The Business Model Behind the Resistance
A lead sold to five contractors generates roughly five times the revenue of a lead sold to one, from a single homeowner inquiry. Refunding one of those five sales erodes that multiplied revenue without the marketplace losing the other four, which is exactly why "credit toward a future lead" is the industry-standard policy rather than a cash refund. It is not an oversight in the customer-service process, it follows directly from how the resale model makes money.
What's on the Public Record
HomeAdvisor's stated policy is an annual membership fee plus $45 to $110 per lead sent, shared among 3 to 8 pros, with credits only, no cash refunds, and early-termination fees that can reach 30% of the remaining contract. Cancellation fees exceeding $1,500 have been reported by contractors. A BBB complaint page and a RoofCalc.org writeup both document contractors seeking their money back and describe the same credit-only pattern from the customer side.
CraftJack has its own BBB complaint file, and its pattern of disputes lines up with the same shared-lead resale structure. Its BBB profile also lists the brand within the Angi family, indicating the entity now operates inside Angi's consolidated shared-lead marketplace rather than as a fully independent vendor. Angi itself layers a separate annual membership fee, typically $300 to $400, on top of its per-lead pricing, which is one more line item a dispute has to work through before any money moves.
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Book a Roofing CallWhat to Ask Before You Sign Anything
Get three things in writing before paying a shared-lead vendor anything: what specifically qualifies a lead for a credit (wrong number, no answer, out of service area, and so on), whether that credit expires, and whether cancelling the contract early triggers a fee and how large it is. If a vendor will not put those answers in writing before you sign, treat that as the answer.
The Alternative: Billing You Can Actually Audit
The refund-dispute pattern above exists because the customer only finds out what "qualifies" for a credit after the fact, on the vendor's terms. A billing model that only charges for appointments that meet your written criteria, that never bills a no-show, and that documents every billed appointment with receipts on a weekly cycle removes the dispute entirely, because there is nothing to argue about after the invoice arrives. That is the structural difference between paying for a lead and paying for a delivered, verified appointment.
Sources
The external data in this article draws on the sources below. Figures described in the text as estimates or industry triangulations are directional and are not attributed to a single dataset.
- BBB, HomeAdvisor complaint profile
- RoofCalc.org, HomeAdvisor contractors want their money back
- Hook Agency, HomeAdvisor reviews
- BBB, CraftJack complaint profile
- LeadTruffle, Angi leads pricing 2026