World Champions, Free Furniture, and Reviews

In 2004 the Red Sox finally put "the curse of the Bambino" to rest. In 2007, Jordan's Furniture decided to put the team to a test: buy furniture from Jordan's Furniture between March 7 and April 16, 2007, and get the furniture FREE (after rebate) if, and only if, the Red Sox could win the World Series.

The Red Sox beat the Indians, and then slammed the Rockies, and now Jordan's Furniture has an estimated 30,000 customers ready to get reimbursed for their undying loyalty and belief in the Red Sox. Are you one of those customers? Read the rebate details here.

Some HomeStars.com reviewers may benefit from the Jordan's Furniture promotion, and we'd love to hear from you. We know that HomeStars.com reviewers shop at Jordan's; read their reviews here for the Natick store, and their Reading store.

Reviews like these help shoppers like you decide where to buy and how to compare pricing and services; promotions like the World Series giveaway help you save money. Tell us your story!

If you are one of the 30,000 customers who decided to take a chance on the Red Sox and will receive free furniture rebates from Jordan's, write a review about your experience at the Jordan's Furniture listing in the HomeStars.com review listings!

And if you had a near-miss and you shopped on March 4, or on April 19, then tell us about that as well!

Consider writing an additional review of a Greater Boston home improvement service or home-related item, to share your experience and expertise on HomeStars.com and help build a stronger Boston site!

Congratulations to the Red Sox and to furniture winners from the HomeStars.com team. And the Patriots aren't doing too badly either, with 52 points their latest game! Any companies willing to offer deals for a New England Patriots Superbowl win? :)

Labels: Boston, furniture, Red Sox, reviews

Posted by Melanie Zoltan
0 comments | Permanent Link

 

When There Is a Difference of Opinion

Welcome to the new HomeStars! That's right, we launched our new-look site at HomeStars.com. One of the most exciting things about it is the soft launch of our Boston site. We'll be adding a bunch of Boston reviews in the next month, and we hope Bostonians like it! In another 35 days, we'll launch a second release with a bunch of minor bugs worked out.

I was just checking out some reviews on a company I had a positive experience with - Downtown Flooring in Toronto. A recent review was lukewarm at best, citing a number of problems and issues. Of course, the job sounded a bit more complex than the one we had done, as it included some staining. In other cases, I had to wonder whether my assessment of a fair price was the same as that reviewer's. And I realize that often many of us have no good standard to compare or assess whether a job was up to "par," whatever par is in a given specialty. For example, the company did not offer "quarter-round to match the floors". Arguably, though, they are not designers. I really don't know if it's very common that a flooring company would match the quarter-round to your floors. We painted our quarter-round.

To deal with this type of uncertainty, it looks like three things will help:

• Checklists of what to look for to assess the quality of any job, created by experts (and you). Stay tuned for this feature!

• Company responses have been an important part of HomeStars since inception. That way, we get to hear everyone's side of the story. Sometimes, it leads to further followup from the vendor.
  

• To deepen the discussion, we will of course be launching a forum section so homeowners can debate, confer, and learn more about specific issues. (Coming soon, but not before our second site release in early October.) Our Boston area community will be led by our new team member, Melanie Zoltan. Welcome aboard Melanie!
  

Labels: flooring, homestars, reviews

Posted by Andrew Goodman
0 comments | Permanent Link

 

HomeStars Blog is Rolling

Hi all, I'm Andrew Goodman, one of the early team members of HomeStars, a website founded by Nancy Peterson to help homeowners sift through the good, the bad, and the ugly of home improvement contractors and retailers. There are already thousands of reviews on the site, and more are being added every day. We've had great media mentions (thanks!) and have met hundreds of homeowners at recent local home shows.

But we're only getting warmed up.

As this small team has grown together, we've learned a lot about the exploding interest in consumer reviews and "peering and sharing" online as people empower themselves to make smarter purchases - and sometimes get to know one another in the process. (What d'yall think? Should HomeStars have a Meetup type event in Toronto for frequent users of the site, in fall 2007?)

For the time being, we'll just be jotting down little notes about the progress of the company here on the blog. Longer term the site will be rolling out North America wide and will encompass more collaborative user features, user Q&A, and so forth. So we hope our pithy little comments here will be drowned out by a loud chatter of "homeowner empowerment".

A running joke here at HomeStars seems to be my title, as I've been helping Nancy with strategy in a range of areas. It was Web Strategist, the Search Engine Guy, Chief Traffic Officer for awhile as I decided we'd get nowhere if nobody came to the site, and now, I would like to call myself Chief Content Producer or VP, Content. Of course, I don't produce the content, users do, in collaboration with local city-based content "producers" who will be meeting, greeting, sharing, and encouraging homeowners. (Can I say we're going to be like Yelp! for grownups?)

Labels: blog, contractors, home improvement, home renovation, homestars, ratings, reviews

Posted by Nancy Peterson
1 comments | Permanent Link