
Amazon has
officially introduced Amazon Home Services,
as TechCrunch reported it would last week, the marketplace for
professional services including things like TV installation, house
cleaning, waiting, plumbing, electrical work and more. The home services
category originally soft-launched in limited beta last year, before
going wide today with 700 different services on tap, and availability in
41 U.S. states, instead of just in four main metro hubs.
The
Home Services
category is designed to make ordering things like home entertainment
centre specialists as easy as ordering up an HDMI cable, with Amazon
shouldering the brunt of more difficult tasks like doing background
checks and making sure pros are properly insured for their industry.
Amazon also guarantees service satisfaction, offering a re-do or a
refund in cases where customers aren’t satisfied, and provides reviews
from verified customers, meaning you’ll know the people who are rating
services actually paid for and used them.
Amazon is working directly with local service providers, but also
with existing service marketplace providers like TaskRabbit, as we
reported it would. The arrangement allows Amazon to cover a much wider
breadth of services than it might otherwise, and could help startups
reach a more mainstream audience than they might’ve been able to before.