Armstrong Painting & Construction An Angi Horror Story

The point: The old Angie's List is no more. The new Angi, after the Home Advisor merger, is nothing more than lead generation for contractors.

Angi is Lead Generation for Contractors

So, in conclusion, we have established several things.

  1. We’ve established that being an “Angi-Certified” professional doesn’t mean much because they don’t actually verify that the provider meets any of the mentioned requirements other than paying for the privilege. As it was trivially easy to show with about 30 minutes of research.
  2. We’ve established that they have already been busted by the State of California for being somewhat less than honest about background checks.
  3. We’ve established that the Better Business Bureau found Angi guilty of “significant failure to support BBB ethical principles.”
  4. We’ve established that Angi’s reviews are useless because they can be easily gamed by the providers themselves with Angi’s either tacit or explicit approval.
  5. And we’ve established that they don’t honor the Angie’s List “Happiness Guarantee” and instead offer you arbitration.

So what is even the point of Angi anymore? What is their business model? That part is easy. Angi is nothing more than lead generation for contractors. They have used all the goodwill that the original Angie’s List had, all the user base, as nothing more than a marketing funnel.

Angi’s actual users are the contractors who advertise on their site. Their “visitors” to the website - you, me, the common people looking not to get hosed - are immaterial and unimportant beyond being eyeballs and potential sources of revenue for the leads that they generate contractors.

Don’t believe me? Believe them! Here’s the page where they describe it themselves. Using “Angi Ads” you can:

We have a saying in tech: if you aren’t paying for a product, you are the product. What’s happening here, though, is remarkable. Angi is monetizing both sides of this. They are continuing to sell paid memberships while at the same time charging contractors to get their services in front of Angi’s members. I have to admit, it’s a killer business model. It’s not often you are able to monetize both the users and the advertisers while, at the same time, doing away with things like the “Happiness Guarantee” and other things that made the users actually want to use your service.

Did you know Angi charges providers $40 for a lead?

That is your value to Angi. By calling a provider, you make Angi $40. And $40 taken over many providers and visitors to the site is quite a bit of money.

But it really bothers me how opaque they are about this to the user base. I am sure the vast majority of Angi users, and especially those of us who remember the old Angie’s List, are not aware that providers are now given basically free reign over their experience. They probably aren’t aware that Angi won’t back up providers anymore and will only offer arbitration instead.

If you want reviews, Google and Yelp are free and probably about the same quality you’d get from Angi. Your state’s licensing boards are likely searchable online so that you can find actual licensed professionals. So what, exactly, is the value proposition for users here? Essentially, there is no reason to be an Angi user anymore except for, I guess, the deals. Whooptie-doo.

The key takeaway from this whole experience:

Angi is an advertising company.

Set your trust and expectations accordingly.

Given the scale of everything I have uncovered, from the sheer incompetence and negligence displayed by Isaiah Armstrong, to the enabling of him by Angi’s business model that treats visitors as nothing more than $40-dispensing ATMs. All because I wanted my patio extended. I am exceedingly unlikely to see any resolution from this. My only hope now, and the reason I put this site together at all, is to warn others about Isaiah Armstrong, and about Angi.

Neither should be trusted.

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