BarkReviews 1,644

Bark was recommended to me by a friend who had used the system with some success. My experience was completely different.

The leads aren't actually potential quality customers looking for my services they are all people just thinking about it and I'm paying for it. I spent quite a bit of money with bark And never got a single contract. As a start up business I could've put that money to better use. Bark did call me and tried to sell me another package which guaranteed me leads but After spending £250 and receiving nothing I won't be using them again.

I'm a private tutor and was solicited by Bark. They started by sending me many leads that seem to be good fits for the type of tutoring I did. I finally gave in and bought their token package. They also promise that if you do not receive one client as a result, they will refund your purchase. Interestingly, after I purchased the tokens, the leads pretty much dried up. I contacted them and they replied that if I really wanted to secure clients, I now needed to subscribe to their ELITE PROGRAM at an additional cost of $30 a month PLUS the token cost. I politefully declined and requested a refund. I got no response at all. My advice is to stay away!

I got the company Nationwide Paving and Building from the Bark website, They put down a patio for me, I found them to be very reliable, professional, very hard working, lovely guys, very clean job, would highly recommend them to anyone

I'm buying jobs from Bark for about 2 years, also I recommended to few friends that they created a account. When started it was quite ok, however in the last year I can say that 19 out of 20 leeds from Bark doesn't exist. No customer answers to phone calls, emails, SMS etc. So they selling FAKE LEEDS! This is one problem. The other and the most important is that they taking money from your bank account, they setting as auto top up, purchasing Leeds without your knowledge and you just realising that money missing from your bank account.
THIS IS FRAUD!

It is very sad to say that Bark service for counselling is not great at all. Leads are send but unfortunately, we can't call them leads as there is not a need behind it. 99% of people I contacted told me that they were looking for information about counselling. Bark transforms this information enquiry as leads. I bought a certains amount of credits thinking to be able to increase my clientele. I persevered but unfortunately it was unsuccessful. It was a waste of money. I contacted Bark team at several occasions about the quality of their leads. The answer: ' when the send us a contact details, their job is done".
Bark should look at what the definition on leads. I will say, for the counselling part, leads are unqualified. It is a waste of time and money.
Going through Directories are less expensive and give qualify leads which can be transform as client.
Will finish the credits I have and will stop througing my money inside a well without end.
Good luck to all counsellor who think of using this plateform.

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.