My Girlfriend’s Maddening, Terrible, Frustrating Encounter With Angi AKA Angi’s List
Certified Professionals? Guaranteed Price?
By David Grace (Amazon Page — David Grace Website)
My girlfriend had plans to turn her second bedroom into a home office. After removing all the furniture she decided that she needed to have the room painted and re-carpeted. Obviously, the painting should come first.
She went on-line and quickly encountered the business called “Angi” which had previously operated under the name, “Angi’s List.”
The home page on the Angi site promised:
“Find top-rated certified pros in your area”
She followed the prompts on the site for a project to paint a room.
Eventually, she talked on the phone to someone in an Angi call center someplace and told them she wanted a room painted. The operator asked for the room’s square footage.
“10 by 12,” she told them.
“That will be $163,” the operator said. She told my girlfriend that the quote was “guaranteed” but that she would have to supply the paint.
It seemed very cheap but, well, if they were going to paint an entire room for $163 she wasn’t going to argue about it.
She said “OK” and was given a date when the certified professional would appear. She went out and bought the paint.
A day or two before the work was supposed to be done she received a text from the painter along the lines, “Hi, I understand you have a door that you want me to stain.”
She replied, “No. I have a room that needs to be painted.”
The painter called her and asked about the door she wanted stained. She repeated that there was no door, no stain. She needed a room painted. He asked her for the dimensions, and then told her that he couldn’t paint a room for $163. He said, no, that he would need about $700 to paint the room.
Of course she said, “No!” After all, she had a “guaranteed price” of $163 from Angi, didn’t she?
Now the “pro” told her that she could cancel her order with Angi and then he could come out, look at the room, give her an exact quote, and Angi wouldn’t need to be involved.
She bid the “pro” a quick farewell.
Neither the emails nor the texts she had received from Angi contained either Angi’s phone number or a reply email address, but she was able to search her phone’s call log and find the number for the call center.
When she got done explaining what had happened, the man asked, “So you don’t want to have your door stained?”
She had to restrain herself from shouting, “There is no door. There never was a door. There is no staining. I want a room painted!”
Finally, the man understood that the job was painting a room not staining a door, and, again, asked her for the room’s dimensions. This time the “guaranteed price” was quoted as $360.
Because of all the previous misunderstandings, she repeated the details all over again: the room was 10 feet by 12 feet. One wall would be blue, the others white, eggshell surface. The painter would need to paint the moldings with a semi-gloss white paint. She would furnish all the paint. The painter would bring everything else he needed.
“Yes,” the guy said.
“And the total price is $360?”
“Yes, $360.”
“OK,” she agreed. A date and time for the work was set.
At the appointed time a guy driving an ordinary car and dressed in normal street clothes knocked on her door. He told her that he was the painter and she showed him the room.
“Where are the tools?” he asked.
“You’re the professional painter. You’re supposed to have your own tools,” she told him.
“I don’t have any tools,” the certified, professional painter replied, So, no painter’s tape, no ladder, no drop cloths, no rollers. This certified professional painter didn’t even have so much as overalls, a cap or a single paint brush.
“I’ll have to go to Home Depot and buy all that stuff,” he said. “I’ll be back.”
And then he left, never to be seen again.
A few hours later when it was clear that he wasn’t coming back, she made yet another call to Angi’s call center. My girlfriend gave her name and address and told the operator that the painter had left and never come back.
“Oh, your job’s been cancelled,” the operator told her.
“Cancelled? I didn’t cancel it. Who cancelled it?”
“The painter called and said he didn’t want to do the job, and he cancelled it.”
“But you guaranteed that a certified professional would paint my room at the quoted price,” my girlfriend said. “How can he just cancel my job?”
“Oh, the professional can always cancel the job.”
“Why didn’t you call me and tell me he cancelled it?”
The response was something along the lines of, “Oh, we don’t do that.”
So much for Angi’s guaranteed price. So much for their certified professional.
So much for Angi absolutely, completely, entirely, and forever.
The happy ending is that a friend had a cousin who was a painter and three days later he painted the room and the trim for $400. He did an excellent job.
Recently, I needed my roof’s downspouts cleared out. I emailed a “roof guy” listed on Yelp who claimed to be a local professional. Apparently, he was merely a feeder for Angi because I soon received this email:
“David, our trusted partner shared your request for Clean Gutters & Downspouts pros.
“We’re Angi — the nation’s largest home services marketplace — and we’ve matched you with top local pros who meet your project needs!”
Top professionals? Sure they are.
I did not reply. I did, however, unsubscribe from receiving any and all emails from Angi. FOREVER.
— David Grace (Amazon Page — David Grace Website)
