Charlie: John in Montrose is helping out his landlord. He’s a renter, but his landlord helps him out with stuff. The latest problem involves where their air conditioning sits. It’s a flat roof and it’s a three story townhouse. It (roof leak) was repaired two years ago, but now it’s leaking again. I love when people say that. We fixed it, but it’s leaking again.
Tom: Mm-hmm
Charlie: Well, then you didn’t fix it.
Tom: I understand.
Charlie: I called Ideal, and Cipriano, Jim who’s a great guy, came out, got up on the roof, put together estimates. A nice professional, quick, everything seemed great, but then his wife got involved and he started having concerns that we didn’t have any other estimates. I look online and I see Ideal’s reviews are okay. Their Angie’s List is a B and Yelp reviews are not good. I do see positive reviews on Best Pick and GAF and Checkatrade. Tom, do you still recommend Ideal? He wants to know.
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Tom: Man, when I was in college and I got a B, it was like the best day of my life. That’s all I got to say.
Charlie: I tell my kids B means you could do better.
Tom: Oh, no. B was a super duper, man. As far as that goes, I know the people at Ideal and they are a great company. You can always get other bids if you want, but you can tell just by your own experience, which is always going to be your best barometer, he was there, he was professional, he was a great guy, he did everything they said they were going to do. I mean, he put it all out there.
Charlie: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Tom: Isn’t that the best way to rate a company is just personal experience with them? I know I’ve had it with them and I’ve always been real pleased.
Charlie: To amplify on your point, the challenge that I have, the whole construct of that question is the review sites themselves, especially …
Tom: I don’t know anything about those.
Charlie: … where Yelp is concerned. That one is one where you can get people gaming that thing and run reviews down. I mean, I don’t have a client that doesn’t twinge when you say the word Yelp.
Tom: Really?
Charlie: Yeah, because it’s just not reliable.