SAN FRANCISCO and REDMOND, Wash., April 18, 2001 — myHomeKey, the leading online home management service, and the MSN® HomeAdvisor™
service, the Web’s most comprehensive home and real estate guide, today announced that they will integrate a private-label, home service scheduling portal powered by myHomeKey’s proprietary technology ( http://www.myhomekey.com/ ) on the HomeAdvisor site ( http://www.homeadvisor.com/ ). With HomeAdvisor and the large MSN audience base, myHomeKey will have access to more than 230 million consumers each month with its extensive offering of home management services.
Through the home service scheduling portal, consumers will find access to more than 40,000 rated, referred and insured service technicians throughout the country, allowing them to schedule and instantly confirm home service appointments in real-time. myHomeKey includes local service technicians as well as those from companies such as Sears, GE, The Home Service Store and Carrier. Unlike other online home services, myHomeKey’s service transactions are backed by a 100 percent satisfaction guarantee and are monitored by myHomeKey’s customer service center.
“Working with market leaders like MSN HomeAdvisor is invaluable to helping us reach the rapidly expanding home e-services market,”
said Eric Zausner, president and chief executive officer of myHomeKey.
“myHomeKey’s alliance with HomeAdvisor highlights our success in this space and offers HomeAdvisor users an easy and efficient way to schedule all their home services.”
Integrated links to myHomeKey will be placed within the
“Find a Professional,” “Home Improvement”
and
“Services”
sections of HomeAdvisor. According to a September 2000 Forrester Report, more than $26.4 billion in transactions for home services such as cleaning and contracting will be executed online by 2005. myHomeKey is leading this new space by using the Internet to modernize home management.
“We selected myHomeKey because of its commitment to providing consumers with the very best home management services,”
said Ian Morris, product unit manager for MSN HomeAdvisor.
“This new relationship broadens the ability of HomeAdvisor to provide consumers with tools and resources related to everything about their home and strengthens our position as the Web’s leading home and real estate guide.”
About myHomeKey
Founded in 1999, San Francisco-based myHomeKey is America’s first true online home management service. It provides consumers with access to guaranteed home repair and maintenance services, sale and delivery of brand-name appliances, home energy analysis and management, community connections, and home information management. Consumers have access to more than 40,000 rated, referred and insured service technicians throughout the country from partners including Sears, GE, The Home Service Store, Carrier, HouseMaster, ServiceLane and SecurityVillage.com. More than 1,000 home-related products, from brand names such as Black & Decker, Carrier, Sunbeam, Culligan, Amana, Sharp and DeLonghi, are also available to members.
myHomeKey has partnered with selected energy services companies including KeySpan Corp. in the Northeast, TXU Energy Services in Texas, Entergy Corp. in Louisiana, Mississippi and Arkansas, and Sempra Energy Connections in Southern California to offer co-branded myHomeKey sites. Additional partnerships with major consumer portals allow myHomeKey to offer private-label service scheduling on these sites as well as access to myHomeKey’s comprehensive service network and proprietary technology. This business model features such partnerships to allow myHomeKey to build its brand and distribution using the strength and stability of its partners’ brand equity. The myHomeKey site can be accessed by visitingwww.myhomekey.com. For corporate information, visit www.myhomekey.com/corp.
About MSN HomeAdvisor
MSN HomeAdvisor is the Internet’s most complete guide for finding everything about the home. With fully integrated content and services ranging from improving and maintaining to buying and financing a home, HomeAdvisor is one of the most trusted names in the online real estate category. Named Best Online Home-Buying Site on the Web by Gomez in the last three consecutive Internet Home-Buying Scorecards, HomeAdvisor was also named Best Overall Home-Buying Site by Yahoo! Internet Life, is a PC Magazine Top 100 Web site and a Family PC Web Site of the Month. Part of the MSN network of Internet services, HomeAdvisor can be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.homeadvisor.com/ .
About Microsoft
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq
“MSFT”
) is the worldwide leader in software, services and Internet technologies for personal and business computing. The company offers a wide range of products and services designed to empower people through great software — any time, any place and on any device.
Microsoft, MSN and HomeAdvisor are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corp. in the United States and/or other countries.
The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.
Note to editors: If you are interested in viewing additional information on Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft® Web page at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/ on Microsoft’s corporate information pages.
