TV Consumer Reporter Creates Free Website Listing Certified Businesses for Consumers–READ FREE

By Paul Greeley,
817-578-6324, Paul@NewsBlues.com

Consumers in the Atlanta area have someone they can trust when it comes to finding businesses to do repair work around their house.

They TrustDALE.

TrustDALE is a free on-line research and referral site for consumers to find businesses that have been certified by Dale Cardwell, a former TV consumer investigator with 40 years of experience.

Cardwell spent 11 years as an investigative reporter at WSB, Cox Media’s ABC affiliate in Atlanta. Prior to that, he was an investigative reporter at WSMV, Gray’s NBC affiliate in Nashville.

Cardwell founded TrustDALE in 2009 after a friend asked him, what does everybody need that they would trust you to deliver?

“For the consumer, I give them a very specific reason to choose a company,” Cardwell says. “And then I create peace of mind around the transaction.”

 For a business to be certified and listed by TrustDALE, they must pass Cardwell’s seven-point investigative standard that Caldwell developed from his experience of analyzing consumer complaints.

If a business passes the test, they get listed on TrustDALE, and as an added benefit, when consumers choose companies certified by the TrustDALE team, they are further protected by the TrustDALE $10,000 Make It Right Guarantee.

Kind of like an insurance policy that guarantees customer satisfaction, and peace of mind.

TrustDALE has nearly 200 local vendors in the Atlanta area listed in a variety of commercial categories like roofing, plumbing, painting, siding, decks, electrical, etc.

Cardwell says “90 percent of our vendor/partners are home service providers, but I also recommend auto repair, attorneys, and some lifestyle companies. My philosophy is to only certify three to five companies in a category.”

Consumers can go to TrustDALE and choose from any of the five vendors in a category.

“You get to watch a little video about them,” he says. “You learn what their hours are, how they approach their pricing and customer service and you choose the one that fits for you.”

Wayne Lyndell, a homeowner in the Atlanta area, says finding a business to work on your house is almost a dog-eat-dog world.

“You can’t trust 50% of these people,” Lyndell says “They just disappear tomorrow. And so I think having someone like TrustDALE gives somebody on your side.”

Lyndell says for the last 10 years, he’s only used vendors he’s found listed by TrustDALE.

“I have used 20 to 30 services through him, and I found that very satisfying,” he says.

Lyndell says he’s contracted with handymen, kitchen remodelers, locksmiths, plumbers and even pest removers.

“You can get quotes from two or three of them, and that always makes me feel better,” Lyndell says. “I talk to them about TrustDALE. And they say, oh, yeah, we’re listed. We feel good about that,”

Cardwell says businesses feel good about being listed on TrustDALE because they spend less money on advertising, and they close a higher percentage of the leads generated.

Spending less on advertising ultimately helps the consumer, Cardwell says.

And consumers are satisfied.

“Our complaint to completion ratio is below 1%,” Cardwell says. “Of all the tens of thousands of leads that we create every year, less than 1% of people write me and say, this didn’t go right. When I started, I thought that was the real risk. When you are careful in screening the companies in advance, you wipe out 99% of the things that could go wrong.”

But for those 1% of times when things do go wrong, Cardwell has the $10,000 Make It Right Guarantee, which he’s had to pay out eight times.

“And that’s a very low, low, low percentage,” he says.

Barbara Geller hired a TrustDALE contractor to put in a new driveway for her house in Roswell, just north of Atlanta.

But the contractor didn’t get it right.

“I was scared,” Geller says. “We just spent $6,900 on this driveway.”

She called TrustDALE and they sent someone out to her house who agreed the job wasn’t done right. TrustDALE removed the original contractor for their approved vendor list.

TrustDALE sent other TrustDALE listed contractors to Geller’s house, some within two days.

“Every time somebody came out, somebody with TrustDALE came out to talk with them,” Geller says. “They dealt with them directly. They called me every step of the way to make sure everything was going well. They really make it so much easier. I didn’t pay one cent.”

Geller says since then, “we have done nothing but use TrustDALE for window cleaning, for pressure washing, for landscaping. There’s nothing that we’ve done to the house that hasn’t gone through TrustDALE.”

In 2013, Cardwell expanded his consumer protection network to Tampa, Dallas-Ft. Worth, Nashville and Birmingham, Alabama.

In Salt Lake City, Bill Gephardt, an investigative reporter with 12 years’ experience at the CBS affiliate, KUTV, started his own model of TrustDALE in 2011.

“He calls his Gephardt Approved,” Cardwell says. “I showed him exactly how I do what I do, and he’s very successful.”

Cardwell says he plans to expand the TrustDALE model to 50 cities in the next five years.

To get more information about how to license TrustDALE in your market email info@talentdynamics.com.