5 ms·

I ask friends and neighbours for recommendations for this kind of thing. Given you know the industry, what made you search online in this case?

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
fijiaarone 1y ago
I don’t know what an example is.
ranit 1y ago
The person you are asking doesn’t say that they looked and found the service through ads. They say that the cleaning companies spent 35% on marketing. And therefore everyone that uses these services pays 35% more as a result. Not only customers that find the service through ads.
- harvey9 1y ago
  It really does read like they booked through a booking intermediary although the advert part is less clear. In either case, I prefer a personal recommendation if I can get one and we both gain by avoiding the intermediary fee.
  - sanex 1y ago
    Given I'm in the digital marketing industry my case was a little unique. Partly it was for UX research.
awesome_dude 1y ago
Sorry, this triggers me a little. Whenever we hire someone, a restaurant to cook our meal, a lawyer to help settle our house purchase, a plumber to fix the leaky pipe, we almost never know what we are buying into. So e ask people that have previously had someone do those jobs for them. And here's the rub, they have no idea whatsoever on the quality of the person being hired, only that they've not NOTICED any poor results. I've highlighted noticed, because, unless the person you ask is qualified to assess the work, they have no idea on is quality. And this affects us all, because we use references to guide us on people to hire for jobs, and we have no idea on the quality of the person providing the reference. Do we ask for a reference on the person giving the reference? Even if we do, do e get a reference on the person giving the reference for the person giving the reference?
- zenoprax 1y ago
  > they've not NOTICED any poor results This is a good enough bar for me to take a chance on someone. If I'm satisfied with the result... I proceed. My "car guy" has a track record of saving me from over-spending on things that don't matter. I don't have a good enough reason to try someone else. There's a infinite regression in your logic that can only be broken by either: 1. trust in the person, or somewhere along the chain of referrals or; 2. simply possessing the skill and knowledge to assess the work yourself (but lacking the time, energy, or other resources to do it yourself)
  - awesome_dude 1y ago
    > There's a infinite regression in your logic that can only be broken by either: > 2. simply possessing the skill and knowledge to assess the work yourself (but lacking the time, energy, or other resources to do it yourself) Yes, that was the point.
- bornfreddy 1y ago
  I noticed this with booking.com. When we asked people for recommendations we got way worse sleeping arrangements than when using booking.com. I believe that the first reason, as you outlined, is that we followed many persons' recommendations instead on a single person's, but there is also fear of bad online review that keeps the service providers on their toes. It's a pity though that the 3rd party is needed for this.
  - awesome_dude 1y ago
    The eBay type feedback (A++++++ would gladly trade again) or the yelp problem, where malicious feedback was being placed to attack another business. Heck, businesses will sue you if you put bad feedback on glassdoor. I've even been offered 2 months salary by a business to NOT disparage their (toxic) culture on social media.
    - whatshisface 1y ago
      If we could just get normal people to use the darkweb, the latter two issues would disappear.
Theodores 1y ago
You need a functioning community for this, with people knowing and interacting with their neighbours. Sadly, we live in an era of a somewhat atomised society. You can live in a city of ten million people to not know a soul, with workmates that are friendly but not friends, with those workmates commuting in from the opposite side of the city to yourself. For a functioning community you need to have reason to know your neighbours. Maybe you need to borrow things or lend things, go into town together to share a vehicle, or spend time together in the local pub. The list is endless, however, nowadays, when everyone is car dependent, there is no need to ask a neighbour if you can borrow something, you can just hop in your car and get your own. Or you can just get Amazon to drop it off for you. In a functioning neighbourhood, you might ask your direct next door neighbour about something such as needing a cleaner, and they might know that the other neighbours, a few doors down have one. You might merely be acquainted with that neighbour, but you would know them well enough to ask them to make the required introductions. It actually requires a little bit of work to have relationships with neighbours, you also need a functioning street with chance encounters made on a regular basis. Being a pedestrian helps. Another surprising factor is home ownership. If people are merely renting then they are not invested in the community in the same way. In the olden days there were opportunities for teenagers to do work such as newspaper rounds, household cleaning, car washing, babysitting, gardening, dog walking and other jobs. But then we stopped having 'free range kids' due to 'stranger danger'. I am from the former times when I did the whole gamut of pocket money jobs for whomever in my village and my mother would know exactly where I was and if anything ever happened to me. If I was late delivering newspapers then someone would call and my 'last known sighting' could easily be ascertained. I could also always hitchhike into town because one of my newspaper customers would stop for me and give me a lift. My neighbours looked after me, and I did my best for them. I also did not do everything, for babysitting I could 'outsource' to my sister and her friends, for gardening gigs I could 'outsource' to some other kid in the village. What I find interesting is how many of these teenage jobs have become professionalised. For example, washing cars. Nowadays that is 'detailing' and a very different deal with all kinds of potions. Saturday jobs also became professionalised, so you no longer see teenagers serving customers in shops. As for babysitting, you probably need full background checks nowadays. All of my neighbours that I did things for gave me a little bit of mentoring, and Christmas was amazing due to the amount of tips and gifts that I received. Oh, how I miss those days. Apologies for the reminiscing!

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

fijiaarone 1y ago

I don’t know what an example is.

ranit 1y ago

The person you are asking doesn’t say that they looked and found the service through ads. They say that the cleaning companies spent 35% on marketing. And therefore everyone that uses these services pays 35% more as a result. Not only customers that find the service through ads.

harvey9 1y ago
It really does read like they booked through a booking intermediary although the advert part is less clear. In either case, I prefer a personal recommendation if I can get one and we both gain by avoiding the intermediary fee.
- sanex 1y ago
  Given I'm in the digital marketing industry my case was a little unique. Partly it was for UX research.

awesome_dude 1y ago

Sorry, this triggers me a little. Whenever we hire someone, a restaurant to cook our meal, a lawyer to help settle our house purchase, a plumber to fix the leaky pipe, we almost never know what we are buying into. So e ask people that have previously had someone do those jobs for them. And here's the rub, they have no idea whatsoever on the quality of the person being hired, only that they've not NOTICED any poor results. I've highlighted noticed, because, unless the person you ask is qualified to assess the work, they have no idea on is quality. And this affects us all, because we use references to guide us on people to hire for jobs, and we have no idea on the quality of the person providing the reference. Do we ask for a reference on the person giving the reference? Even if we do, do e get a reference on the person giving the reference for the person giving the reference?

zenoprax 1y ago
> they've not NOTICED any poor results This is a good enough bar for me to take a chance on someone. If I'm satisfied with the result... I proceed. My "car guy" has a track record of saving me from over-spending on things that don't matter. I don't have a good enough reason to try someone else. There's a infinite regression in your logic that can only be broken by either: 1. trust in the person, or somewhere along the chain of referrals or; 2. simply possessing the skill and knowledge to assess the work yourself (but lacking the time, energy, or other resources to do it yourself)
- awesome_dude 1y ago
  > There's a infinite regression in your logic that can only be broken by either: > 2. simply possessing the skill and knowledge to assess the work yourself (but lacking the time, energy, or other resources to do it yourself) Yes, that was the point.
bornfreddy 1y ago
I noticed this with booking.com. When we asked people for recommendations we got way worse sleeping arrangements than when using booking.com. I believe that the first reason, as you outlined, is that we followed many persons' recommendations instead on a single person's, but there is also fear of bad online review that keeps the service providers on their toes. It's a pity though that the 3rd party is needed for this.
- awesome_dude 1y ago
  The eBay type feedback (A++++++ would gladly trade again) or the yelp problem, where malicious feedback was being placed to attack another business. Heck, businesses will sue you if you put bad feedback on glassdoor. I've even been offered 2 months salary by a business to NOT disparage their (toxic) culture on social media.
  - whatshisface 1y ago
    If we could just get normal people to use the darkweb, the latter two issues would disappear.

Theodores 1y ago

You need a functioning community for this, with people knowing and interacting with their neighbours. Sadly, we live in an era of a somewhat atomised society. You can live in a city of ten million people to not know a soul, with workmates that are friendly but not friends, with those workmates commuting in from the opposite side of the city to yourself. For a functioning community you need to have reason to know your neighbours. Maybe you need to borrow things or lend things, go into town together to share a vehicle, or spend time together in the local pub. The list is endless, however, nowadays, when everyone is car dependent, there is no need to ask a neighbour if you can borrow something, you can just hop in your car and get your own. Or you can just get Amazon to drop it off for you. In a functioning neighbourhood, you might ask your direct next door neighbour about something such as needing a cleaner, and they might know that the other neighbours, a few doors down have one. You might merely be acquainted with that neighbour, but you would know them well enough to ask them to make the required introductions. It actually requires a little bit of work to have relationships with neighbours, you also need a functioning street with chance encounters made on a regular basis. Being a pedestrian helps. Another surprising factor is home ownership. If people are merely renting then they are not invested in the community in the same way. In the olden days there were opportunities for teenagers to do work such as newspaper rounds, household cleaning, car washing, babysitting, gardening, dog walking and other jobs. But then we stopped having 'free range kids' due to 'stranger danger'. I am from the former times when I did the whole gamut of pocket money jobs for whomever in my village and my mother would know exactly where I was and if anything ever happened to me. If I was late delivering newspapers then someone would call and my 'last known sighting' could easily be ascertained. I could also always hitchhike into town because one of my newspaper customers would stop for me and give me a lift. My neighbours looked after me, and I did my best for them. I also did not do everything, for babysitting I could 'outsource' to my sister and her friends, for gardening gigs I could 'outsource' to some other kid in the village. What I find interesting is how many of these teenage jobs have become professionalised. For example, washing cars. Nowadays that is 'detailing' and a very different deal with all kinds of potions. Saturday jobs also became professionalised, so you no longer see teenagers serving customers in shops. As for babysitting, you probably need full background checks nowadays. All of my neighbours that I did things for gave me a little bit of mentoring, and Christmas was amazing due to the amount of tips and gifts that I received. Oh, how I miss those days. Apologies for the reminiscing!