At the meeting of creditors hearing in Lancaster this week, Shawn Gerety gave sworn testimony before the bankruptcy trustee that he paid HomeAdvisor for customer leads. He said HomeAdvisor was his primary source of business when BuildTrend was grossing $200,000 in revenues per month.
Fraud victims describe
5-star ratings of BuildTrend Construction on
HomeAdvisor.com as a driving influence in their unfortunate introductions to this crooked contractor ring. Validation by HomeAdvisor appears to have influenced consumers to develop undue confidence in the contractor, even when the introduction may not have originated from HomeAdvisor.
What is HomeAdvisor?
HomeAdvisor appears to collect comprehensive reviews and connect consumers with "trusted home improvement pros." From their website:
With more than two million pro reviews and one of the industry's most comprehensive screening processes, HomeAdvisor gives you the peace of mind that comes from knowing you hired a pro you can trust.
HomeAdvisor listed BuildTrend as a 5-star contractor on their site until late September 2015. Indeed, from Google search results for BuildTrend, HomeAdvisor's endorsement was consistently a top ranking. HomeAdvisor also promoted an independent listing for Trend Investment Group - another one of Shawn Gerety's registered contractor entities - until October 2015 when the Trend page was also finally removed.
What Background Checks?
HomeAdvisor claims to perform background checks on recommended contractors.
If they actually perform checks, how did they miss that both Shawn Gerety and Vincent Cottrell are felons? How did HomeAdvisor also miss prior bankruptcies, civil actions, criminal theft and theft by deception convictions and prison time for drug crimes?
Shawn Gerety and others could have made misrepresentations to HomeAdvisor, but how rigorous or independent was HomeAdvisor's supposed vetting when they missed ALL of these reasons to question this contractor?
Why does HomeAdvisor suppress critical reviews?
We have heard of multiple customers whose projects were going wrong attempting to post on HomeAdvisor only to see their critical reviews quickly purged from the HomeAdvisor site by staff of that website.
What service was this to other consumers who may have benefited from a balanced perspective of actual customer experiences with this contractor? What value does HomeAdvisor provide by curating reviews to only retain the most positive ratings? What steps does HomeAdvisor take to validate if positive (or negative) reviews are even originating from real customers?
Were the BuildTrend's listings with HomeAdvisor removed when Shawn stopped paying for advertising? or for some other reason?
How much do contractors like BuildTrend pay HomeAdvisor?
Shawn Gerety testified that his companies paid HomeAdvisor for leads and that this was his primary source of business.
In the case of BuildTrend, leads HomeAdvisor sold turned out to be a hit list for the next crime victims, folks who would have their lives disrupted by the thefts and frauds of this ring of scammers.
