Bark Reviews

Bark is terribly designed for personal trainers in comparison to it's competition app, thumbtack. After using both for a month to snag a few clients, I invested about $500 in each app. My return from the this app app got me only 1/19 clients that I was notified wanted a quote or wanted me to message them. I would end up texting these potential clients and get no answers . Bark is totally rigged for trainers because paying for credits to be able to message potential clients is not cheap, especially when you do not even get a response. Out of the 19 clients, 12 requested for me to contact them and I got no reply from 10 of them. My responses were quick and within the hour. Most times I was one of the first two professionals to contact them. My recommendation is do not use Bark, unless if you have unlimited finances . I invested a lot and got very little return. On the contrary, the competitor app got me perfectly matched clients and most of the individuals who messaged me actually replied . The competitor app varies because you set a weekly budget that is only charged if someone messages you, rather than needing to invest to message a potential client and get no response.I think a lot of these phone numbers are faulty or bots are used as profiles. As a reference, I have been training for eight years and have a master's in exercise physiology. No, it is not that I am not marketable. Bark is just a rip off!

I received an email that a potential client found my company and needed home cleaning services via email. I answered the questions that the email said the client was seeking. I was scammed into an account/subscription with this app. I’ve responded to about 17-20 leads and no one is responding back. I see they have read the message, but they don’t respond. The estimates that I have provided based on their preferences are affordable and we have a new customer special. I try phone calling and the phones go straight to voicemail. The emails of the potential clients looks suspicious and fake. The names of the leads are cycled. I have multiple platforms for leads and the same names and services they are seeking are all coming up. I’ve spent almost $200 on credits and I haven’t received not one confirmed lead. Bark is a scam!! Stay away.

This is the worst app ever for responding to leads! Not only are you charged money for purchasing credits to respond to leads, but when you respond to those leads that people put up, no matter how fast they either are unresponsive or they are very rude and have no respect for you or your professionalism! on top of everything else, they need to have a better screening process for people who put up leads looking for services, so they are not continuously wasting peoples time for all the wrong reasons. It is truly infuriating and disheartening that this is such a hostile environment for people trying to make a decent living and all they get is rudeness and disrespect from those who post leads.

this app was less than amazing. A lot of the leads that I received were not verified. I spent almost $300 and none of them turned into fruition. I tried to call customer service and they argued with me that all of their leads are verified. I received a dial tone several times, so I know this cannot be true. When I asked about a credit towards my account to help me continue serving their clients, they said no. The funny thing about lead gen is that entrepreneurs are trying to serve the customers of these large companies in these large companies have no loyalty to us as entrepreneurs. We are simply trying to offer services to their client base. But they are more focused on taking every dollar that they can from us. Insane.

Read the reviews. Stay away from this app! I had over $200 in credits EXPIRE without any warning or notice. Expiring credits may be in the fine print (I never saw that any where) but even Starbucks tells you your credits are going to expire. And YOUR CREDITS SHOULD NEVER EXPIRE. You paid for them. How insulting to your clients to flush their money down the toilet. Do you think I will EVER buy credits again? There has been zero response to my questions on this subject to support. UPDATE: this app updated their Terms of Service on December 12, 2024 to include the clause of expiring credits, AND THEY DELETED MY CREDITS ON JANUARY 1, 2025. Thanks to support for reinstating my credits worth over $200. These will expire AGAIN if I do not use them.

The customer service is rude to you they don’t even try to help you. When I first signed up I payed the $135 for 40 credits, this app sends me an email 30 minutes late offering a 84 credit for the SAME PRICE. I called to have them fix this because HELLO it’s common sense and she was already coming off rude and said no? Like that’s weird as a first time customer. But I see their game plan they want you to spend more and that’s when you get the email late. They have a lot of fake leads on there as well. Customer service is the worst. They deleted my profile without my consent LEGIT NO REASON. This all happened in a matter of 30 minutes sign up to getting my profile deleted. They kept my $135 I got no leads out of it . AVOID THESE SCAMMERS AND FAKE REVIEWS ON HERE

I have been on this app off and on for a few years hoping for better. After all this time you would think that you could vet jobs better. We run a security company and we constantly get post from people looking for jobs or fake accounts. No matter what suggestions we give you. You don’t take them. At this point I’ve been trying to work with you so long that I can tell the fake leads better than your system. We spend a lot for a few credits that get ate up after a few responses that we never hear from. Your credits are TOO EXPENSIVE. I know what you’re going to say. “Thank you for your feedback. We’re sorry to hear about your experience. All our leads go through background checks and additional verification to ensure quality.” Like I said I’ve been trying to work with you for years and you continue to disappoint with expensive credits and leads you think are verified. I can tell by emails and no explanation of what a lead wants that it’s not a good lead. Suggestion! Either drop your credit price or find a better verification system. No, sorry. Do both.

I’ve been using Bark on and off for a couple of months now saving my credits for jobs that I know I could do and for messages that seemed reliable. nine times out of 10 people are not going to answer any of your messages you can invest hundreds of dollars into Bark and not get a single client. All of their competitor apps are either free or far cheaper, than what they offer for $100. You can realistically message roughly 5 people who are still not guaranteed to answer you. It is a big waste of money and time for anyone who’s trying to make it in freelancing and don’t even bother of getting any type of refund if you realize that the credits you paid for aren’t getting you any jobs. You were literally paying people to ghost you. DO NOT DOWNLOAD Bark!

Found this app a few months ago and it seemed to go to be true, leads for my business close by or even virtually. I bought a pack of credits without my worry because of their guarantee to replace if you don’t hear back from anyone the first time.

I have now gone through every credit I purchased without a single email or text back from the 20 people I have reached out to multiple times through emails, texts, and calls. I have emailed internally through this app as well as externally typing email addresses in and sending directly from my gmail. I’ve been curious if this app emails go to spam so they might not be seen. I find it hard to believe that there wasn’t a reply from at least 1 person.

Bark and site work well, but don’t be fooled. Most likely a very well put together scam.

I’m speaking for those DJs who use this app! The staff is absolutely wonderful. The issue is the credit policy for Leads. Not only are Leads not Guaranteed, there’s zero Guarantee that you will be able to contact the customer after your Purchase of a Lead! The policy states this app will not give your lead credit back if you reach out to the customer and never receive a response. Even when customer service reaches out to experience the same results, you still by policy will not receive your refunded credits. Even further, several leads say verified however aren’t. Considering this app isn’t based on US soil, they get away with this terrible service. On Thumbtack, I have an amazing experience! I’d like to give them a -1 rating. Until that credit return policy is fair, I would suggest all to stop doing business with this app ASAP SCAMMERS FOR SURE

I signed up for the this app app to connect with potential clients for personal training, but it was a huge disappointment. Bark requires you to spend about $200 upfront for credits to contact leads. While they offer a one-time credit return if you don’t get hired, it doesn’t make up for the poor experience.

I contacted about 20 people, and only 2 responded—both of whom turned out to be scammers. I even have proof on my phone of the scam attempts, which I’m happy to share if needed. While Bark does allow you to text, email, and call, the quality of leads is extremely poor, making it feel like you’re throwing money away for nothing.

For personal trainers looking to grow their business, I strongly recommend avoiding Bark. It’s not worth the investment, and I hope this review helps save others in my field from wasting their money.

For service providers, this app is a total scam. You’ll spend $1000s of dollars buying credits to be ghosted by the fake leads 99% of the time, and eventually win one worth $75. It doesn’t take a genius to see that the math only adds up for this app and not the service providers.

Take photography as an example. It’s not sustainably profitable to buy 60 credits for $132+tax, and then have to use 18-24 credits to respond to a lead with a budget of $75, assuming you even got a response and land the client. Spending $40 to make $75 isn’t going to keep anyone in business.

For customers, if you want quality, reliable service providers, you should look elsewhere or find a provider here and contact them directly so they can actually make enough to stay in business. You’ll be disappointed using this app more often than not because it depends on a system of awarding the lowest cost provider, many of whom are pricing below their own ability to successfully run their business. They’re either bad business owners, or hobbyists.

I think I read another review with this exact title and I agree! It’s not set up as good as thumbtack. I wish I read the reviews before I used Bark . I only put a little money in, THANK GOD, because none of the leads were worth while. Only one lead even ever responded and they didn’t realize that they had indicated they wanted in home training because they wanted to go to a gym. I am an in-home trainer by trade so I don’t have a physical location. Worthless. I have had much better luck with thumbtack - it’s more expensive but I’d rather pay more for a good lead that’ll pay for itself within 2 sessions when I actually book the lead.

I got like 8 leads from this app but they also gave those 8 leads to who knows how many other trainers. The leads were bombarded with messages from more than 6 different trainers at a time. You have to stay on top of the leads but even then, even if I responded to a lead within an hour of getting it, out of like 10 leads only the one I previously mentioned even responded to begin with. Long story short: crappy leads.

They use your hopes of landing gigs against you, instead of charging you for gigs you get they charge you to apply for the gig even if you don’t get chosen which rarely happens I think they are posting fake ads and stealing money.

You reaching out assuring me the leads are legitimate doesn’t help the fact that the photographers are one of many photographers that will apply for a gig which will only be rewarded to one person and everyone else will lose money because they paid to apply for the gig it would be fair to only charge the one that won the gig but that would be too much like right you guys wouldn’t be able to get rich off that still a scam

As a web $ branding design agency owner, I went into this very optimistic and have gotten a few genuine leads, but after spending over $1K on leads, I’d estimate 8 of 10 leads are scam accounts/project listings. My company has been on this app for 5 months now and still haven’t booked a single project even though we have 100% customer satisfaction with the portfolio to back it up and still only get responses from scam job listings.

The customer service team is amazing, and I’m hopeful that this app will build a better system for verifying real accounts looking for creative companies, but for now I don’t recommend putting your investments into Bark.

I’m a DJ and spend hundreds of dollars a month on people who are either “just curious/looking”, are minors (who cannot be legally responsible or sign a contract), or people who are taking some kind of class using Bark as part of their “class project”. Also, the amount of credits required for each job is all over the place and very inconsistent. 70% of jobs I respond to don’t even view my profile. I wish there was something done to make Bark and service a little more reliable for people who offer services like mine. And yes, I’ve paid for the premium and other services and it’s still the same crapshoot.

First, overall this is worthwhile and I have secured a good amount of business via this app. Like any lead aggregator the actual leads are not always responsive compared to direct website leads but that is to be expected. My two comments are:
1. Lead return/credit timeline policies need to be examined per industry. I am in the speaking industry and routinely I buy a lead, they finally respond after 2 weeks, email a bit, then after a month many have decided not to hire anyone after all. Unlike many home services (not all) speaking leads can be up to a year out, and the 2 weeks cap is unhelpful except in times of bad phone numbers.
2. The newest version has slowed Bark way down and refresh rate lags pretty bad. When purchasing leads that are available to 4 other businesses, literally seconds can count. Hopefully you can return Bark to the previous processing speeds.
Overall thank you and keep it up!

Been using the platform for almost a year now. While I’ve landed a few gigs. The amount of time and cost for leads seems to unbalanced. There is zero guarantee that a customer will even respond to you. Even when the customer has requested for you to contact them. On top of that, I’ve had ongoing issues recently with the website on my laptop. After reporting this issue to this app I was simply told to use Bark on my cellphone. I then began having issues on the phone app. I wish this overseas based company had better customer abroad support.

My average customer value is $450, average lead on Bark for my service (it’s different depending on the average value of customer in the fields) is $12. Out of 10 I buy, I can talk to 3-5 usually and sell at least 1-3 of them. That makes my cost per acquisition through Bark $40-$120 or in other terms my marketing cost is 8%-25% per customer acquisition. Spent $10,000 ish and turned out $100k after the momentum through word of mouth and some other avenues. I also traveled 1,000 miles a week to services those customers. So if there’s a will there’s a way. It’s not free money, not even close

I was desperate to find a professional company who would clean my house and do a great job. I stumbled across Bark and realized it was super easy to find the right company. Top Clean, gave me a flexible schedule, drop by my home to do a quick estimate, and let me tell ya, my house was sparkling! I will with a doubt recommend TOP CLEAN (Jamila) if your looking for a super clean home.