bark.com

[Grumps]

Why have I never heard of these before?
Has anyone here got anything good to say about them, or how they compare
to checkatrade or mybuilder?

[Colin Bignell]

On 10/07/2023 13:20, Grumps wrote:
> Why have I never heard of these before?

Inadequate marketing

> Has anyone here got anything good to say about them, or how they compare
> to checkatrade or mybuilder?

--
Colin Bignell

[Andy Burns]

Grumps wrote:

> Why have I never heard of these before?

They show the BBC logo as some form of endorsement, but searching for
bark.com within bbc.co.uk turns up this

"I stole £30,000 from my mum to make millions"

[Theo]

For these things it's always worth going in as a tradesperson and seeing how
it works from that side.

It looks like Mybuilder in that you post a job and tradespeople pay for the
lead if they're interested in the job. There is also a Checkatrade like
directory but it's not searchable - you have to click through the type of
job and the location before it shows you.

There are reviews, but they seem quite thin. eg when I go for fencers in
Cambridgeshire this is my local sawmill, but there are 8 reviews over 10
years:
https://www.bark.com/en/gb/company/cottenham-sawmills/1R3bR/

From the tradesperson side there's no clue about pricing so it's not clear
how they compare. They say a credit is £1.60 but not how many credits a job
might cost. (At Mybuilder it can be £4 to £30 depending on the scale of the
job)

I created a job for a fence replacement, it found me 142 tradespeople who
are up to 50 miles away, and many of them general builders not fencers. I
think they have to pay to bid for the work, but it didn't ask me for many
details - type of fence, length of fence, etc, but there wasn't a freeform
box to enter details or upload photos (although I didn't complete the whole
process when it started asking for address details etc).

So the leads the tradesperson sees must be fairly generic, like the example
here:
https://www.bark.com/en/gb/sellers/create/

In contrast at Mybuilder you can put in a description and photos so they
know what the job is, and the householder has to shortlist the tradespeople
before they get charged for the lead.

For Bark it seems like anyone can kick tyres and tradespeople have to pay
even if the customer never replies to their offer. (I closed my request so
nobody had to pay to solicit my fictitious job). It seems like most of the
benefit flows to Bark and not to the traders.

I've tried posting a few jobs at Mybuilder and had a decent response but low
quality replies - eg there was some guy who said he could do a new flat
roof but he had no history, was 90 miles away and when I looked him up his
Linkedin said he was employed maintaining trains. I've never found anyone
worth giving jobs to (and by posting jobs I haven't wasted their money if I
don't shortlist the lead).

I can't see Bark being much better, frankly. The good people are busy, and
the people who aren't busy aren't good. It's only the edge cases like those
starting out where a platform like this might help.

Theo

[Brian Gaff]

Maybe their bark is worse than their bite?
Brian

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