Services: Classic and Custom Car Restoration

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INDIANAPOLIS (November 6, 2009) – Angie’s List is bringing its 14 years of experience in helping consumers find reliable help around the house to the $2 billion classic and custom car industry.

Starting today, Angie’s List (www.angieslist.com), the nation’s leading provider of consumer ratings on service companies, is actively seeking consumer reviews from car buffs with insight into custom and classic car specialists offering services in more than 100 categories, from babbiting to paint, plating and polishing, to wiring and welding.

“Custom and classic car owners will go to the ends of the Earth to find the one person who can bring their baby back. We’re going to make that trip easier,” said Angie’s List Founder Angie Hicks, announcing the launch of the company’s Classic & Custom Car restoration services division.

Auto restoration is the second niche service added to Angie’s List in the past two years. In March 2008, the company added health care services with 50 categories. Member demand has grown that service niche to more than 200 categories.

“There are tons of forums, classified ads everywhere you look, and lots of talk in garages around the country about individual specialists and companies that focus on restoring vintage vehicles,” Hicks said. “We’re going to do what we do best and gather that great consumer experience at a site where anyone can easily find just the person they need for the specialty work they need done.”

Angie’s List will collect and process the reports in accordance with its existing accountability structure. The auto restoration reports will be available to all members early next year, regardless of where the service is located, which is a departure from the traditional, highly localized approach Angie’s List has taken with other service areas.

Angie’s List has collected consumer reviews since 1995, starting with a handful of categories focused on home services in suburban Columbus, Ohio. It now offers reviews in more than 450 categories in more than 200 cities across the country.

“We proved with our health care service that our model can be used to deliver great consumer value to a number of different service areas,” Hicks said. “Auto restoration is a huge market, but there’s not currently a way for consumers to tap into a reliable word-of-mouth rating systems that isn’t limited by service or geography.”

Consumers grade service companies’ performance on an A-F scale, making it easy for other members to do their homework before they hire. To ensure those consumer reports are reliable, Angie’s List has a multi-layered accountability structure that:

• Prohibits anonymous reporting;
• Limits members to reporting only once on each, specific hiring experience;
• Prohibits service providers from rating themselves;
• Alerts service providers (free of charge) to reports so they know what's being said about them;
• Encourages companies to respond (free of charge) to reports so members get both sides of the story;
• Dedicates specialized staff and proprietary technology to screen all reports for adherence to company policies or suspicious trends;
• Helps members and service providers resolve differences through the Angie’s List complaint resolution service.  

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