Anyone used Homestars or similar services? Are they good?
Homestars.com
Homestars is an advertising and review site for home services. So contractors can advertise and be reviewed by customers. I hired an insulating contractor who I found on Homestars and was very happy. If you join (free), you can see the price of the job done in the review so can compare based upon the description. The one good thing is that when you do a review, HomeStars confirm that you were an actual customer of the company you're reviewing. So you need to provide them with some invoice details which they check before posting your review. Of course, I'm sure a company could fudge this - but it would be a lot more effort than other review sites. I always take review sites with a grain of salt - but was happy with my experience with HomeStars. I would use them again if I need to get a service call for something and I don't have a previous contractor to use.