BarkReviews 1,644

The leads do not exist. The clients do not exist. The contact details do no exist. All you professionals out there do not waste your hard earned money. There is also another similar site called Bidvine using the same scam!

On the consumer side, my elderly Mother used Bark to find someone to landscape her garden. They took a £250 deposit and disappeared. The best thing to do is use people who have worked for someone you know rather than these job sites.

Their offer code didn't work. I sent email immediately and called them in the morning. They were not only wasting my time; they indirectly referred me as stupid. Then asking me to spend another £155... saying they are helping. Secondly, 70% of their leads are bogus. When asked they say the phone numbers are checked but action speaks louder. Thirdly, customer service reps are trained to passively bully people (as in say the same things again and again people will cut the call). Hiding behind fraudulent policies... will not do business with them. WASTE OF MONEY. Spend on FB ads...

Waste of money and time. They trick you by having one of the leads book a job. In my case it was photography for a wedding and a short 5 minute video. Both parties committed to the work, then one kept making excuses and changes the date until they finally said they were going to do the video in another state. The wedding gig fell through when the bride said the sisters forbid the groom from marrying her. And this was after 3 months and one month before the required deposit. I stop paying for leads after I got the first two to make sure they would follow through. Good thing I didn't take the bait and pay a lot more fake leads.

I had initially purchased the 200 credits for $264.00. After they were used up with zero contacts responding, I emailed and requested the guaranteed refund of the 200 credits had I not been contacted by any leads. I received those credits. Since then, the balance of the credits have been used up contacting leads. Only 1 lead responded to ask questions never to be heard from again. So, had I actually purchased all of those credits, I would be out $528.00 without one dollar in return. I also noticed that many leads received just sit there. Most leads are listed at high credits, so your going to be charged $30-$40 per lead. Very pricey for no one ever contacting you, even with one or two questions. Most of the time you get an email a week or two later mentioning the lead is still looking for a pro. That in itself speaks volumes. Wherever these so-called leads come from, there is no detail of what they are looking for. Commercial, not sure, dont know, etc. etc. Save your money and avoid these people at all cost.

I am a person who believes that if something doesn't make sense and seems to good to be true then it must be! Well this site fits that bill. I feel like their leads are not real people. I mean I would call and email leads and never get a call back. Supposedly people view your profile and make a request to contact you but when I call them I get no response and no return call. How serious are their leads really?! I got one client out of this and honestly I don't recall even responding to her via credits. This site has to be a joke! Now I will say this. They have since improved their customer service. A couple of times I complained and they gave me some credits and they always respond. But that is not going to help my business. I hope they read these reviews and either fold the company or change something. This is sad!

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 they 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.

I spent $150 on credits; after contacting 16 people, I got only 1 booking.
And that 1 booking I got was from someone who saw my profile on Bark and called me directly to my phone.

The last lead I contacted; I offered her a steal of a deal on purpose to test Bark.com.
$200 offer for something that was worth $600; she sounded excited on the phone but like all others Bark never returned my call.
But when I was talking with her on the phone; I noticed her voice and story sounded familiar to another customer I called a week earlier.
So I concluded it was the same person.

When I got the first email from Bark saying all the different people were looking for services, my first thought was stay away. But then they keep sending you emails about all these "potential clients" you could be getting in touch with and it gets hard to ignore. I figured if we can get 2 jobs out of it the 96$ dollar fee for 60 credits will be worth it.
We followed up with many leads, 6 emails and called 3 of those 6. We got nothing. I'm not sure where they get these people but they don't seem to anxious to inquire about our services.
I would not recommend this to anyone

My business spent $100 to get started with Bark. I thought it was a little pricey at first, but sometimes you have to spend a little money to make money, so I did it. After three weeks and several bids, I've not only not had any contacts from the bids placed, I haven't even heard from the people I've tried to reach out to. I've responded to them via Bark and also through the contact information provided by Bark. Nothing! Crickets chirping!

Word of advise to any company of any size, go to Thumbtack or GigSalad or Yelp! Don't waste your time or money on Bark!

I wish there was 0 rating. I can't even give them 1. Absolutely fake. Please don't pay anything. Paid money and never received any genuine client as all contacts are fake. They denied to Refund my money even though originally they sent me an email to confirm that until I receive at least one client they will refund my money! Such a waste of time and money behind this. Feel absolutely stupid. Please be aware and don't trust anything they say.

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 they 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.

Thankfully we did not pay for Barks services, this company is full of lies each time we got someone wanting a photoshoot it seemed weird. We found someone searching for photography recomended by bark.com, we contacted her directly as we found her on facebook and she replied yes she was searching for a photographer, when we asked her to fill out the inquiry form, she stated she didnt know how, so we asked her a couple simple questions to fullfill her needs but she never replied, we then gave her our webpage and buisness number letting her know she can call us for her needs, she never did and never replied back. They all do the same, Complete Scammers. Dont pay for bark.com services. Its heartbreaking to know that people do these kinds of things.