A Little Help

When we first bought our house we had no contacts as far as professionals to call when we needed help. We moved to a new town and didn't know many people that we could ask for recommendations.

Somewhere along the line we were introduced to Service Magic. It's a website that you can put up a post for different services you need. For example, when we purchased our home we didn't have a washer/dryer hook up. So we placed a job on Service Magic. We added basic info. and the details of the job. Then professionals in our area contacted us if they were interested in the job.
The thing I like best is that prior clients rate the pros on their service and give feedback. They label specific types of jobs, so you can see not only if the pro is good in general, but also if people were happy with a similar job to yours. They also rate things like customer service and pricing.

So far we've used it to find a plumber and to find someone to install hardwood floors. We've been really happy with the results. For the plumber, we had multiple people come out and give us free quotes. We ended up having one that we liked and have ended up using him on multiple jobs since. While I'm not particularly happy that we've had multiple plumbing jobs, I am happy that we found a plumber we really trust.

The first job we used the plumber for, the washer/dryer hook up, wasn't particularly easy. He had to install the pipes going into the attic because we live on a slab and it would cost far too much to rip up the floors. Most plumbers we met told us it wasn't possible. He said he'd figure it out and then went to bat for us with the town. It was an issue because you aren't supposed to have pipes flushing up (at least in our town), due to a rule started because of 3 families. He said it didn't make sense in our situation and got the town to agree!

Needless to say we are very thankful for not only our plumber, but also to service Magic for getting us hooked up with him.

How do you find quality service professionals in your area?
*this is not a paid post, just my personal experience with a website.