AngiesList.com

The initial 700 payment was for them to diagnose the A/C problem. This was a misdiagnose, stating that I would need (2) coils in my two Carrier units. Total cost would have been over $3100.00. I decided to get a second opinion. The company charged me $150.00 to tell me that the thermostat was wired wrong by JDL, in the bottom unit and the upstairs unit needed a fan. $350.00. So instead of 3100, I will pay 500$, plus the 700$ that I paid for thermostat that was wired into the heating unit, not the A/C....

This being said, we called Angie's List customer support one more time, but this time to cancel the service. They said that they could cancel it, but we would have to pay a significant early termination fee, which would make it a lot more expensive than just keeping it for the remainder of the year contract, if we were to grab at least a couple of jobs here and there. We kept it, but mentioned that we would NOT renew it for the following year.

We are also subscribed to Home Advisor, which we pay per lead instead of monthly like Angie's List, and at one point we started receiving leads on Home Advisor that said "Lead submitted via Angie's List". This is where we realized that Home Advisor and Angie’s List are owned by the same people, and we were paying twice for the same lead. We are paying Home Advisor for that lead that came in, but also Angie’s List monthly for the same lead that found us on their platform. We called customer support again, and they tried to explain how it worked and why we weren’t paying twice, but didn’t make sense at all.

At this point we asked again to cancel our contract, to which we were told one more time that it would be an early termination with a high fee. We were again convinced to keep it till the end of the contract. Once again we let them know that we would continue with the subscription until the end of the contract, but we would NOT renew it. This year we sent them an email asking when the contract was up, with the idea of NOT renewing.

They answered right away saying that our contract had been renewed for another year, after we specifically mentioned at least a couple of times that we didn’t want to renew. We told them that we didn’t want to renew, and that they knew that from last year, and they said they sent us an email regarding the renewal, and if we wanted to cancel the contract, we would have to pay an early termination fee. EARLY??? We told them last year that we didn’t want to renew!

We also told them we didn’t receive any emails from them, but they kept saying they did send it. We checked again the email address we have in their system, but couldn’t find anything. They then said they sent it to an email address we haven’t used in over a year, and we don’t even have in our Angie’s List platform. Even though we kept saying that that email address was not in use for over a year and it’s not the one they have on file, they kept insisting that the email was sent and because they didn’t receive a reply, they auto-renewed the contract. That is insane. AND THAT EMAIL WAS NEVER OPENED until they told us they sent it there.

Not surprisingly, if you Google Angie's List for complaints, you will see many negative reviews about their deceptive business practices and questionable validity of how they promote the "best" service providers.

I suppose what is most surprising of all though is, in these current unprecedented times where businesses, especially contractors that focus on residential/non-commercial customers who either have been financially impacted by the COVID crisis or are afraid and want to distance themselves from the risk of virus exposure,, Angie's list is taking a very hard line.

Insurance companies are voluntarily reducing premiums, small businesses are feeding front line essential workers, banks and credit cards are easing restrictions, but Angie's list management won't even return phone calls to if nothing else have a fair conversation. Calls to customer service who referred us to a manager and promised a call back followed by 5 voice mail messages were not even returned.

The salesman said you signed the contract and they will not deviate from it, even though we never knowingly opted into a renewal. Legality aside, in these times, is this the company you want to have your back or be your "trusted advisor?" There are two sides to every story, so I encourage you to Google "Angie’s List Complaints, Angie’s List Scam, Angie’s List Deceptive Sales Practices" to name a few searches. If you are a consumer I encourage you to do the same, including looking at consumer reports and phrases like "Is Angie's List Reputable?"