Lead Quality Rules

1. Purpose of these rules

These Lead Quality Rules explain how QuoteLink defines, checks, scores, moderates, sells, disputes, and improves customer leads.

QuoteLink is a lead marketplace. Customers submit service requests for free. Professionals may buy access to suitable customer leads using credits or direct pay-per-lead payments.

These rules are designed to improve customer request quality, protect professionals from clearly defective leads, protect customers from spam or misuse, reduce fake and duplicate requests, and keep the marketplace fair and commercially sustainable.

2. What a lead is

A lead is a customer service request submitted through QuoteLink.

3. What makes a high-quality lead

A high-quality lead usually has a clear service need, correct category, usable location, realistic timing, valid contact details, genuine customer intent, enough detail, and no obvious fraud signals.

QuoteLink’s goal is not to make every lead perfect. The goal is to make leads clear enough, genuine enough, and fair enough for a professional to make an informed buying decision.

4. What makes a poor-quality lead

A poor-quality lead may still be genuine, but may be less useful to professionals.

• Very vague description, such as “Need help”.
• Weak customer intent or early-stage price research.
• Missing budget or limited detail.
• Slow customer replies.
• Small job size relative to the lead price.

Poor-quality does not always mean defective. Some genuine customers are early-stage, price-sensitive, unsure, or slow to respond. That is normal sales risk.

5. What makes a defective lead

A defective lead is a lead that should not normally have been sold, or should be refunded if already sold.

• Invalid phone number and invalid email address.
• Customer confirms they never submitted the request.
• Same customer and same job already sold to the same professional.
• Spam, prank, bot-generated, abusive, or fraudulent request.
• Materially wrong category.
• Materially wrong location.
• Customer confirms the job was completed before the lead was sold.
• Customer requests illegal or unsafe services.

Defective leads may qualify for credit refund under the QuoteLink Refund & Dispute Policy.

6. What does not automatically make a lead defective

The following issues do not automatically make a lead defective:

• The customer does not answer or replies slowly.
• The customer chooses another professional.
• The customer rejects the professional’s price.
• The customer changes their mind.
• The customer is comparing options or asking for multiple quotes.
• The professional responds too late.
• The professional bought outside their service area or skill set.
• The lead did not convert into a sale.

7. Customer rules for submitting good leads

Customers must submit honest, accurate, and complete requests.

Customers must not submit fake requests, duplicate requests, false contact details, another person’s details without permission, illegal service requests, competitor research requests, abusive content, or requests they have no genuine intention to consider.

8. Professional rules for evaluating leads

Professionals must review the available lead information before buying.

QuoteLink may reject disputes where the available information clearly showed that the lead was not suitable for that professional.

9. Lead quality indicators

QuoteLink may show professionals quality indicators before purchase.

• Lead quality score.
• Detail level.
• Contact confidence.
• Location confidence.
• Intent level.
• Urgency.
• Competition level.
• Verification status.

10. Lead quality scoring

QuoteLink may score leads using automated checks, manual checks, AI-assisted tools, and marketplace performance data.

11. Automatic lead checks

QuoteLink may automatically check leads for required fields, valid email format, South African mobile number format, duplicate phone numbers, duplicate email addresses, duplicate descriptions, duplicate IP or device patterns, location-category mismatch, spam wording, competitor abuse signals, suspicious budget patterns, bot-like behaviour, and high-risk category triggers.

Automatic checks are support tools. They may be wrong and may be manually reviewed where appropriate.

12. Manual moderation triggers

A lead may be manually reviewed before sale where it involves high-value categories, urgent requests, vague descriptions, suspicious contact details, duplicate signals, sensitive services, unusual locations, large budget claims, or previous complaint-linked activity.

High-value categories may include solar, construction, software, security systems, large events, commercial projects, and other categories where poor lead quality creates higher refund or trust risk.

13. Lead pricing and quality

Lead prices may vary based on category, location, job urgency, expected job value, lead detail level, contact confidence, customer intent, market demand, number of professionals allowed to buy the lead, refund risk, and promotional rules.

Weak leads should either be improved, discounted, manually reviewed, or blocked from sale.

14. Lead sale limits

QuoteLink may limit how many professionals can buy or receive the same lead.

QuoteLink should avoid overselling leads. Too many professional contacts can frustrate customers and reduce professional trust.

15. Customer contact protection

To protect customers, QuoteLink may limit the number of professionals who can buy a lead, hide contact details until purchase, track which professionals accessed contact details, restrict professionals with complaint histories, block professionals who misuse customer information, remove leads where customers withdraw consent, and allow customers to request no further contact.

16. Lead correction and removal

QuoteLink may correct minor issues such as obvious category errors, location typos, spelling mistakes, missing details supplied by the customer, or duplicate submissions that can be merged.

QuoteLink may remove or block a lead where it is fake, spam, abusive, duplicated, unlawful, unsafe, materially misleading, missing a usable contact method, or creates legal, safety, privacy, fraud, or reputational risk.

Removed leads should not be sold. If a removed lead was already sold, QuoteLink may issue credit refunds where appropriate under the Refund & Dispute Policy.

17. High-risk categories

Some categories require stricter checks because poor lead quality can create legal, safety, payment, or trust risks.

• Electrical work.
• Gas work.
• Solar installations.
• Security systems.
• Construction.
• Legal or financial services.
• Health-adjacent or child-related services.

QuoteLink may require extra form fields, verification, moderation, or professional eligibility checks for high-risk categories.

18. Duplicate lead rules

A lead may be treated as duplicate where it has substantially the same customer, contact details, service category, location, job description, timing, or submission pattern.

A duplicate may still be valid if the customer submits a clearly different request, such as a different property, different service, different date, or separate job.

If the same professional buys the same customer’s same job more than once because of a platform duplicate, the duplicate purchase should usually be refunded as credits.

19. Lead fraud and abuse rules

QuoteLink may investigate fraud or abuse where there are signs of fake customer identities, fake contact details, competitor quote harvesting, bot submissions, repeated fake submissions, collusion, dishonest refund attempts, harassment, payment fraud, or chargeback abuse.

QuoteLink may restrict users, remove leads, reverse credits, block accounts, or escalate serious matters where appropriate.

20. Customer withdrawal or cancellation

A customer may cancel a request or say they no longer need the service.

Customer cancellation does not automatically mean the lead was defective.

A refund may be considered where evidence shows the lead was already unavailable, fake, completed, or materially misleading before it was sold.

21. Professional response speed

Lead value drops quickly when professionals respond slowly.

A professional who responds late may not qualify for a dispute where the customer has already moved on.

22. Customer and professional feedback

QuoteLink may ask customers to confirm whether they submitted the request, still need help, were contacted respectfully, received too many contacts, hired someone, want the request closed, or want no further contact.

QuoteLink may ask professionals to rate purchased leads as good, wrong category, wrong location, invalid contact, duplicate, fake or spam, no response, too small, already completed, or other.

Professional feedback does not automatically create a refund. Refunds are handled under the Refund & Dispute Policy.

23. AI-assisted lead quality checks

QuoteLink may use AI-assisted tools to support lead quality scoring, category classification, location interpretation, duplicate detection, spam detection, fraud risk detection, missing-detail detection, professional matching, dispute triage, and marketplace quality monitoring.

AI-assisted outputs are support tools and may be wrong. Important decisions may be manually reviewed where appropriate.

Users may contact QuoteLink if they believe a lead quality decision, match, dispute outcome, moderation action, or account restriction is incorrect.

24. Personal information and lead quality checks

Lead quality checks may involve processing customer and professional personal information.

QuoteLink may process this information to verify contactability, detect duplicates, prevent fraud, improve matching, improve lead quality, handle disputes, protect users, enforce platform rules, and comply with legal obligations.

QuoteLink handles personal information according to its Privacy Policy.

Professionals must not use customer personal information to perform unrelated investigations, marketing, scraping, profiling, or resale.

25. Lead quality and refunds

Lead quality issues are handled according to the Refund & Dispute Policy.

Usually refundable issues include invalid contact details, customer denial, duplicate lead purchase, fake or spam lead, material wrong category, material wrong location, or job completion before sale.

Usually non-refundable issues include customer non-response, price rejection, customer cancellation, choosing another professional, comparison shopping, slow professional response, or buying outside the professional’s service area.

26. Lead quality transparency

QuoteLink should be transparent with professionals before purchase.

27. Internal operating standards

QuoteLink should track contact validity rate, duplicate rate, dispute rate, approved dispute rate, rejected dispute rate, time-to-first-contact, customer complaint rate, lead-to-hire rate, pro repeat purchase rate, refund credit cost, category defect rate, and location defect rate.

For QuoteLink, the most important early metric is paid professional repeat purchase rate. If professionals do not come back, lead quality is not good enough.

28. Enforcement

QuoteLink may take action where customers or professionals breach these Lead Quality Rules.

• Correct a lead.
• Remove a lead.
• Return credits for defective leads.
• Restrict fake or abusive customers.
• Restrict professionals who misuse leads or customer information.
• Require manual review before future leads are sold.
• Adjust pricing for lower-confidence leads.
• Suspend or permanently remove serious or repeated abusers.

29. Changes to these rules

QuoteLink may update these Lead Quality Rules from time to time.

The latest version will be published on this page with the updated date.

Where changes are material, QuoteLink may notify users by email, dashboard notice, or website notice.

Continued use of QuoteLink after changes means the user accepts the updated rules.