I got tired of buying leads from strangers

I got tired of buying leads from soulless companies. Faceless nobodies on the east coast who have never set foot in Oregon, selling me the same customer they sold to four other guys that morning.

So I built this instead.

I am a licensed contractor here in Oregon and I run my own company. This site exists to benefit us — to build our businesses, mine included, so we all pay less for work and the money stays here in the Pacific Northwest instead of going to a call centre three thousand miles away.

What I want from you

If you want your company listed here, fill in the form at the bottom and I will give you a call. We can talk about who you are and what you are about.

Before that call I will have done some homework. My researchers will have told me about you and your company — your licence, your bond, your insurance against Oregon records, and how you treat your clients. What people say about you when you are not in the room.

Then I want to talk to some of your customers. Not the three you hand-picked; the ones I choose off the jobs we send you. And frankly, I want to make sure you are not an asshole, because I am putting my name next to yours.

That is the whole vetting process. It is not complicated and it is not automated. It is some research and a few phone calls.

And I keep doing it. Not every job — at random, unannounced, from the leads I sent you. I will ring the customer and ask how it actually went: did you turn up, was the price close to the quote, was the work any good, would they have you back. If it warrants it I will come and look at the work myself.

I am not doing that to catch you out. I am doing it because the word "vetted" on this site has to mean something, and the only way it means anything is if somebody is actually checking. If you are worth your salt this costs you nothing and earns you a page that says so.

What you get

The customer is yours alone. Every lead goes to one business. It is not sold to four of you to race over, there is no bidding, and nobody else on this site is chasing the same job. That is the entire point.

You get a text and an email with the customer's first name, phone number, zip code and a plain description of what they actually want — in their words, from a real conversation, not a category ticked in a dropdown. The customer gets your name and number at the same moment. Some of them will ring you before our text lands. That is the system working.

We would rather send you nothing than send you rubbish. We list about one business per job type per area, and when nothing we have fits what somebody needs, we tell them so and stop. Fewer leads than the big sites will promise you. The ones you get are people who described a job you actually do, in a zip code you actually cover.

How you get kicked off

Plainly, so nobody is surprised:

• Not calling people back. Within a few working hours. If someone sits waiting on you, they blame me too.
• Bad work. I will hear about it, because I ring your customers.
• Overcharging. A final bill well over the quote with no honest explanation.
• Not representing yourself the way you would for your own mother. That is the standard. It covers everything I have not thought to list.

A lapsed licence, unlicensed work, or a safety problem and you are off the same day. Everything else, we talk first — I will tell you exactly what I heard and from whom, and you get a chance to fix it. Most people do.

What it costs

I only want to be paid when I actually hand you a lead. That does not mean a deal you closed — what you do with it after the introduction is your business and your skill, and I am not taking a cut of your work. It means a real person who is genuinely interested.

And they are interested, because of what it takes to become a lead here. They have to work through a conversation about the job, read back a description of it in plain English, agree that it is right, and hand over their phone number. Nobody does all that idly. There are no tyre-kickers coming out of that flow, and there is no form on this site somebody can mash through in four seconds.

You pay per lead sent. There is no invoice to chase and no thirty-day terms — you put a card on file when you join, and it gets charged for the leads I actually sent you.

Once a week, not once per lead. Everything from that week goes on one charge, so your statement shows a single line instead of fourteen. It also means there is a window: if something was obviously not a real lead, I can pull it before it ever reaches your card, rather than you spotting a bad charge and me refunding it a week later.

You will get the list of what you are being charged for before it goes through, every time. If a week is quiet, nothing happens.

Some leads cost more than others, and the price reflects that. I am talking to you, roofing. A roofing customer costs several times what a junk haul does to put in front of anybody — the advertising is dearer, everyone is bidding on the same words, and the job is worth twenty times as much when it lands. Charging one flat rate across every trade would mean the hauler subsidising the roofer, and that is not a thing I am going to ask him to do.

Leads run from about $10 to $200 depending on the trade. You will know your rate before you take a single one.

If a lead was rubbish, say so

You can dispute any lead. Wrong number, nobody home at that address, somebody messing about, plainly not the job it said it was — tell me and I will take the charge off or credit it. I am not going to argue with you about forty dollars.

Do it quickly, though. Because the charge runs weekly, a dispute raised before that run means the charge simply never happens and there is nothing to unpick. Once it has gone through I can still credit you, it just becomes a line on the next one instead of quietly disappearing. So flag it the day you notice, not at the end of the month.

I am not going to audit your disputes or make you prove anything. If somebody disputes most of what I send them, that tells me something — but it is a conversation about whether this is working for either of us, not a fight over one lead.

Three things that follow from that, and I would rather say them now than argue later. Keep your card current, because if it fails I stop sending you work until it is sorted — I am not going to quietly hand you customers for free and then present you with a bill. Keep your phone number and email current with me, because I bill for what I send. And tell me before you go away — I will either ask someone else to cover your area for those days or run without that trade for a week, which is far better than you paying for customers you cannot get to.

Some newer listings start free while we both find out whether it is working. If you are one of those, you will know, and I will tell you when I think it is time to start paying.

Two things you should know about me

I own Two Man Crew, the handyman and remodelling business listed on this site. It is vetted, reviewed and removed on exactly the same terms as yours, it is labelled as mine everywhere it appears, and it never gets a lead that the routing rules would have sent to you.

And nobody can post a review on this site — not a customer, not you, not your competitor having a bad week. What appears on your page is what I found when I rang the people we sent you. You cannot edit it or pay to remove it. Neither can anyone else, which is the half of that deal that protects you.