Angie's List Rebuttal

While I have long since passed the period of caring too much about the inane; getting up on the pulpit to preach about meaningless drivel, there are some things I can't just stand and let go by unquestioned. One of these things was Angie's List.

I heard about their business model and I was curious; I investigated and came to my own conclusion that Angie's List seemed flawed or speculative at best. For those who don't know Angie's List is this website where people basically pay to all share in the collective of "trusted information" from like-minded individuals. Which is fine; not how I'd chose to spend my time or money, but hey, to each their own.

However when I dug a little bit deeper it appeared to me that all could not have been totally well in Angie's List world. I came up with three potential things which could be a problem for them going forward: real disgruntled consumers have too high an entry barrier (really, if you were ripped off would you want to pay someone to talk about it?), people care about their businesses, therefore the unscrupulous can lie, and that if you're playing in the game of critical analysis, retaliation can come.

I posted this analysis for my own readers and I received a few comments on the boards and several private conversations from folks who had been treated unfairly by Angie's List providers, had tried to make things seen as "right" through Angie's List and had been shut down.

I also got a response from (and subsequent afternoon of emails as well as an invitation to speak on the phone, which I was unable to act on) Cheryl Reed of Angie's List. She responded to my three main points. Her whole post can be seen on the bottom of my Angie's List article; I'll republish it here for you:

"Thanks for opening up the discussion about Angie's List, Jesse. I'm with the company and wanted to add a little insider insight to your assessment.

There are a ton of places on the Internet, and elsewhere, where people can register comments about anything they want. We encourage a free flow of information - the more consumers know before the hire or buy, the better off they are. But it's becoming increasingly difficult to know the origin and reliability-factor of each of the thousands of search results you can find on any given subject. Angie's List - by investing an enormous amount of time, talent and resources - takes a lot of the guesswork out of that search.

Barriers to Entry: Angie's List is a membership site. In general, our members don't just join, rant or praise and never return. They become part of our community and quickly come to understand the value in both reading and offering reviews. It's a collective experience that allows members to learn from each other's experience. Our members are privy to a lot of perks, including exclusive discounts and other services. While our reviews are highly valuable, they're only part of the service our members receive.

We don't believe in or allow anonymous reviews. We aren't a rant site, and we don't want to be. We welcome honest reviews of service experiences - good, bad and mediocre. And yes, we stress honest assessments. Our members affirm they'll give us that when they first sign up, and with each review they submit, we ask them re-affirm they're telling the truth. We also remind them at that time that their review - and their name - will be available to the company or service pro they are reviewing. We encourage service companies to give their side of the story, as well, so members get the whole story of any given review.

People Lie: It's not a simple matter to game our system. We don't divulge the specifics, but we use a combination of proprietary technology and human review, and we take swift action when we find violations. We've gotten pretty good at catching self-reporters over the past 15 years.

Retaliation is Inevitable: No one enjoys criticism, but we can learn from it. Lots of companies rated on Angie's List watch their reviews and take action to correct problems. We also have a complaint resolution service to step in to help when asked, and we "out" companies for both good and bad performance in our monthly magazines. In the court case you cited, we worked closely with those members throughout the process. We don't tolerate threats from either service pros against members or members against service pros."

To me, Cheryl Reed's interpretation of the type of world Angie's List is living in sounds a little bit like Stepford. Or grade school. Or a cult. How many kids got into a disagreement with a child in grade school and got sent to the principal's office in pairs so that they could "work it out" together? I'm sorry but the business/consumer relationship is a totally different situation not something which can just be hashed out in a "Point/Counterpoint" style argument. The service provider needs to remember their place as does the customer; it's a delicate relationship and deserves to be treated as such. The second you upset the balance of power, you can have real issues similar to the headache one of my readers went through.

One of my friends who read the piece and contacted me directly off the online sphere told me that the experience she and her husband had with Angie's List really left a bad taste in her mouth. They had had issues with a contractor who had stolen items from their home while he had been working. When they asked the contractor he denied it, then got angry and began threatening. When they tried to post this info to Angie's List they got major pushback from the website. When my friends persisted they were told that they would have to put their name on this and that they would be alone with this contractor "in the dog house." After dealing with the criminal activity of this one contractor (seeking counsel from their lawyer, hiring a security officer to patrol the front of their home for a period of time) just to combat the threats, they decided to let it go. Who wants to go back to grade school principal's office after all these years? Still this contractor exists on Angie's List, unpunished.

Whether or not this one contractor just misplaced some valuable, antique hardware when they were working and was not cognizant of it or whether they removed it by mistake and just forgot, it is the contractor's duty to find out. The customer left them alone at their home, pointed the piece out to them beforehand (the hardware was in the vicinity of their working zone) and the contractor dropped the ball. But say so if you've made a mistake. Otherwise, what happened to these pieces? And why won't Angie's List take on stricter entry to their site for their service providers? Or is all money, good money?

I love that Angie's List thinks their smarter than the rule breakers. Saying they "use proprietary technology and human review," to catch people trying to game their system is a little ridiculous. I have no doubt that they have "caught" many gamers in the past; I also have no doubt that there are gamers gaming the system at Angie's List right now. Maybe the issue is even less of the website getting good at catching the rule breakers and just that Angie's List is so exclusive that it's almost irrelevant. If you only let certain people in under certain conditions, then you are obviously excluding yourself from a broader cross section. Meaning that you're not getting the general public's consensus on these businesses but you're getting your general public's consensus. It may be a good number of people but I guarantee that a portion of that number is the same businesses who Angie's List customers have railed out against with fake profiles that actually care about this kind of thing and are trying to uphold their reputation amongst your audience. I don't know how large this audience is and since Angie's List is a private company; we only know what they tell us. We don't have insight into their revenue streams, we don't have insight into their website's customer traffic, and we don't know how great or little the interest is in this company's service. While we have seen a recent uptick in those Angie's List commercials, from the looks of these ads they don't appear to be breaking the bank on their ad-creation budget.

I'm not trying to make private enterprise enemies here; I've already spent two days too long even thinking about Angie's List. I will say though for a service provider with so many hurdles and so many guidelines and so many rules and such a growing undercurrent of upset or disinterest, it would seem to me that Angie's List would be wise to take a good long look in the mirror and ask themselves just whose side are they on anyway?