How to Stop Paying for Bad Leads

A bad lead costs you twice: the price you paid for it, and the hour your rep spent calling a number that was never going to turn into work. What most contractors discover only after the invoice is that the published policies cover a much narrower set of failures than the ones that actually happen.

Are shared leads a scam?

No, and the companies selling them are not hiding how it works. Angi's help centre states it plainly: "Each time a homeowner submits a project request, we will match them with no more than five pros." HomeAdvisor's own how it works page tells the homeowner they will "receive information for up to four pre-screened, local home improvement pros."

That is a product description, not a trick. The question worth asking is a commercial one: at the price you are paying, can you win often enough when three or four other companies got the same phone number minutes before you did? For some trades and some teams the answer is yes. The contractors who feel cheated are usually the ones who were never told the number in the first place, and it was published the whole time.

What happens when a lead is fake or a wrong number

This is the case suppliers do tend to cover. Angi's lead credit guidelines list "All contact information provided by the consumer is wrong or disconnected" as eligible for a credit, alongside duplicates, the wrong ZIP code, the wrong job type, and a competitor testing the system.

So the dead number, the thing that feels most like being cheated, is usually the one you can get back. It is also the rarest.

The failures that actually cost you

The same document lists what is not eligible, and this is the part worth reading twice. These situations are "accounted for in our lead pricing and therefore not eligible for lead credits":

• "Consumer is not calling you back"
• "Consumer already found someone to complete the work"
• "Consumer changed their mind"
• "Consumer is just 'shopping'"
• "You did not win the job"

Read those two lists together and the shape of the product is clear. The supplier stands behind the data being real. It does not stand behind the homeowner being reachable, decided, or yours. That is a defensible position for them to take, and it is the one that empties a marketing budget, because those five lines describe most of what goes wrong in a normal week.

There is a time limit on top: the same guidelines say a credit must be requested within 30 days of the charge, and that any credit is issued as store credit which expires six months later if unused. Money that only buys more leads from the same supplier is not quite money back.

How do I stop paying for bad leads

The lever is not the dispute process. By the time you are disputing, you have already paid and already spent the hour. The lever is what you agreed to buy.

• Decide what a bookable job looks like first. The service area you will actually drive to, the project types you sell, the minimum size worth a visit, and who has to be on the call for a decision to be possible.
• Agree those criteria with the supplier before launch, and buy against them rather than against a lead count.
• Read the policy on what happens when a lead misses them before you sign anything, not after the first bad week.
• Size the order to the appointments your team can run. A pile of leads nobody calls back is the most expensive thing on this list, and no policy covers it.

Most of what contractors call a bad lead is a lead that was never going to fit, bought under criteria nobody agreed. What makes a qualified home improvement lead sets out the questions worth settling before money changes hands.

What happens here instead

Every lead is sold to one contractor and is never shared or resold, so you are not racing three other companies to the phone. You tell us what counts as a qualified lead for your order: the service area, the project type, the size, and anything else that decides whether a rep should get in the van. On every lead our base standard applies as well, which is that the person is the homeowner or an authorized decision-maker for the property, the name and phone number are in a valid format with consent to be contacted, and the lead is not a duplicate within 60 days.

If a lead misses the agreed criteria, it does not count toward your order, and another qualified lead takes its place.

That is a replacement, not money back, and it is deliberate. A replacement keeps the order whole, which is the thing you were buying. Money back leaves you short of the jobs you actually wanted.

What to ask any supplier before you buy

Five questions, and the answers tell you more than the sales call:

1. 1.How many companies receive this lead?
2. 2.What exactly counts as a qualified lead on my order?
3. 3.What happens when one misses that, and can I read the policy before I sign?
4. 4.How fast does it reach me, and in what form?
5. 5.Does anything change if I pause or stop?

A supplier who answers all five plainly is telling you how they expect to be judged. One who answers the first with a number you have to find in a help centre has already told you something as well.

If you want the longer version of the comparison, exclusive versus shared home improvement leads works through what each model costs per sold job, and Home Lead Supply vs Angi Leads quotes Angi's own documents in full. If you would rather just tell us the jobs you want, get qualified leads is the short form.