BuildZoomReviews of buildzoom.com

We were looking for a site that provides legitimate contractor reviews. Unfortunately this outfit does not do that. It's just a contractor broker - that rips off the contractor by charging them a huge fee for the "service" - so just go to the contractor directly and not through this outfit. Here you will have a very limited contractor selection and your costs will be way up because the contractor will have to fork over a fee for their referral. It's like "Angies" is now. Angies was a useful service many years ago before it turned into the same kind of rip off.

i wasted a year working diligently with a build-zoom builder who ultimately, after much time and $$$ spent, failed to give me a comprehensive bid. i reached out to build-zoom and did not get a call returned. dont waste your time ...

Buildzoom is an absolute joke. They use contractors of their own choosing while giving other contractors low scores. Against my better judgement I decided to use one of the contractors that buildzoom had recommended and it was the worst experience of my life. Buildzoom clearly does NOT do research on any of the contractors listed. Basically the contractors pay for a good review and recommendations. The fact that they would send half of those contractors into someone’s home is horrifying. When contacting buildzoom they only tried to sell me on using their help with the project. Never will I ever trust what buildzoom has to sell or offer. It’s disgusting knowing that the contractors they recommend are the ones that paid for high scores and reviews and NOT work experience. If someone needs to pay for good reviews , that tells me they aren’t good enough or professional enough to get the jobs on their own . PLEASE do your research before using BuildZoom, your best bet is to look elsewhere. Don’t find out the hard way!!

My wife and I decided to use buildzoom premium after our discussion with their coordinator. We were told that the service could be used to outsource our bid solicitation and evaluation process, which would take between three and five weeks from start to finish. We met with three contractors Buildzoom selected, each of whom indicated that their bid would take a few days to put together. Buildzoom suggested a fourth contractor and scheduled a walkthrough with them the following week, but hours before the contractor was scheduled to show up, he backed out saying he would be unable to complete the project within our proposed budget. Buildzoom did not identify a fourth contractor despite our asking if they would be able to identify a replacement bidder. Fast forward a week and a half, we received one bid from the three contractors that completed walkthroughs. The premium service welcome sheet confirmed the original timeline we were told on our first call with Buildzoom and indicated that the process of receiving initial bids would take one to two weeks, which would be followed by one to three weeks of negotiation for a total bid timeline of three to five weeks from bid to selection. Concerned about the lack of responsiveness by the contractors, we reached out to our coordinator to confirm that we would receive all of the bids within the two week window that was proposed in the welcome sheet. The response from the Buildzoom team was that they had actually set the deadline for bids three weeks out, but that we should expect to receive bids from the other two contractors by the bid deadline. Despite our frustration about the lack of communication about the bid deadline and the inconsistency with the proposed schedule, we choose to give them the benefit of the doubt and wait until the bid deadline passed. The bid deadline came and went with no additional bids delivered. Disappointed with the lack of communication and upset with the lack of progress, we reached out to the one of the contractors about the delay directly and also requested a call with our bulildzoom team. On the call we asked why we had not received the additional bids and suggested that we were thinking about cancelling the service. The Buildzoom team choose to take the opportunity to suggest that we were being unreasonable and that we should give the contractors an additional week to deliver bids. We hesitantly agreed to give them some additional time, but wanted them to (i) confirm that they had reached out to the contractors and (ii) provide an update on when they expected to deliver bids. We also noted that we were not interested in further delaying the selection of our contractor as we understood that the permitting process would take a significant amount of time and could not get underway without selecting a contractor. Later that day the contractors we followed up with directly replied to our email indicating that they would send us a bid later that day, which they did. However, what they sent us equated to little more than a guess as it did not describe any of the services included or work to be performed and was based solely on their review of the concept drawing we provided to them directly. At this point we reached out to Buildzoom to let them know we would not be confident using their bid as part of the bid process given the lack of detail and asked that they follow up with them regarding the content of the bid and separately asked that they provide an update on their interaction with the third contractor. Rather than reply regarding the questions we raised they asked if we would like to schedule additional contractor walkthrough despite our explicit instruction the day before that we were not interested in further delaying the contractor selection process. Frustrated by the delays and lack of responsiveness from the Buildzoom team, we decided to inform them via email that we would be terminating the premium services and asked that they refund at least a portion fo the amount we paid at signing given that we never really received any of the premium services we had contracted for. At this point the Buildzoom team replied indicating that they had satisfied an additional milestone (review of schematic drawings) which they would be charging us for the next day and asked that we wait until we receive the third bid (conveniently another milestone under the agreement). At the time of this review, I am currently discussing the milestone with Buildzoom as it could not have been satisfied (we never provided schematic drawings to them) and are still requesting a full or partial refund of the amount we paid upfront. I would not recommend their premium services to anyone that wants to get their project done in a timely or stress free manner.

Use their free service. Their "premium" is not worth anything. Did you know that they charge 3.5% to the contractor AND you still pay 5000, yes that is 5 THOUSAND dollars. They are double dipping, and like I said, the service is not what they promote in their sales pitch. Money flushed down the toilet. I fired them, asked for a partial refund. No, can't do

BuildZoom referred me to a verified licensed Architect but, I found that they guy is not an Architect and does not carry a license as an Architect, the guy also told me that he didn't tell BZ he is a licensed Architect and he doesn't know how BZ came up with license # for him on their website! The guy wrote me a contract for about $7000 but, I told him it is against the law to run a contract over $500 without a valid license, he replied that what I say is not true! and he does not need a license to do business for that kind of money. The guy says he never gave any license number to BZ but, BZ has a license number written on the guys profile for public to see. BZ says the the guy has a business license in city of Milpitas but when I went to city of Milpitas website I could not find anything on him. I wish I know who BZ called to verify his business license. BZ is telling me the guy can ask them to have his license # removed from their site but, why BuildZoom asking me? BuildZoom is a scam because finally the guy admitted that he is not a licensed Architect but BZ says I verified that the guy is a licensed Architect.

I did not know how to go about building our custom home. BuildZoom offered assistance and I had the worst imaginable experience that cost me a lot of time and money. If you are reading this please beware: BuildZoom is a total scam. They promised a lot delivered worse than nothing. I wasted tons of time and money and ended up where I started. They connected me with an architect that designed a very expensive house, twice over the budget that I planned for and almost twice the size I asked for. It took over a year to get this design from him which required tons of adjustments and the final one provided did not have all the necessary components, such as plumbing for example. Everything he designed was overly expensive and a lot of stuff was unnecessary and uncalled for. I got no help with selection of a contractor, and all contractors offered by BuildZoom were poorly qualified to build a custom home (specializing instead in solar panels, windows, improvements, etc.). Total nightmare, so I had to find my own contractor. When I complained, I was told that they will take care of it but never received a call back. Their employees come and go and the ones I dealt with were not paying attention to my project.

8/3/2021: After several back-and-forth's with Buildzoom, my husbands review was posted. The contractor, GCH Construction Group did file a dispute (not at the time Buildzoom said but later) and we "won" the dispute. Well after a while, we figured out that if my husband was logged into Buildzoom, the review showed and GCH Construction Group received 4 stars BUT if he was logged out or if ANYONE else viewed it, GCH Construction Group had 5 stars and my husbands review didn't even show. How is this possible? Is it a scam? Does Buildzoom really want to offer reliable contractors or is it like I think, they offer the contractors that PAY? We shall see. Be very cautious when using this site! UPDATE: BuildZoom surprised me and did the right thing! They did not choose to put up my review but did opt to post my husbands'. I wanted to publicly give my thanks. This may prevent others' from the turmoil this contractor caused us. Thank you, Buildzoom! Buildzoom has removed our one star review of an unscrupulous contractor. By doing this, they are promoting this contractor and in turn, allowing unknowing customers to be swindled. I have proof of the contractor taking our money without completing nor correctly doing the project he was hired to do. In addition, this contractor cost us almost double to repair and complete the project. Do your due diligence! I would not depend on reviews alone! Buildzoom: The contractor is Josh V., Owner and operator of GCH Construction Group. My husband and I have made several attempts to post an honest review with backup and proof to deter unsuspecting customers from hiring this unscrupulous contractor. However, it seems that your site and other sites such as yours continue to allow this contractor(and I am sure others) the ability to remove any review that isn't "5stars" and by doing so, you are doing a disservice to the public that you SAY you are protecting by offering "contractors you can trust." So, why not do your own due diligence before promoting contractors such as this one. Information is all over the internet. Do your due diligence!! Don't just count on these "consumer sites."