Bark

An absolutely horrific experience with a 'cleaner' who charged £300.

The reviews on bark.com are 100% fake. There is no Sara/Sarah's army (they can't decide on the branding). She doesn't exist despite the 9 FAKE 5* reviews on there giving HER a glowing reference. (You will note that I am the only 'verified' review for a reason!) Additionally the company keep deleting my review (how does it makes sense to allow this on bark, it's an invitation to be scammed if they can keep creating fake positives and not allowing negative?!)

Instead two Romanian people arrived, MR MOLDOVAN ALEXANDRU RAZVAN (as per his bank details) and a woman with funky teeth who I now know to be his wife. I was expecting a team given the name but accepted two people might be fine. They asked for payment immediately stating it was barks terms. I couldn't work out why the name was different so he tried to show me on my phone and sent it. A fact I wasn't aware of.

He then left within 40 minutes to 'collect his child from nursery' and only notified me via text after he left even though I was in the house. When he returned 2 hours later (not the 15-20 mins he stated in the text) he was alone.

He did an absolutely shocking job and at the end, after only 2.5 hours, he left again WITHOUT telling me. I checked the work and it is horrific, he did almost nothing. This is not a deep clean as per the quote. I pleaded with him within 10 minutes of him leaving to come back and finish and he refused saying he was busy. I asked him to refund some money, he also refused. I have items missing from my bedroom which I now expect that is the reason why he wants to disappear!

If I can find a way to post photos with this review including of their faces so you're not scammed too, I will!

IF YOU ARE CONTACTED BY THIS COMPANY, RUN A MILE. If you do answer a call from them, you'll soon see that there is absolutely no Sarah! Their current telephone number is ******* *******.

I have reported him to the police, trading standards and to bark and will not stop until I have my money back!

I was initially drawn to Bark by a review (which it turned out had been written by... Bark themselves). Once they 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.

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 & they 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.

Worldwide but especially our New Zealand consumers, vendors and businesses BE AWARE! Don't take my word for it... read all the other complaints and do your own research first. I tried advertising two businesses.
- Firstly, they are a UK based company claiming "ex GST": Isn't it illegal to charge GST if you're an overseas company?
- Misleading currency charging for their service: Should they disclose what currency they are also charging us?
- On the bottom right of the site it has a NZ flag icon. Quite misleading using our NZ flag icon without correctly loading the information relevant to that country – ie NZD $300 not just $300 ex GST.
- Excessive fees: If it is, say $2.50 a credit and I am being charged 26 credits to purchase a lead x $2.50 = $65. That is also not in NZD! Highly excessive to purchase a Lead. That's approx 26 hits on google ads for me if the CPC is set at $2.50
- Consumer Protection: They are not taking any steps or care in vetting Vendors/Business Owners/Tradies signing up their services. The professionals on here could be scammers, cowboys and dodgy people claiming they know what they are doing, take someone's money and that's it. Where is the Consumer Protection? Have seen heartbreaking overseas feedbacks from consumers being ripped off from a so called Professional.
- My Visa Credit Card statement: Where are the Offshore Service Margins when charging a credit card from overseas? It clearly shows on the transactions, they are setup in UK so legally should disclose the exchange rate and offshore margin that comes with that transaction. What currency was this charged at?
- Misleading and False Reviews: Under my Celebrant profile they claim I have 4 reviews. I got one job and made $50? Where did the 4 reviews come from? That is false advertising and misleading the consumer.
- Option to Auto topup or manual topup: You cannot manually topup when you want. I just keep getting charged each time my credit runs out, so no control for the business owner.
- Cancellation: There is no option or button to cancel. You have to contact them directly.
- Misleading/false advertising: Under my Graphic/Web Design profile, it says that I am an Elite Pro – that is false. And that's just the surface!

Contact your own relevant governing bodies for consumer law, commerce law, online consumer protection, credit card transaction regulations (like your bank).