Angi Services to pay $2.95M for misleading ads in New York

Angi Services will have to pay thousands of workers a combined sum of nearly $3 million after its subsidiary — Handy Technologies — ran misleading advertisements about the hourly rates workers could earn for household services on Long Island and elsewhere in the state, prosecutors said.

New York Attorney General Letitia James and the Federal Trade Commission secured the consent order Tuesday over misleading advertisements that inflated pay rates for work utilizing Handy — an online platform where users can hire workers to do home cleaning, lawn care and other residential services, prosecutors said. Workers who qualify for a portion of the $2.95 million will be told how much they’ll be given, prosecutors said.

At times, Handy advertised an hourly pay rate for a service that was nearly 50% more than what it actually paid to workers for the task, prosecutors said.

“New York workers deserve to be paid what they are promised, when they are promised,” James said in a statement. “Apps like Handy’s offer New Yorkers’ flexible job opportunities, but they cannot be allowed to lure workers with lies and false promises.”

Across New York, Handy ran scores of commercials touting exaggerated potential earnings through the platform. However, prosecutors said, the workers — called Pros — were sometimes lured in with advertisements that were often “false, unsubstantiated, or misleading.”

For instance, the app advertised in about 100 areas that specific lawn care workers in 2021 could earn a maximum of $53 an hour, prosecutors said. Yet, 10% or fewer of those workers made the publicized rate in virtually all the areas. The median wages fell short of $27 an hour.

Handy also promised in job postings that workers could be paid daily, or “as soon as the job is done,” prosecutors said. But Pros were often paid within a week of a finished job. And to be compensated earlier, workers had to pay a $1.99 charge, not listed in the platform’s advertisements.

Prosecutors also said that Handy didn’t tell workers of a complicated process to avoid paying a fine that was usually $50 when a customer canceled or didn’t open up the job site.

Handy required workers who sought to avoid the fine to go through a process that included providing the app access to their phone’s GPS and waiting 30 minutes at the location while they tried contacting the customer, prosecutors said. Many workers found out about the steps to avoid the fine as they were challenging one, which was already too late.

“Handy Technologies relied on inflated and false earnings claims to lure workers onto its platform. It then deducted inadequately disclosed fines and fees from their wages,” Samuel Levine, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said in the statement. “The order announced today puts a stop to these unlawful practices and ensures an honest marketplace for American workers.”

By Tiffany Cusaac-Smith

tiffany.cusaac-smith@newsday.com@T_Cusaac

Education: Howard University 

Tiffany Cusaac-Smith came to Newsday in 2023 after being a race and history reporter at USA TODAY, where she wrote enterprise and spot articles examining how the past shapes the present. Previously, she worked as the race and justice reporter at the USA TODAY Network of New York, covering issues such as criminal justice reform, housing, environmental justice, health care and politics. At The Journal News/lohud.com in Westchester County, she covered Yonkers, the state's third-largest city. She also worked at The Associated Press in Atlanta.

Honors and Awards: Criminal justice reporting fellowship with the National Press Foundation;  New York News Publishers Association award for distinguished investigative reporting;  Contributed reporting for Best of Gannett honor; Member of Table Stakes, a program funded by the Knight-Lenfest Local News Transformation Fund and managed by the American Press Institute to transform local news.