Bark

This is an update to my review written a couple days ago. I went to Bark yesterday, signed in and began looking for a ink to delete my account. There is none so, I called the number listed. Next, there was a recording of a male with an English accent. Could barely understand a word he said.

I was then given a series of options to connect with customer service and pressed #2. The phone rang and rang and rang. I hung up. Maybe 30 minutes later decided to try again. This time I pressed #4.

A lady with an English accent answered. Told her that I want to delete my account and gave my account info. She could see where I had gone in and changed all account info in my feeble attempt to delete.

I told her that because there is no link to delete the account myself, I entered the information "CANCEL MY ACCOUNT." She told me that one has to call to delete. She was very nice, cordial and professional deleting my account while on the phone with her. That was yesterday.

Today I check my email account and there were NO spam emails from Bark. Usually there are 20 or more scam tire kicker request notifications. I am free. Successfully removed myself from them and their emails that I never signed up for.

And thank you to the Bark rep who handled everything so swiftly.

The worst platform to get leads for your business (SEO and Webdesign category). Don't bother because leads are low quality and you will only lose money!
I have bought credits and contact cca. 5 leads, 80% of them don't even respond and the one that responded thought SEO services were cheaper, so Bark didn't convert.
After no one converted I contacted Bark to return my credits because they have this policy "We're so confident you'll get hired at least once, that if you don't we'll give you all your credits back.", but this only applies once.
Anyway, I got my credits back and went for a hunt. Again, I have contacted 5-7 new business. 50% of the business didn't respond or they closed the listing right away (they are just shopping, well they don't have to pay anything)
The one that responded I went back and forth for days, and at the end say they will go with someone else, even though I went to the bottom with my pricing.
Contacted Bark again to give me credits back, and they saj this is only once! Well if you are so confident that we will get hired at least once why don't you give credits back until we do get hired at least once so we cover the cost of your "credits"!?

Spend this $200 on Facebook ads or Google ads you will get way more leads and they will only be talking with you an not with 10x different companies, and with Bark you don't even know how many companies bided on a lead.

I received an email from Bark offering me a free trial.
I accepted this.
I did not know Bark had my credit card details stored (this was from a previous transaction)
They did NOT inform me that I was now signed up to an on going service. Yes I agree, rather underhand tactics.
It was only by chance that I saw charges on my credit card. I then realised I had been the culprit of their Click Bait - something which is highly underhand. They hadn't sent me any invoices, receipts etc and when I checked the portal there was no mention of subscriptions and equally importantly, the ability to cancel them.

I was getting nowhere with the staff (and they do not have an escalation procedure - to escalate you have to write to their legal team in London - we are based in Australia). I think the fact that you can't even email the escalation team and in fact have to write speaks volumes.

I was very clear in my emails to the team - I stated that unless they escalated my valid complaint to a manager I would post honest reviews about their service to want other companies from falling into the trap I fell into (ie, clickbait).

The response again was to write to their offices in London (not email, a proper letter).

I therefore contacted a Director via LinkedIn thinking that he would care about how his staff were behaving and of course not wishing to believe that these dodgy dealings were systemic.

I then received the email below terminating my account as I had made multiple complaints against them. I will let you judge for yourselves if this is the type of company you think it's wise to work with.

Taegan (Bark.com)
Mar 19,2021, 11:36 GMT

Hi,

This email is to inform you that following multiple complaints, your Bark account has been terminated and you are now banned from using Bark.com.

You can find a copy of our full terms here: www.bark.com/terms/

For any legal queries, please write in to our legal department at the following address:

85 Great Portland Street,
London,
England,
W1W 7LT

Kind Regards,

Taegan
The Bark Team

I was initially drawn to Bark by a review (which it turned out had been written by... Bark themselves). Once Bark had my email address and the description of the type of work I was looking for I began almost immediately to get emails. This looks promising, I thought. But then I examined the contents of the emails. The type of work described was very wide of what I'd specified.

I wrote them at least one email telling them that they may be "barking up the wrong tree".

I also wrote "Have you done any field research on break-even points with smaller charges and much higher acceptance rates?" Because charging £288 just to allow someone reply to an inaccurate job posting was ridiculous, hence my suggestion that they would get a higher acceptance rate if they reduced their price significantly.

Then I looked at my online bank statement. Bark had taken £288 from me the previous week and I didn't even know about it.

I phoned my bank and explained what had happened. The bank insisted I speak to Bark. I told them I had looked for Bark's phone number but I couldn't find it. But my bank had their number (I wonder why the bank knew it?).

I phoned Bark and a delightful fellow explained to me that because I had "used their service" I would have been charged the £288 which was the fee for using their service.

I asked him where was any suggestion that I had given them any notice that I intended using their terrible service.

He simply said that I had used the service so the £288 could not be refunded.

The problem is that I still don't know how they got hold of my card details. There's no way I would have willingly paid for something like that which it was obvious was never going to deliver.

The investigation continues, and my bank has filed a case of fraud and cancelled my card.

So I truly encourage anyone reading this not to have anything to do with Bark.com. It seems that they have a reseller network (which is very possibly how they gained my card details) so steer clear of these as well, although it's almost impossible to know who these would be.

Bark is a scam. They are one of these companies who skirt very close to the edges of the law so that they never actually break it. But they are entirely dishonest and without a shred of integrity.

If you are in Australia and about to subscribe to this service and you are unsure, read this first.

I never write reviews but I can't express how extremely annoyed I am with this service at Bark. The customer care is great but the actual Leads are either fake or useless.

If you are in Australia and are a service provider, don't waste your time.

Times are hard as it is, why throw money down a hole on a service that not only wastes your time and effort but also tarnishes your brand as you end up calling innocent people who have no idea why Bark are being approached?

I am surprised how they have so many short answer "happy reviews". These might also be a tactic to reel unsuspecting service providers such as yourself in.

I tried to look for reviews elsewhere on the internet and discovered the facebook ones are switched off- maybe because they can't "fake" those ones.

Such a red flag.

All I really wanted was a genuine service to put me through this tough season and little did I know I was throwing myself into this little charade. Now I am out $520 and nothing to show for it.

I might be wrong, but I know it takes a lot for me to put myself out like this, hope you tread with caution.

I used all the credit in good fortune. Got 12 "leads" but none of them were even close to useful.

This is $520 I am talking about and In these hard times, who has that much to waste?

Do yourself a favour and save yourself the misery.

Either these guys are not ready or they are jokers.

Your brand that you have worked hard to build and the money you have worked hard to earn, should not be flashed down this drain.

If you decide to go ahead and get success, please come and prove me wrong- happy to take this review down, as I think this is a lot of hot air.

Then If you give a genuine review- you are just brushed off like you mean nothing on this earth.

Is this the best use of your money? Read thier response below...

Recently after a couple of years of receiving emails from Bark (Bark.com), I decided to give our company a try with them and purchased some leads after I noticed that Bark offered structural engineer and surveyor options.

Once you register they ask you to fill up a few details about your company and provide a company description.

Through Bark one purchases leads and then when potential clients are flagged up if you select to click on one their link Bark deducts an allocated amount.

The idea is great however there are issues as far as I am concerned relating to the quality of the services and the lack of verification of the professionals

Bark list the services of structural engineers, structural surveyors and building surveyors which in order to undertake a piece of work, even for domestic purposes they need to be qualified, certified and generally carry PI and PL insurances.

Unlike another site called Local Surveyors Direct that actually searches up your company up and only approve you once verified, there was no such quality check by Bark.com. Basically through Bark anyone can claim to be a structural engineer or a building surveyor.

Also since Bark does not do such professional qualification searches it has come to my attention that non-qualified persons pretend to be structural engineers or building surveyors and through Bark there is no way for the uninformed client of verifying if the person responding through a lead is competent and qualified.

Recently a client of mine told me that she had another structural engineer price the design for a removal of a chimney breast and was not even going to visit the property just give her a fixed set of calculations. When I visited the property I noticed that chimney breast was shared with the adjacent property as it was a semi-detached building. The person that quoted turned out did not even have a degree in civil, structural or mechanical engineering but she trusted that Bark would have done this validation.

This has resulted in professional services through competition being ridiculously under-priced as any say student of civil engineering or with minimal experience can claim to be a structural surveyor, resulting in inferior and in most cases substandard quality of services which can have detrimental consequence's for the clients.
Also the HSE under CDM 2015 even for domestic clients and designs require an appropriate level of rigour that someone with inadequate training and experience will not possess. Bark without doing searches on competencies fail to safeguard their clients, which trust the site to provide them with competent and qualified professionals. By encouraging their clients to provide quotes online which is just means of them generating more revenue, goes against HSE guidelines in my view, which requires form professionals involved in construction and design to collect preconstruction information and evaluate risk form hazards, that one cannot identify remotely. By promoting clients to ask professionals to quote online without investigating a property and any particular hazards present, like the potential of asbestos, hidden critical elements, or even say form a load bearing wall roof loads or the direction of the span of floor joists.

I have written to Bark but they ignored my email regarding these concerns. Bark in my view by failing to address the above are contributing to potential failings, which could result to a collapse of structural work or failing to address subsidence issues properly. Anyone can claim to be competent and a professional without appropriate competence and certifications.

This could have been easily resolved by Bark if they took the time to study the industries related to the above and filter only companies or individuals that meet the minimum requirements like:
1. Professionals with degrees;
2. Charted engineers and surveyors;
3. Professionals with minimum industry quality requirements like a UKAS certified integrated management system;
4. Professionals with HSE and CDM 2015 proven competence, like SSIP, Construction Line; and level 2 at least, RISQS or other accepted certification bodies;
5. A minimum 2 million PI and 5 million public liability insurance.
The search for professionals via the internet is become more common however at the moment it is not regulated resulting in my above concerns.

My mother, now in her 80's, chose a 'professional' roofer using Bark.com- she believed Bark to a trustworthy filter for selecting from a sea of potential cowboy builders, as she had no personal 'safe' direct recommendations.
She is sharp and far from a typical old lady. Her major concern was that she would be overcharged and taken advantage of because she is elderly.
Choosing Bark made her feel safer.
Sadly she has put herself in a very vulnerable situation no thanks to Bark.com
She has now been conned out of £6700 and had signed up to have anther £4000 of work carried out at the roofer's suggestion- for jobs that didn't exist.
She was lied to as the roofing team lied throughout their time at her property and had the audacity to go through her home and into her loft. The work undertaken still isn't finished. These men were criminals and both
Trading standards and the Police are now involved. We have told them about Bark's part in this miserable situation and I hope Bark close this extremely poor platform down. I also hope no one in their right mind chooses to use them.
Without assessing the professionals they advertise, or the fake reviews- what actually is their purpose. They no value whatsoever.
Disgusted.

After getting a profile, I watched to see what leads came in. There were very few quality leads. I seen a couple I might have bid on, but Bark want you to spend over $200 to buy a package. I don't know anything about this company and they want me to $235. I looked at the refer category on there site and they give them 40% off on the package of credits. They only want o give me 20%. I email them and ask them for the 40% off and I will try them. This is the response i got."Unfortunately we don't have a way of giving you 40% off, the reason for the difference is to incentivise newer customers". I wrote back That makes no sense. I haven't even bid on job yet because the 20% off isn't enough for me to try it. Technically I am a new customer, but if Bark can't see that than cancel my
Account. I will stick and recommend Thumbtack.

They replied "As requested, we have deleted your Bark.com profile.
We are sorry to see you leave, and wish you all the best for the future.
If you do change your mind, please let us know and we will be more than happy to reactivate your profile for you.
Kind Regards,
Chris

How am I not a new customer? I didn't bid on any jobs, but they would rather lose a customer over a few bucks. I have thousands with Thumbtack. But they are too stupid to see giving me a discount to try Barf would be profitable to them. Good Riddance Barf!

Bark needs to do a MUCH better job of qualifying job posters.

From what we've found, as a service provider who pays Bark with credits, we end up spending way too much money, because most of these job posters are not legitimately looking for services or ready to purchase. Although we have gotten a couple of jobs from Bark, the amount we've spent on credits has not brought us a very good ROI, because cost of credits are quite high, and a lot of the job posters are not serious and questionably real.

Another HUGE problem is that the majority of the time, the job posters are only looking for local service providers when Bark submit information. The job posters don't realize that their listing is being sent out as though they're looking for national providers. We've heard repeatedly that they were looking for local providers. Bark doesn't refund credits in this instance.

Bark claims they qualify everyone, but that is NOT true at all. They ask a few vague questions with their submission form, and then send out the lead. We've tested their forms ourselves. As a job poster, no attempts to validate or qualify occur from the Bark side after you fill out the very brief short form. It does ask for you to submit a phone # and email, but many times these are non-working. Bark does nothing to ensure that these are working, real or qualified.

Many times the people who fill out the forms don't really want to be contacted and don't respond to emails, phones, texts, etc, even when they supposedly request you contact them. They're window shoppers.

Bark's customer service is not always helpful either when you bring up issues with their platform. Their customer service department can be rude and unpleasant.

Bark should listen to some of the service provider complaints, because we are the hands that feed you. You should work to improve your services for those paying you to use them, as otherwise it begins to feel very much like you're being scammed as a service provider.

Bark also needs to do a better job of qualifying everyone by having submit their project budgets. People should be forced to submit a budget, because it allows service providers to make a wiser choice in who they submit to, as well as does a better job of ensuring these people are really looking for services, because they have thought about what their budget is. Currently is very sporadic.

Anyone who submits a job post on Bark should also have to confirm that they submitted the job posting with an email sent to their email that they click on and confirm before the job is sent out to service providers. This also helps ensure these people really are looking for service providers. Or Bark's customer service should call them, whether it's an automated call or whatever, to confirm that they want to receive contacts.

If Bark is interested in improving their platform and keeping their current service providers, they should adapt more of the feedback that would make it a better platform for the people WHO ARE ACTUALLY PAYING YOU.

If you are in the security industry, I would advise not using bark.com as every lead I have been sent and purchased have been terrible, 80% of the leads are people looking for a job and aren't clients looking for security services, the other 20% don't even respond to any forms of contact. When you contact Bark about this Bark will refund you the credits to your bark account for people you are able to prove are looking for work and not looking for a service. The other 20% who don't respond you lose your credits. I have been on bark a few months and have had zero forms of response or any good leads, again when speaking to bark they blame it on the response of the companies, saying you need to respond to leads ASAP, have a full completed profile. My profile is completed and I respond to leads as soon as I receive them and yet nothing. For some industries bark.com is probably pretty decent but for the security industry it is terrible. Bark.com offers a guarantee that you'll be able to get at least one client from their site which hasn't happened the sub clause to this is that on your first order of credits if you don't receive any clients they will refund you the credits to your bark account to try again you can only do this once, after your 2nd lot of credits you'll have to purchase more. I recommend that you do not do this. Bark will not refund any £ to you for not receiving any viable leads and will state that they do not offer any guarantees of getting any clients. They also state that the money you spend on credits is used for advertising and has already been used so they can't do any £ refunds.

In the 100's of sectors they cover I'm sure they can be decent in a few of them but in a lot of them they aren't.

Also bark does not vet leads properly, they class a mobile number and email address as sufficient evidence that a lead is viable, in the 80% cases I've had this has proved to be wrong and I've had people who had no reason to be using bark creating leads that aren't real. Bark does not contact new leads to go through their requirements to insure that the lead is real, if they did contact these leads it would reduce the amount of fake leads.

Anyway if you're looking for a site to waste £240.00 minimum then this is the site for you, otherwise you are better off using that £240.00 to advertise yourself.

Happy contract hunting

A lead based service site/app connecting consumers looking for a varitey of service pros that seems glossy on the surface. Seems like a great idea until the cracks begin to show. Potentially fake Leads that never return messages, and seem highly disconnected (like bots) a site that gets glitchier and glitchier as you learn the nuances and intricacies of how this $#*!ty site scams good people and wastes people's valuable time. Horrible customer service full of apologies and excuses with no ability to resolve issues or provide corrective action. The more you play - the more you get invested, and the more you see just how glaring and cleverly Bark have i tentionally sey up inconplete info loops to cause yiu to use credits, then BUYER BEWARE of the auto top off that was never authorized, offered, or selected by me. No fine print. The language of a guaranteed client yielding greater than your cost for leads or they will pay for a free round of leads is also a whole rats nest with the hoops they make you jump through to even request those credits after you have already been auto charged for a new round of credits. This seems so illegal. Of course they are also registered with a fake office in Delaware - the scam corporation and digital company state with best corporate tax benefits. Another example - the estimate box doesn't indicate anywhere that there's a word limit or that it will cut your carefully crafted estimate off after so many characters even though it lets you keep typing and submit. Also, I discovered my profile lists a related service that I don't offer so I get booking requests for that - but the site won't let me deselect or edit that out of my profile- forcing potential "customer" leads for a service I can't provide. And if you don't respond - your response rating goes down. Either way - your paying for an empty credit. This site/app has casino gaming-tech qualities woven all throughout the whole experience - and feels very synthetic, soul-less and impersonal.
After countless leads, with full estimates and details shared - then calls and texts made to dead-end numbers with only one real person who returned a message - then flaked on his special FX appt after I went shopping for supplies to complete his job. Then zero replies, explanation. The site seems to have automated fake AI interactive replies. I am absolutely convinced that 90% of these people are fake - and that this site was set up to mine data through AI survey and gather information about these industries by accessing estimates of all kinds info through the platform - which should be totally confidential. There are not enough parameters qualifying potential leads. No budget range is asked or divulged by app generated leads. Dealer always has the upper hand. And this credit system sucks - no way to verify any of these fake leads. I sure would love to have verified users and service providers - for everyone's protection - such as a personal facebook page. And 1 other major platform presence. This app is loaded with so many ways deception and manipulation can happen to more easily cipher away peoole's money. Agents are paid for jobs booked and paid a percentage of the vakue of the job they negotiate. This credit experience is for me was more like a marxist mindset programming experience... conditioning and rewarding through the user experience was highly manipulated and conditioned like a communist credit banking system, only given when certain behavior patterns and conditions are met. This is why I think it feels so soulless and devalues both the user and service professionals by taking them off a financial grid concept and into a credit system. Really horrific of you ask me! I see through this tool of the dark at play and I'm calling it out for the sake of human decency, community, authentic connection and freedom. The company couldn't have picked a more insulting name - it's quite horrible and degrading - "Bark" it's pavlov's dog classic conditioning code for humans interacting with tech in a way that slowly, then with a rapid uptake turns users into lab rats looking for cheese. You learn the subconscious codes the way a video gamer looks for dopamine rewards to crack the code to the next level. Abd by the time you figure that out - this front of a company has siphoned away your dollars on what seems like a lot of work that you did (but in reality were spinung in circles giving you the illusion of work and built value through the illusion of forward motion, chasing down leads whenever they bark to get that cheese. The Jig is up. Game over.
Gross company. I'd love to know what shell company and holding companies are behind this. I bet the money trail leads to bitcoin washing machines then overseas. My recommend is to stay away from this gross company. A serious investigation should be performed on this company. It's one big psyop if you ask one who sees behind illusions. One of the gifts a true makeup artist develops is to see people's people's authentic energy, beyond the surface and how to craft illusions that mask or radiate that inner frequency. This site is a mask and the true mechanism is concealed within. This is black magic energy.

Bark.com claims Bark havenot recieved complains email after 10 emails have been sent."Money deducted from my account without my permission. This is a scam. Avoid at cost
When i complained that i suspected the leads were fake, Bark.com sent me an email that all the 33 leads they sold to me have closed their account however no refunds. What a surprise, will the same leads be sold to some unsuspecting tutors.
Is it not surprising that 33 leads decided to all close their accounts on the 3rd July 2021 after my complaints.
See example email from barks.com

"Thanks for getting back to Clara about their Tutoring Bark. This Bark has now been closed so that no further professionals can contact Clara"

Bark.comBark.com
'Thanks for getting back to Scott about their Tutoring Bark. This Bark has now been closed so that no further professionals can contact Scot'

'Thanks for getting back to Albert about their Tutoring Bark. This Bark has now been closed so that no further professionals can contact Albert'

'Thanks for getting back to Sophie about their Tutoring Bark. This Bark has now been closed so that no further professionals can contact Sophie'.
I received 33 emails with same information. Wow!, This company... avoid

I have spent in total £147.84 for getting only one reply from a customer which have not led to any job. So basically I've sponsored bark and received nothing in return. It's true what other person said that Bark lure potential buyers with a ridiculously low budget estimates, which mean at best you would earn £2-3 per hour. But the thing is I even didn't get to the stage of discussing the budget, as people just simply not replying to any messages, emails or phone calls. If I would've spent this money on platforms where they charge 20% for completed work, offering, for example, some discounts to clients I would earn at least something or even decent money. Here I've just thrown money for nothing. Their sales team calls promising they improved their service to get you accurate leads and ensuring of 30 to 50% conversion rate. In reality, you're lucky if you get 3% and 0% ROI. The reality is I have now £150 less on my bank account. There is plenty of bad opinions of this service on other sites, especially from photographers and videographers so sellers don't repeat mistakes of others and don't waste your money. I've contacted bark asking for a refund they informed me they don't offer any refunds.

Bark may in deed be a legitimately formed company. That does not mean however that the quality of their product is not suspect.

After being jilted out of over $200 and being denied a refund I used my skip tracing skills as a licensed professional within a field which I can not disclose, but pay annual dues to be a member of and swear an oath not to abuse my privilege, and what I discovered was that 1 out of 15 of the leads I received belonged to a real person.

Whereas 90% of the other leads were to disconnected phone numbers of people who supposedly were looking for service, but mysteriously got their phone cut off less than 5 minutes after submitting a request for a quote. On several occasions people would pick up the phone and hang back up without saying anything. However, in the split second the phone line was open, I could hear chatter in the background as if I had reached a call center with about 20 people talking in the background.

I also traced one lead to a business that was... out of business. Why would someone shut down their website and phone service within minutes of requesting a quote for service?

Why would anyone in their right mind ask for a quote, and then disconnect their phone or avoid answering the phone all together?.

Why would anyone provide a number to a call center and repeatedly hang up or allow the phone to ring 50 times if Bark are in need of services?

None of this makes any sense. Unless you factor in Bots. Like the ones used on Twitter and Facebook to perpetrate personas of real people. If you don't know about it, there is in deed artificial intelligence systems which can literately engage in short back-and-forth conversations.

If not the above, then perhaps they are using a data mining system that searches the web for "service for hire" inquiries on other websites. The problem however is that the data collected could be several months, if not years old. Which is probably why this company has no problem giving people "credits" to try again, Perhaps they figure if you beat your head against the wall long enough, there is a 10% chance you will make contact with a real person amid the garbage.

Technically, they can claim the leads are to real people, but if the lead is so old that the phone numbers are disconnected, who cares? When a Vendor purchases a customer lead, the presumption is that the lead is fresh from a real person, in real time. Not a Bot recycling leads from some other company's website.

To better prove my suspicion they are using Bots, I also did a forensic analysis of the over 1000 emails I have received in the weeks following my cancellation and request for refund. I can't be too specific at the moment, because of the class action lawsuit I intend to bring if I am unsuccessful in getting my money back through my CC service (if you are interested in signing onto the initial complaint, feel free to respond below). However I will say that there is irrefutable evidence that this company is using Bots to manage their so-called customer profiles.

I was a service provider. I sent them their minimum fee to start service. At first Bark sent me requests for service but soon the requests stopped coming. Several months later I discovered that there was an "active" request that they had not sent me any info about.

As I was then discontinuing my business because of slow holiday season demand (the reason for my visiting their site) I was surprised to see an "active" request.

Since they did NOT provide me the services I paid for I asked for a refund of my balance. They steadfastly refused to do so. They maintained that they "did" send me several requests in the preceding several months but they obviously did not. IF they sent the requests to me their systems did not actually send them to me but their systems said they did. Their systems do NOT work right.

Looking at their rating I can see I am not the only one who is greatly unhappy.

DO NOT SEND THEM ANY MONEY unless it is money you can afford to lose. Based on past experience, only about 1 out of 10 requests actually turn into a booking. Some categories are likely even less. This can severely cut into your income as they charge an arm and a leg (and sometimes two arms and two legs) to respond to each request with never a guaratee you will ever hear from the requester again (likely not in most cases).

Bark, from a sales perspective, is really easy to use to get leads. However, the customer leads on Bark are of a really low quality and value. When you are paying the equivalent of £1.20 per credit and it costs between 8 and 20 credits to apply (modal is 18 as of May 2020), you burn through credits really quickly on their really poor quality leads.

In general, a few things happen when you've paid for your Bark:

1. You contact the customer & engage, the customer goes quiet.
2. You contact the customer & there is no response at all
3. The lead closes randomly not long after opening
4. Customers are after really low price services
5. The customers can't afford your work, but want to go into a joint venture (we've invested £25 in the lead for a company that doesn't exist or is worth zero)
6. The customer wants free consultancy
7. The job is worth very little
8. The customer starts excited, but then life happens & Bark can't go on or lose interest. This is really bad for non-pushy sellers

This is on top of the very large number of very generic, somewhat fake "tyre kickers".

As of May 2020, for sellers, the platform doesn't make its money back on the lead spend. Last month, I spent just over £460.80 (inc VAT) and received £260 worth of business. There was one freeloader (the joint venture person, who isn't interested in getting your money back & just wants free work done). Two other leads remain open, but they've put themselves on hold for 2 and 4 weeks respectively. Probability is they won't turn into anything.

Business has come from 2 conversions from 20 applications. A 10% conversion. Seems high, but it's only double cold leads. Warmer leads in our other channels return 40% and projects are typically 100x that value on average.

As a whole, Bark is really really easy to waste money on. I read that customers worry about customer service from the vendors. For less seasoned freelancers, you can see how this happens. There is no incentive to maintain relationships, because the leads and returns are so poor. Not that I'm advocating it.

Pros:
- Interface is really easy to use
- Acts as a CRM
- Keeps track of relationship through the platform

Cons:
- doesn't return its costs
- really low value work
- poor quality customer jobs (as it's free for them to list)
- as time consuming to filter once the lead is in, as getting your own leads
- questionable whether Bark is an "agent" (Conduct of Employment Agencies Act then applies & charging "work seekers" then becomes an offence)

In general, avoid it. Uplifted score due to interface.

EDIT Jan. 27,2020: It is very likely Bark has been inflating their ratings on this site with FAKE REVIEWS. If you look back from 2018 until Dec. 2019, reviews skew negative, and there aren't very many of them. From Dec. 2019 until at least today -- a period of just over two months -- DOZENS of very positive reviews were posted to this site. So it's one of two things. Either a) Bark has experienced a tremendous upswell in client/customer goodwill over the last two months, or b) it's something else. Wonder which? -- I would also like to add that Bark.com messaged me regarding my review below. Bark apologized and asked for the email address that was receiving the unwanted messages, and any websites where my email address may be listed, which are definitely questions a legit company would ask! Unless they're not!

(ORIGINAL REVIEW from Oct. 2019 :) Bark trawls the web for email addresses that appear to pertain to "businesses," then spams their owners with completely irrelevant "offers." I co-manage a not-for-profit studio space. We provide services to the public, not to clients. Bark.com emailed me 13 times in the past two months. They are literally asking a room in a warehouse if they want to provide magicians for children's birthdays. Utterly unreal.

See photo below*

Bark started delivering leads to the contact form of my website in April 2019. So it tweaked my interest then as a potential to gain new clients. I'm a personal trainer.

The first thing I noticed about Bark was how easy it was to buy credits, it seems that Bark have enabled this feature quite nicely, not to mention the automatic top-up function.

My issue with Bark is there is no filtering of genuine leads from fakes &/or scammers. In the photo below, I received a lead from a client in my locality - however, once I purchased the lead for 11 credits, it turned out that a) the phone number wasn't even in my country b) the email address looks suspect. But I only discovered this upon purchase of the lead. So this was a fake lead that my business incurred a cost on. How Bark can facilitate this is in my opinion, disgraceful.

This has happened to me more than once, and I have complained to Bark each time. This experience questions the integrity of the operation and most online businesses i use would have this problem sorted at the front end.

This creates a situation where it is impossible to discern a genuine from a fake lead. So of the 25 or so leads I have contacted, I've managed to convert 5 into sales with the majority not returning my contact even though they request my services specifically. This is way below what I actually do day to day, where I'll close about 75% to long-term contracts.

None of it makes sense to me. So, once my last 12 credits expire, I will no longer use Bark, nor, will I recommend it to anyone.

I wish I had looked for reviews about this website prior to using it. I've tried several lead generation sites/apps, and none have really turned out too well and can turn out to be quite expensive overall.

Bark.com seemed great at first, especially with all of the information Bark gave you up front about people looking services (mine being personal fitness training). I figured with so much data and information that people would be serious about it. I was DEAD WRONG.

I've spent hundreds of dollars at this point on Bark.com for credits to reach out to customers. To date I have received a fair amount of replies, but I have only received ONE client. Basically, I am slightly over breaking even for my costs associated with this site. Other people respond and decide not to train with me, mostly due to pricing... even though when someone submits their information they show what they think they'll pay; my amount has almost always been at the lower end of the range. It is quite fishy...

Other people do not respond at all, even after texting and e-mailing the number and e-mail address given when they submit their information. And this isn't a rarity - it is quite common to get no response whatsoever! At least Thumbtack started to make it so with their Pro model that you wouldn't get charged unless the person responded back.

So overall, the idea seems good in theory, but there seems to be something fishy going on. With the current state of Bark.com, you're better off throwing your money into a fire pit or just advertising on social media or something. Anything is better at this point.

And last but not least, the lead amounts are completely random in terms of frequency. Like, it is not even close to having an average. You can get 5 in a week and then none for a month. I've been checking daily to just burn which credits I do have and there have been no new leads.

The reviews here and elsewhere speak for themselves -- stay away.

Signed up last night and started getting responses. My alarm bells went off immediately because I sensed a very strong similarity between Bark and Dating sites.

I won't bore with details but I had an experience where I joined a dating site and had over 40 messages from around 30 women so some messaging twice!

So as a stupid man I paid the $40 to see and reply to those messages. I replied to every single one and not one answered... by the way I'm not that bad looking lol!

I can only speak for myself but if I genuinely sent a message to a woman and she replied then there is no way I would not reply to that... perhaps women are different but I don't think so and for none of then to reply... c'mon!

This happens a lot on dating sites and Bark try so hard to create the illusion of women liking you for obvious reasons and so it saddens me a lot that this fraudulent activity is now present in the freelance employment market.

I've used Fiverr and PPH for a number of years and they're 100% genuine and I suppose what caught my eye with Bark is that they're emphasis is on local businesses needing help... as far as I can see all the leads I've received are anything but local!

But to be paying just to communicate with a potential business... that should be enough to reject Bark out of hand irrespective of anything else. Take my advice and go to a reputable freelance site like those I've mentioned.