Angie's List - www.angieslist.com

AL is a big marketing ground for inexperienced vendors and AL has big team supporting them not the consumers. For consumers they come with several excuses to divert the topic or make the process very complicated. Be careful before signing up for those deals on AL.

This review is specifically about Angie's List "Big Deal" program.

The big deal works like this: you get an email from Angie's List with a discounted service (tree trimming, carpet cleaning, .etc). If you like the offer, you sign up for the coupon and the price (discounted) is paid for with your credit card (on file as you have to renew their membership periodically).

Most coupons have a 90 to 120 window for use. What they don't tell you is there is a 30 day window to get your money back from Angie's if you change your mind about the service (buried in the fine print on the website). After that, any money for coupons not acted upon (apparently) are sent to the business.

So for a coupon at with 100 people taking an offer, 50 actually got the service (good), 30 people decided on a refund in 30 days (good), and the rest (20) lost their money as this was residual paid to the business. In short, free money for the business.

No where on the coupon does it spell out these details and the user is left thinking that he or she has the full 90-120 days to either redeem the coupon or get the refund.

The "BIG DEAL" works best if it's a coupon with a single price for a service, say $100 vs. $200 for duct cleaning. It's worst for a $200 savings for a service. In my case I finally got the estimate for the service (within the 4 month window) but found it way too high and I've been trying to get my money back ever since. To no avail.