Servicestart UK Reviews 195

First-class service.
Initial contact by phone, which was very professional and informative.

The service offered was exactly what I needed and as a result of the service provided I have a provider for my services.

I would not hesitate in recommending Servicestart

Outstanding!!!!!!

Nice and friendly Service.
Very accurate and they understand the real needs of a business

Great site and a fast response to suit my needs with finding an Accountant. I will recommend and definitely be using Trustpilot again.

Brilliant service and received high quality leads and great customer support throughout. Recommended!

ORIGINAL REVIEW:
I have used Servicestart for a while now and unfortunately my experience has been an expensive waste of time.

I run an accountancy firm and thought this would be a fantastic way of building my client base. For those of you who do not know how servicestart works, broadly speaking; the customer will post a request for the service(s) they require, servicestart will verify the customer exists, suppliers can purchase the contact details and provide a quote.

The issue is, the customer does not pay to receive the quote. There is no risk to them and so they can make a speculative request if they wish. I suspect a number of the leads I purchased were obtaining quotes to reduce their current accountant's fee.

In theory servicestart will refund you if the customer had already appointed another provider or they were unreachable. But having reported the majority of the leads as unreachable, servicestart began to ignore me and refuse to give me a credit. Note you don't get your money back, only a credit on your account.

Having spent a decent amount of money purchasing leads with a very low rate of leads that will actually communicate and an even lower rate of conversions to clients, I can honestly say that for suppliers, this service is not worth it.

My advice:
to customers; only use the service if you actually genuinely want a quote.
to suppliers; if you want to sign anyone that uses this site, be prepared to spend a lot of money and waste of lot of time and effort chasing false leads.

UPDATE FOLLOWING SERVICESTART's RESPONSE:
Thank you Servicestart for your response.

Whilst you may have thought it was a good idea to 'name and shame' me, it goes to show your lack of professionalism and I suspect that it will have done you more damage than it would to me.

It is true that I have been registered with your site since 2011. As a startup I found it expensive to purchase leads when I wouldn't get a response from them. As a result, between 2012 and 2017 I did not purchase a lead from you. So to try and spread the number of leads purchased over the inactive periods would be incorrect and provides a misleading statistic. My review was relating to the purchases made within the last 12 months.

The insurance system paid out once or twice for me. I would report the leads when I could but you had a habit of removing the report button after a period of time so I was not always able to do so. Then when I did report the leads you would investigate and tell me the leads were still considering quotes and to contact them again. There's only so much I can do if they refuse to answer emails or pick up the phone.

I've been in business long enough to know how to successfully sign a client from a lead. However, if the lead itself is not a quality lead then there's not much I can do. I would rather spend my marketing budget elsewhere.

Great service, very fast and good individual customer support. Would recommend.

I'm very happy with Servicestart UK for helping me to find an accountant to resolve an urgent issue. It couldn't be easier to fill in the form on their site. I even got a call from one of the people from Servicestart UK to ensure my form request covered everything I wanted it to. I can highly recommend the service. Very useful when you're swimming in the sea of choice with tens of thousands of accountants and accountancy firms out there and don't know who to call. Just type in what you need in the form, and you'll get contacts in no time. Thanks.

After I have sent my inquiry for accounting quotes, I have received immediate response and I have been given with a lot of options for that. Really great service and immediate reactions! Highly recommend them.

Excellent service , I was looking for an accountant , this company helped me greatly , I was contacted by several accountants with different quotes and I was able to choose the one that fits my business needs , I highly recommend Servicestart UK

Brilliant service, using them again for my next accounting period.

Such a good service from Servicestart UK. Their account advice was really helpful, and they have been very reliable in delivering leads. Highly recommend! .

I have used Servicestart for a year now and have found that you need to look at their buisness as a form of advertising and promotion, as architectural designers we are in a competitive market and any leads that are provided are a usefull form of introduction to new clients. Not all leads are succesfull but on the whole it is down to you as to do the necessary legwork to win the contract.
On whole you need to look at this as advertising of which it is not always succesful but can provide you with some surprising new projects.

Helped me solve my search within 24 hours

I have been registered on this site as a supplier of architectural services for a number of years, but have now decided to cancel my account. In all the time I have been registered very, very few of the buyer requests have appeared worth pursuing. Many are very obviously completely speculative, with little likelihood of a commission, or have totally unrealistic budgets. Of the five that I have paid for, only two were at all serious, and only one has resulted in a job. The others were a complete waste of my time. One of the 'buyers' wanted me to provide a quote, but wouldn't tell me what the job was, where it was, or what he wanted me to quote for. Utterly pointless. On that occasion Servicestart refunded the fee, but only after a lot of chasing. On a more recent occasion a similar thing has happened, but Servicestart have flatly refused to refund the fee of £70, even though the 'lead' was nonexistent. Buyers - please be aware that Sevicestart charge a very substantial fee to suppliers using the site. Please don't post requests unless you really do want serious quotes, and there is a realistic chance of a job arising. And suppliers, from my experience I suggest you don't waste your time or money using this site. Maybe for contractors doing small value jobs in some fields it may work out better. But for a consultant in a profession like mine, it's a lot of money for unverified leads that have little chance of producing work for anyone.

Unsurprisingly, Servicestart have now made a patronising bs response to this review, which I'll also address.

1. Yes, I've been emailed thousands of requests, and only responded to six. That's because the vast majority of them were obviously either unsuitable or not serious, and I'm not going to waste my time and money on these.

2. No, the problem was not about me needing Servicstart's help to pitch for work. I am a UK qualified, registered architect. I know my business better than Servicestart, and don't need their advice. The problem has been that the requests were not genuine - as outlined above. They were just fishing exercises, with no actual contracts to bid for. Of the six 'leads' I purchased, four were completely worthless, and did not actually want quotes from any provider. One of the remaining leads was genuine, but didn't have the money to hire anyone. So that leaves just one lead which was genuine, and from a customer who actually had the funds to hire a supplier - and I won this contract. That's a 100% success rate for me when presented with a genuine opportunity to bid, but still only one job won (which is ongoing).

3. Perhaps the Servicestart team can explain how a supplier is supposed to gain customer feedback when virtually none of the supposed 'customers' are actually looking to hire anyone?

I cannot emphasise strongly enough what a waste of time and money Servicestart are for suppliers. Their response to this review just demonstrates the very issues I am complaining about, namely their refusal to take any responsibility for vetting or verifying the requests, and their refusal to refund fees on bogus leads. They're not even attempting to address the points raised in my review - which were not 'concerns', but well founded complaints. They're simply seeking to excuse the poor quality of their service by trying to blame it on me. If you do decide to use Servicestart, and have cause to contact their support team (which you almost certainly will), you can see from their response here what kind of 'support' you can expect - if you can get through to them at all.

Servicestart's customer support team would do better to concentrate on doing their own job properly instead of pretending to be able to tell me how to do mine.

I found a great positive accountant through this site and very local. This was quick and easy to get set up on the site and quick response Monday morning.

Excellent quick service. Friendly and efficient. I found an accountant within 2 hours of contacting them

Excellent and prompt service offered by Olivia.
Will return the call and responsive. I heard from a provider in 10 minutes, my request was out of the ordinary as well.

Really helpful, Servicestart contacted me straightaway and I received first response from architect already the next day with two more quotes to follow. The company i chose was rated highly at the website and they have proven their reputation by working quickly and efficiently. Very pleased i didn't have to go through all the architects myself - Servicestart did it for me. Thank you!!

Total waste of money - Bought 5 leads on five separate occasions. Spent roughly £45 per lead. Not a single lead answered the phone, messaged or emailed back. I spotted 3 recent leads with very similar details and the description written in a unique style - very likely it was the same person....spend your money on different form of marketing people!!
The good reviews on here are from people who are looking and not paying
The bad reviews on here are the professionals paying for leads that go no-where. Work it out for yourself