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.
