Lead services sell you something genuinely valuable: a person who wants a roof, today, without you having to build anything. For a company that needs work this month, that is a real offer and it is not a scam.
The problem is not the quality of the leads. It is the shape of the arrangement, and it is worth understanding before it becomes your only source of work.
How the arrangement works
You pay for access to enquiries in your area. Depending on the platform you pay per lead, per month, or both, and prices vary enormously by trade and area. Roofing is at the expensive end, because a roofing job is worth a lot.
The two structural facts that matter:
- The same enquiry is usually sold to several contractors. You are one of three or four ringing the same homeowner within the hour.
- You pay for the lead, not the job. Wrong numbers, tyre kickers, people who already booked somebody, and jobs outside your area are all billable in most models, and disputing them is its own admin job.
The result is a price per job that is much higher than the price per lead suggests, and a conversation that starts with you being compared on price against three people who arrived the same way.
The part that compounds badly
Rented leads stop the day you stop paying. Nothing accumulates. Three years of buying leads leaves you with three years of jobs and exactly the same position you started in.
Compare that with the same three years spent asking every customer for a review and putting job photos on your Google profile. That does accumulate, it does not stop when you pause, and it gets cheaper per job every year rather than more expensive.