The Lead You Just Paid For Went to Two Other Guys
You paid for that lead. So did the two other contractors who got the same one.
Getting Calls
Pay per lead looks like the safest thing you can buy. You are not paying for advertising, you are paying for a customer. Except that is not what arrives, and the contractors who have run it can tell you exactly what does.
Sold three times
The most common complaint is also the simplest. They send the same lead to you and two or three other guys and charge every one of you for it. So you are paying to be one of four people calling the same homeowner in the same hour, and the job goes to whoever dialed first. You paid either way.
Why the math cannot work
The price per lead gets set so the seller still profits at four contractors deep. Yours has to survive three other bids just to break even, which means you are either the cheapest quote in the pile or you ate the cost. That is how something sold as pay for results turns into paying for entry into a bidding war.
The ones you cannot even reach
Contractors describe getting billed for numbers that were disconnected, then getting the refund request denied. Many people never answered calls or messages at all, making it impossible to even schedule an estimate. And the one that stings worst: the homeowner said he never requested a quote.
The bill on the way out
One operator paid off a past due balance of six hundred and sixty five dollars and was then told that cancelling would cost another twenty three hundred. Worth knowing going in rather than coming out.
What owning the front door changes
When somebody finds you and calls you, that call is yours. Nobody else got it. Nobody bills you for it. It was not sold three times and it does not show up dead. And it costs nothing per call from then on, because what produced it was a one time build.
Leads you rent get resold. A call that comes to you is yours.