BuildZoomReviews of buildzoom.com

Response from BuildZoomSep 18, 2023

Hi Mark, We're sorry to hear that you've felt dissatisfied with your recent communications with us. It is important for us to resolve this issue and we want each person who interacts with us to feel that they've had a positive experience. We'd like to continue this conversation with you and will be reaching out to you shortly via email to discuss this further.

Response from BuildZoomSep 5, 2023

Hi Christopher, Firstly, I'd like to address your claims about your experience speaking with one of our reps. We take these claims very seriously and want every person reaching out to BuildZoom to have an excellent experience with us. We investigated this case thoroughly with a small internal team and after speaking with the rep, it seems as if there was some miscommunication on the call. We do apologize that you felt that the experience you had with BuildZoom was unsatisfactory. After reviewing the call with our employee, it sounds like the following occurred: -You had asked to reach a specific contractor to ask if they were aware of any land for sale -Our rep confirmed that your client's want to build on land -The rep attempted to help you understand what Buildzoom is capable of assisting with in the process of evaluating lots (it was during this where miscommunication seemed to occur) -The rep apologized for any miscommunication more than once and offered the direct contact info for the contractor, which was refused, although you did thank the rep for a sincere apology This is a bit more detail on BuildZoom and what we do: BuildZoom partners with over 2000 building departments and contractor license boards across the United States to maintain a database of almost 4 million contractors. Similarly, we receive permit data from city or county building departments. We pull this permit data every day to ensure we have the most updated information for all of our contractors. BuildZoom is a place where property owners can search our database to find a local contractor, and to leave reviews regarding their experience. They can also contact our Project Consultants if they want help finding a local contractor. BuildZoom offers a premium service in which our dedicated Project Managers support property owners through the pre-hire process. This includes, but is not limited to, pre-land services such as lot evaluation and post-land services such as sourcing contractors, bid management and revision, and contract administration, amongst other premium offerings.

Response from BuildZoomJul 17, 2023

Hello Debra, We are sorry to hear about your dissatisfaction with our services. We found your service request and looked into it to make sure you received the best service possible. It appears that we actually reached out to a total of 17 contractors within proximity of the project and of those 17, two of them initially indicated interest in the job, then it dwindled down to one who was willing to provide a quote. That final quote came in at $200 per square foot, which is actually just below the estimated average mid-range quote for your project type of $207 per square foot. We use national data and a cost estimating tool to figure out estimated average costs, however that information isn't shared with contractors. Contractors will create their own estimates based on their evaluation and costs. It's great that you've been able to meet with other contractors who've quoted you less, however we always tell property owners to exercise caution with estimates when they are being given far below the averages, especially if they're given without the contractor having developed a full scope of work and understood all the details of what you're looking for. It's incredibly common for a contractor to verbally give a low estimate, then when it comes down to itemizing a bid they almost always come out much higher. Also keep in mind that a bid or estimate that isn't inclusive of all the necessary costs or changes will result in future change orders. If a change order needs to be filed with the contractor, it's the property owner who needs to pay a "Change Order Fee" to the contractor to add new items to the contract. It's for those reasons that we offer our Premium Service, however if a property owner chooses not to purchase the Premium service that doesn't impact our effort to source and secure a contractor for you. It just means you won't have a construction expert review your bid and contract to ensure you're getting the best price and it's fully inclusive of everything needed. Again, we apologize that our service didn't meet your expectations, but I can assure you that our effort to find you a contractor who would offer a realistic quote was there. We wish you the best of luck with your project.

Response from BuildZoomJun 16, 2023

Hi Sparkling, We are very sorry to hear about your experience with a contractor you found on BuildZoom. Contractors on buildzoom.com are not employees nor affiliates of BuildZoom. Contractors on our website do not pay us a subscription to be a part of our marketplace, they only pay us a referral fee for jobs that they win. We are not a regulator and remain a neutral party in post-hire disputes. We partner with over 2000 building departments and contractor boards across the US to maintain records of over 3.8 million contractors. Unfortunately it’s not feasible for us to run background checks on all 3.8 million licensed contractors, especially since they are not employed or affiliated directly with BuildZoom. Think of BuildZoom like Yelp but for local contractors — Yelp maintains a large database of Restaurants, we maintain a large database of contractors and offer services to help source local contractors, and a Premium Service that helps compare and review bids & contracts. If and when we discover that a contractor is conducting themselves in a manner that’s bad, we do suspend or ban them from our website. We put a block on Accent Services' profile so they will temporarily not get any leads from BuildZoom. As far as your situation, here are some actions you can take: File a formal complaint to your State Attorney General Reach out to your State .gov's Office of Consumer Affairs and Business Regulation, where their license is listed and open up a complaint - request for the contractor to be investigated Simultaneously, ask for their contractor's bond information (if you don't have it already) to file a formal claim against their bond, which would compensate you for misperformance Review the requirements for your State’s Recovery Fund (if they have one) If you would like, leave a review on their BuildZoom profile so that others are aware of your experience (we've come to learn that some regulators will visit our site during their own research) Again, we are very sorry that you encountered this situation and we hope you’re able to figure something out. If you need help researching any of the above options in your state, reach out to us at [email protected].

Response from BuildZoomApr 19, 2023

Hello David, When someone goes to leave a review on BuildZoom, we require that they provide us with contact information to ensure the validity of the review. We have a review integrity team that validates every single review that is submitted for a contractor to ensure they are not falsified and to ensure they meet our review requirements. If a contractor believes that a review is falsified, they can claim their BuildZoom profile and submit a dispute directly from the platform to have the review integrity team reach out to the person who left the review and conduct a further investigation. Keep in mind that submitting a dispute is 100% free and we would never require payment to submit or dispute a review. By allowing reviews on our website, we can’t act as arbiters or judges — meaning we can’t get involved. All we can do is validate that it was a real person claiming their review is based on a legitimate experience, but we can’t be the judges on how good, bad, or how well aligned to a timeline their review is. This holds true for any website that allows reviews (such as google, Yelp, SiteJabber etc.) Regardless, it’s in our best interest that contractors have good reviews on our website so we can help property owners find good quality contractors through our website. However, that also means we have to accept bad reviews because it helps property owners avoid poorly reviewed contractors, and we have to remain fair and consistent. The second part of your review mentions our constractor database. We partner with over 2000 city and county building departments and contractor license boards across the United States to maintain a database of almost 4 million contractors. We use publicly available information provided to us by those contractor boards and local building departments to create your profile, which may explain the email issue you mention. We also search through the internet for other sources of publicly available information (such as Yelp, BBB, and others). It’s similar to how your website can be listed on Google, you don’t have to ask to be listed on Google’s search engine, they simply find your website and add you to their search engine. Yelp does the same thing with local businesses and restaurants. We can assure you that it’s not to compromise or negatively affect your business at all, we want to help Property Owners find all the available local contractors in their area, and inversely it can help a contractor get work they otherwise would’ve never seen by not being listed on BuildZoom because we have thousands of property owners looking for contractors on our website every day. What Yelp is to restaurants and small businesses, BuildZoom is for contractors and architects. It’s a place where property owners can search our database to find local contractors. If you would like to make any updates to your BuildZoom page, you are able to claim your profile (at no cost) and make edits to your information from your profile dashboard. Please let us know if you have any questions throughout the process.

Response from BuildZoomApr 18, 2023

Hello, We are sorry to hear about your experience with Ironman Exteriors. We’d like to clarify that BuildZoom is not associated with Ironman Exteriors, or any contractors. We assist property owners with finding contractors in their local area and act as an owner's rep to help them validate contractors and get through the pre-construction process, however we don’t have our own network of contractors. We also partner with over 2000 building departments and contractor license boards across the United States to manage a database of active contractors on our website. After taking a look at their BuildZoom profile, I do see that Ironman Exteriors has an automatic block due to an inactive license. With this block, they will not receive any leads from us. There are also blocks on all other profiles that are associated with Ironman Exteriors. Although their profiles remain on our website, I can assure you that they do not receive leads from us, and we leave their BuildZoom profile up in order for other property owners to read the reviews and hopefully influence their ultimate decision one way or another. This is just as you would see with other review centric sites, such as Yelp, Google, etc. We highly encourage you to leave a review on that contractor’s BuildZoom profile directly, and if you’re in need of finding a high quality contractor in your area, we’re happy to help you! We also recommend looking to see if they have their own Trustpilot profile and leaving a review on their profile — this review looks to be specific to them and their business, we’re unsure why it was posted to our BuildZoom profile. If you used BuildZoom, we’d love to hear feedback specific to your experience with our Project Consultants!

Response from BuildZoomMar 16, 2023

Hi Kendra, We understand that our information collecting process can be long, so we do our best to make it as simple as possible to use. Once you fill out each section and hit the submit button, our system is triggered and processes that information in the case someone does not complete the form in full. This was your case, and one of our reps reached out to check in to see if you would still like to move forward with the process. If you would like to learn more about BuildZoom, we would be happy to speak with you further. Please feel free to reach out to [email protected].

Response from BuildZoomMar 10, 2023

Hi Patricia, We are very sorry to hear about your experience. I have reviewed your project and I'd like to help clarify a couple of things in your review. We charge an initial down payment to ensure that property owners are serious about getting work completed, and the price of the down payment differs depending on the cost of the total contract. Before we begin our premium process, we have all clients sign a premium agreement which clearly states an invoice schedule, including a description of what you are paying for. At the beginning of the project, all parties involved agreed to change the SKU of the project, thus also changing the invoice structure. Our team notified all client parties at least 24 hours in advance each time a new invoice was scheduled, as proven by our email history. In general during the sourcing stage, our team speaks with the property owner to better understand the scope of the project, and from there, reaches out to the best and most relevant contractors in the area to meet with the property owner and submit bids. In your specific case, our team reached out to a total of 7 contractors in your area for your project, 3 of which were interested in continuing the conversation. When our Project Manager reviewed the bids, they were successfully able to reduce the initial bids quite substantially by catching unnecessary expenses, and limiting potential for change orders during construction. For example, you received an initial bid for $292k, and our after our team reviewed and edited it, we sent it back to the contractor and it was reduced by $33k. This is part of the value of BuildZoom's Premium service: Value engineering. As it relates to your concern about our sourcing process - BuildZoom assists property owners with finding contractors in their local area and act as an owner's rep to help them validate contractors and get through the pre-construction process, however we don’t have our own network of contractors. We partner with over 2000 building departments and contractor license boards across the United States to maintain a database of almost 4 million contractors. Similarly, we receive permit data from city or county building departments. We pull this permit data every day to ensure we have the most updated information for all of our contractors. Again, we are very sorry to hear that you were dissatisfied with our service.