Share What You Paid
Real prices from real homeowners — that’s the data nobody publishes. Lead-generation sites show you “estimates” designed to get you to submit your phone number. We do the opposite: you tell us what you were actually quoted or actually paid, anonymously, and we publish the numbers every month so the next homeowner walks into their quote conversation knowing the real range.
Why Your 2 Minutes Matter
Every price in our cost guides is cross-checked against government wage data and national aggregators — but nothing beats a real invoice from a real ZIP code. Ten submissions for AC capacitor replacement in Phoenix tell the next Phoenix homeowner more than any national average ever could.
What we publish: monthly roundups like “What People Actually Paid: [Month] [Year]” — job type, city, quoted vs. final price, and whether you’d hire them again. What we never publish: your name, address, email, or anything identifying you or the contractor’s pricing terms covered by your contract.
What We Ask (2 minutes, no account needed)
| Field | Why we need it |
|---|---|
| Type of work (dropdown: HVAC, roofing, plumbing, electrical, foundation, etc.) | Sorts your data point into the right guide |
| What exactly was done (1 line) | “Capacitor replaced” vs “whole compressor” — precision is the value |
| City + state | Local averages are the whole point (we never ask for your street address) |
| Quoted price / final price paid | The two numbers that expose lowball-then-upsell patterns |
| Year of the work | Keeps the dataset fresh |
| Was it an emergency call? | Emergency premiums are real — we track them separately |
| Would you hire them again? (yes/no) | The satisfaction signal |
| Optional: what surprised you | The quotes we feature in roundups |
Our Promise on Your Data
- Anonymous by design — we don’t collect names, emails (optional for a copy of the roundup), or addresses
- Aggregated in public, raw data never sold — submissions feed monthly roundups and improve our city guides; we are not a lead-gen site and will never sell your contact info to contractors
- Outliers verified, not deleted — if your number looks unusual we may flag it as “reported high/low” rather than silently dropping it
- You can reference it forever — every monthly roundup stays published, so the dataset compounds
Where the Data Goes
- Monthly: What People Actually Paid roundups — every submission appears (anonymized) within ~30 days
- Quarterly: our city cost guides get re-calibrated against submission data
- Yearly: the NearMeTips Cost Index report, free for anyone to cite
Questions about the program? See our editorial policy or contact us.