subsidary company" and sell it 3-4 more times at a discounted price.
--Just imagine being that 7th or 8th guy trying to call these people,....

Also,....as I'd call to request a credit occasionally..At first, they were good about it, and reimbursed our credit card for the lead at question. Then they got in the habit of sending me "replacement leads" for the initial junk leads i received. Come to find out after doing some extremely thorough research that these "replacement leads" i was getting sent were over 2 months old...Only reason i found that out was because i started asking the leads at question how long ago it was from the point they initially went online to inquire about doing a project.

Any attempt as of lately to get one of these douchebags to do anything but pass the buck has failed miserably...The sad but true fact in the matter is since Jan. 1st of '08 my company has purchased 77 leads from myfreeestimates.com and have only netted $7,942.00 in business from this particular lead company.

Very sad when there's another lead company we've only purchased 21 leads from, and netted $87,523.00 from.

Bottom line----if these guys are doing this,..And practicing this type of work ethic....Considering that they happen to be one of just a few of the "bigger dogs" in the online lead generating business...I can't help but to wonder if it's going on across the board.

RUN FAST FROM MY FREE ESTIMATES. AS WELL AS MYCONSTRUCTIONLEADS.COM--AS THEY ARE ONE IN THE SAME--the customer service blows,....and the overall lead quality sucks. You'd really have much better luck taking all that money invested and tossing it coin by coin into a wishing well. Maybe even better luck playing powerball.

www.morganexteriorsnh.com

Bill

Scumbags. I hate a scammer. Maybe one day they will need a real job done and a fly by night contractor will rip them off

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Brandon.heath34

I would be curious to know who provides the 21 leads that you closed on....

brandon.heath3434@yahoo.com

I have used both those companies before and have noticed the same thing.

It seems to me the market is really changing for these guys. To have so many companies call now and provide the same garbage, something has to change or we contractors will just fork up more for our own campaigns...

I depend on them to much and see little action. I do burn through a lot, but land jobs. I am not the lowest bidder, but damn close.....I sell myself and ask a ton of questions, smile and be polite. Also provide pictures/#'s of work I have completed. I hear most often I got the job cause I actually listen and care about the homeowner's needs. I get them off the price... well, try.


Not all lead companies are bad, most are...., but it is a lot cheaper for me to sit at home/shop and call leads than to do all my other marketing stuff that provides nothing but wasted time, little ROI, and frustration. I just Let them do it, and do all sales related after job is complete e.g.: network, door hangers, front yard sign. And trust me word spreads......if you’re a genuine contractor...and by not RAPING people. I don’t make a ton, but work is steady and sure…

marc

Now I have a warm fuzzy feeling about the Myfreeestimate lead that I'm running this afternoon.
I did do a report on my leads this morning
Thankfully I haven't accepted a lot of leads from myfreeestimates but I am 0 for 8

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Marc

PMI

I get solicitations all the time to then learn that the same company is using all sorts of different websites to promote the same business selling the same leads to more contractors. Just today I got an email from MyContractorLocator.com. I went to the following website contact page http://mycontractorlocator.com/contact+us.php and called the Toll Free # 866.506.6350 and was surprised that the system says "MyFreeEstimates" so now we are up to three company names for the same business. So technically one lead in can go out to contractors at three different business names. Also, compare it to the following website http://www.myfreeestimates.com/contact+us.php. Everything is exactly the same except the name.

I really am not sure why they do this, but you can bet it has to do with extra revenue from the less informed contractors.

I am willing to pay for good leads and just wished the business was more quality driven.

morganexteriors

what scumbags....

id personally pay more for more exclusive leads myself.

so now they're selling them 12-16 times....

think i might call them and act like a "newbie" and then once i get them on the phone let them know that I as well as every other contractor they deal with knows what they are up to.

but you;re exactly right--i think they're doing this hoping for the extra revenue from the mis-informed contractors.

Double-A

Read your contract. Unless these are solicited as exclusive leads, then the fact that one company sells you a lead, and then passes that information on to a second company (salesforce, change your hats please) to sell doesn't mean they are in violation of their contract.

Now, this is not in defense of these folks. We don't use them. Personally, I find them more trouble than profit. I'm just trying to point out that, while unethical in my opinion, its not necessarily illegal. There is no such thing as a free lunch, even over the internet. If you're not doing your 'due diligence' when it comes to whom your company does business with, then you're just asking to get scammed.

Don't play with people that cheat. Take your ball and go home. Good work on sniffing these dinks out.

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Markon

Actually MYCONSTRUCTIONLEADS.COM is the same as myfreeestimates.com is the same as mycontractorlocator.com. You can simply use myipneighbors.com to see other c-block members of a url, even if they block there ICANN registration. They must be on the same server though. They should be smarter than that if they are going to play everyone for a idiot.

It is amazing what some of these lead companies do and how they work. I'm not going to say they are all bad, and I think some of them are very naive and don't truly understand everything going on out there. I have been in the lead business for a couple years now. I once paid for leads through every company imageanble to try and create a mind map to connect all the different companys that have other company fronts, tie toghther who shared and sold there leads to who, and see who gave good leads and who gave bad leads. The mind map became a mess. So many of them work toghther, and most of them have tons of affiliates. Some of the affiliates have done so well, they almost appear as a seperate company themselves.

Hammer_Nail

Nothing worse then spam. I guess it's just a numbers game for those jerks

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Ed the Roofer

Could you show us an example using Service Magic to see how many Class "C" sub-domains they are utilizing?

Thanks,

Ed

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Markon

I am a new member so I can't post URL's. Email me and I will send the post I was going to put up and you can see if you approve and post it.

Ed the Roofer

Information from Markon regarding a little digging up additional SM sites.

Ed



Below is a list of sites servicemagic.com owns. I’m sure it is not all. These are just the sites listed on the same server; they have the same c-block.
To learn more about c-blocks of IP address, go here: http://www.theinternetdigest.net/articles/ip-address-overview.html

Understand Servicemagic.com is owned by IAC/InterActiveCorp. Servicemagic is a little part of their company. Other company’s they owns: LendingTree.com, Ticketmaster.com, Myway.com, Excite.com. The last two are search engines once bigger than Google. When Google, Msn, and yahoo took off, there shares plumbed. IAC or it’s subsidiary, Servicemagic, bought them to study people’s user behavior. Now they know what they need to do to get more leads, sign up more contractors, sale more concert tickets….ect IAC is a multi-billion dollar company. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAC/InterActiveCorp

Service magic owns these sites to: Protect there Brand, Appear more like a local lead company, they are keyword rich domains, and to separate different departments in their company. Sign up and get a profile that they run PPC with, it’s done with smrated.com I don’t think they do what a lot of the lead companies do and appear as another company. No matter were you sign up with service magic, before you hit send, you will know its service magic. I wouldn’t be surprised if lead companies sale contractors info who drop out of there system to servicemagic.com. But that’s just a guess. Does Service magic own other lead companies? I don’t know. I have seen many business purchased though were the deal was, “ok here’s 100 million and a 350,000 salary for the next ten years. You run how you always have with the same people and everything, well give you leads to sale though. Thing is, you can’t say a word or were going to sue the pants off you.” Just a guess. So if we all knew, that’s means there would be some real idiot out there in the world running around!

They have tons of affiliates. Homeblue.com, is owned by a venture capitalist. You’ve probably seen them. Homeconnections.com I think in the past was owned by a gal in California, I guess servicemagic.com got sick of paying commission and bought her out????

See, servicemagic is huge. For a lot of searches, both organic and PPC, between them, their affiliates, and other sites they own, they might take up 12 of 20 spots. Crazy! I could write a book about them really, the fact is I don’t care. I once did and that’s how I know so much about them and all the others, once I knew everything, I knew I didn’t want to be like them.





CUSTOMHOMELEADS.COM

CUSTOMHOMEONLINELEADS.COM

REPLACEMENTCONTRACTORLEADS.COM

RESIDENTIALARCHITECTLEADS.COM

RESIDENTIALCONCRETELEADS.COM

bestscreenedpros.com

builderonlineleads.com

chicagoservicemagic.com

contractopia.com

greathomepros.com

highestratedpros.com

home-contractors.net

servicemagic.com

homecontractors.biz

jlconlineleads.com

smrated.com

poolspanewsleads.com

pros.improvenet.com

prosforyourhome.com

qualityhomepros.com

remodelingonlineleads.com

screenapro.com

screenedhomepros.com

excite.com

iwon.com

.myway.com

builderonlineleads.com

customhomeleads.com

jlconlineleads.com

remodelingonlineleads.com

smpros.com

smrated.com

topratedpro.com

topratedpros.com

trustedhomepros.com

trustedhousepros.com

trustyourpro.com

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Aiken Colon

wow that is crazy. Why the heck would such a big company participate in such a scandalous business. Greed is an amazing thing.

amazing post and research Markon.

JJ

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dougchips

from the list 'jlconlineleads.com " JLC openly partners with them.

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MGSProperties

can we do a class action law suit?

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Markon

Thanks aiKencolon.

I think jlconlineleads is a little more than a open partner dougchips

MGS Properties, the internet is really the wild west. Some laws automatically transfer, but with the internet there is the ability to do so many different things that have never been possible. I pay attention to a lot of the different trials that go on about the internet and online advertising. Usually the internet business always wins.

For instance, it is now illegal to use a companies name in your meta tag (home depot). But home depot will never do anything to you unless you start taking millions from them. They might send you a CD letter, that's it. Meta tags don't do anything for you any way, so why would you want to do it. It's a dumb law. On the other hand, it is currently legal to have home depot as a keyword in your ppc advertising. Now if your advertising under that term you will get thousands of impressions and a percentage of traffic that would have gone to home depot. Your doing more harm to them advertising under there name, than having it in your meta tag. Who lets you do this, well Google, Yahoo, MSN. If you want to change the way things work, you got to take out the guy selling guns to the killers. money, money, money....When it comes down to it. It's just the world we live in. It's why your buying gas for $5.00 a gallon, why farmers are poor and commodity and future traders are rich from selling their product. It sick to the people who want to make an honest living.

As far as that post, that's just the start of it. If anyone has any questions about some of the different companies, I'll see what I can do to answer them.

BreyerConstruct

Markon,

Thanks for the info.

I'd be curious to hear your background, and what else you've run across, as it seems you have more depth of understanding in this area.

~Matt

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Markon

Well, BreyerConstruct, I have a history that is a little bit crazy. I use to be a full time custom home builder and still for fun I build about a house a year. I spend a lot of time working as a consultant in the real estate industry. I teach them how to build there business through the web: how to build a better user experiance with there site, make there site more into a tool for people to use, and drive traffic to it. I love real estate. How do I know so much about these lead companies. Well, I own one (because so many of these companies have ruined the name "lead", we like to think of ourselves as a marketing company that gets paid in the form of "per lead"). I'm not going to say what one because I didn't become a member of this site to self promote. At some point in time I/parneters have spoke with virtually every lead company on the market (at the top). Being a consultant in the real estate Industry, maybe the most competative field out there, you got learn your way around the web, so it real easy for me to break down companies in lead generation or any industry for that matter.

What else have I ran across? 6 words, huge answer. I really don't think, from what I've seen, anybody knows how bad it's gotten. These companies are printing money. Is it illegal what there doing? Most of them have dotted there i's and crossed there T's. Could a good attorney find an error? Maybe, but it would be a slap on the wrist, nothing would change.

It's wierd how I came into all of this. I was/am a home builder. The real estate agents always referred to clients that came from the web or hot calls as LEADS. I started using the word. Being in construction I have a lot of freinds in construction who wanted more work. Over beers a few different nights, I did some of the things I did for the brokers. Work came into them and they were happy. Being a work-a-holic, "hey I got a great idea, lets start a lead company for construction." It made sense, I develop leads in real estate, I can do it in construction. Not long I was using the word construction leads. After being in the business now for a couple of years, I really don't like that word.

There's so much to tell, I wouldn't even know where to begin. If you have a direct question I'll do my best to answer it.

mrhodus

Hey Guys,

I too have faced similar situations with online lead services. I decided the best way to fix the problem was to generate the leads myself. I am a brick paving contractor with extensive Internet marketing experience. I now provide web design and self lead generation service to other contractors. The way it all got started for me was a home improvement contractor was looking for a brick paver installer in his area do install a paver patio. When he went to Google searching, he found my business at the top for everything he searched. He contracted me to install his patio, and asked if I could do the same thing for his website. At the time I was too busy, so I turned him down. He then came back to me and offered a payment package to me that was similar to his canvassers payment package. His ideal was for me to run his website and optimize it to appear at/near the top of Google and Yahoo for keywords/phrases that were similar to his business. So, I took on the project. Within a month we were receiving 3-5 leads per week. Now, several months later, we are generating 8-10 leads per week. These are homeowners that visit his site, like what they see, and then request a quote. .

Murphy Stout

This is not surprising at all, from what I've read on these forums, lead generation is a seriously shady venture, it's such a scumbag thing to do, but its easy and I guess that's all that matters with these greed vultures out there.