Checkatrade, Mybuilder, Myhammer ratedpeople etc etc.. Your views?

[alexg]

Are they amu good as I am thinking if joining and one of their reps is coming next week!!

Keep the cash and have xmas or spend it and have a bonanza Xmas next year?!?!!?

 

[Mark_Burgess]

checkatrade.com, is NOT some agency to get you work and make you pay for leads.

It is a scheme for tradesmen to join, customers leave you feedback on the website, customers can find and contact you from checkatrade.com directly.

If you do bad or good workmanship, the feed back will be left.

From what I know, when you do a job, at the end you leave a checkatrade feed back card and ask them to logon or write and send it back I think, to leave feedback of your workmanship etc.

It is probably the only decent site that works in favour of us.

If it didn't cost so much, I would join it.

 

[micknew]

When the recession is over scams like these will fade away but they will milk the vunerable until then and that could be awhile yet.

 

[Mark_Burgess]

When the recession is over scams like these will fade away but they will milk the vunerable until then and that could be awhile yet.

Have a look at their website and you will see that they are NOT a lead generator, I know a few guys that use them and get quite a bit of work from customers checking out their feedback.

 

[RS2OOO]

As a customer I've used My Hammer a couple of times, and been quite impressed to be honest.

Put a job for a plumber recently as stopcock was seized and so was mains stopcock in the street. Someone quoted £30, thought blimey that's cheap. He came round, froze the pipe, cut out the old stop cock, replaced it with a shut off valve (the type you turn with a screwdriver), also gave my toddler son his LED hard hat light and sorted a leaky tap flexihose..... all for £40 including parts. Fella came from the other side of London too.

I'd been looking on there for a sparky before finding this forum.

I think it's free for both tradesmen and customers alike.

 

[Strima]

replaced it with a shut off valve (the type you turn with a screwdriver)

So he used a service valve instead of a stop cock? No wonder it was so cheap.

Wait until you burst a pipe and spend ten minutes looking for a flat blade screwdriver rather than just chuck the Domestos out of the way and turn a few times. A stop cock is designed to be operated by hand for that very reason, if a plumber had done that to my house he would get stomped on.

 

[mickys86]

So he used a service valve instead of a stop cock? No wonder it was so cheap.

Wait until you burst a pipe and spend ten minutes looking for a flat blade screwdriver rather than just chuck the Domestos out of the way and turn a few times. A stop cock is designed to be operated by hand for that very reason, if a plumber had done that to my house he would get stomped on.

Hence my post a few hrs ago on another topic about people rating when they don't know anything about the subject is like me being a judge at the Olympics!

 

[Strima]

Hence my post a few hrs ago on another topic about people rating when they don't know anything about the subject is like me being a judge at the Olympics!

I will be judging the womens beach volleyball again this year from the comfort of my own sofa with the aid of a couple of beers.

 

[ipf]

As a customer I've used My Hammer a couple of times, and been quite impressed to be honest.

Put a job for a plumber recently as stopcock was seized and so was mains stopcock in the street. Someone quoted £30, thought blimey that's cheap. He came round, froze the pipe, cut out the old stop cock, replaced it with a shut off valve (the type you turn with a screwdriver), also gave my toddler son his LED hard hat light and sorted a leaky tap flexihose..... all for £40 including parts. Fella came from the other side of London too.

I'd been looking on there for a sparky before finding this forum.

I think it's free for both tradesmen and customers alike.

I hope you've not used your hammer on your namesake, RS. I'd have battered anybody if they'd gone anywhere near my 'Mexico' with one.lol!

 

[RS2OOO]

To be fair, I let him fit the service valve as otherwise it meant smashing through the brick wall to get access to fit a stop cock. He only had around 5" of visible pipework to play with and brickwork an inch behind the pipe and 2 inches to the side of the pipe. There's a 2nd stopcock upstairs, so this particular one is just for the mains fed kitchen cold tap and washing machine.

As for screwdriver, I've got one constantly left wedged behind the pipe just in case :smug2:

Could have insisted on the proper stop cock and I'm sure he'd have done it, but I didn't fancy the repair bill for smashing through the wall.

Anyway, my point was, I'd use that service again, including to find a sparky, but I'd imagine most punters describe the job too simplistically and expect too much. Must be plenty of disputes over quotes that go up once the job turns out not to be what it originally seemed!


Regarding the RS.... Yep, hammer is coming out tomorrow after cracking the inner wing whilst giving it a bit too much stick. Don't think Ford intended on them coping with 200bhp!

 

[Adam W]

Anyway, my point was, I'd use that service again, including to find a sparky, but I'd imagine most punters describe the job too simplistically and expect too much. Must be plenty of disputes over quotes that go up once the job turns out not to be what it originally seemed!

It doesn't seem fair to 'rate' a tradesman based on that. As I mentioned on the other thread a lot of customers will probably rate tradesmen on things like turning up on time, personal hygiene, vacuuming up after themselves and sticking to the original estimate which was formed before seeing the job; while these may seem important, things like technical knowledge, ability and safety should come first.
I can't imagine a potential customer wanting to read a review which goes along the lines of:
"He was a real jobsworth - he wouldn't do anything until all the asbestos was removed at great cost. All I wanted was a simple extra plug but he wanted to pull up my new carpets, lift up the floorboards and start running wire all round the house. He gouged a hole in the wall for the wire to go in and I had to get the decorators in again afterwards when they had just decorated the week before (not to mention the dust he left on my skirting boards which I had to clean up), which meant the job tripled from what he originally promised when I first phoned him."

 

[Ricen'easy]

Check a Trade. Com no doubt attract all their business from their heavily advertised website working at a local level. Their promotion costs are huge and reflected in their charges. Use the money you would have spent to get a good website of your own and it will pay for itself within time.

 

[pjcomp]

Ditto Adam's comment (above). It's a nice idea that customers leave feedback and new customers use it as recommendation, but the system's also open to abuse from competitors, trolls and customers you're in dispute with. Tripadvisor has had a lot of bad PR of late from just those sort of things getting on the site, and businesses have been ruined by wholly erroneous and malicious "feedback".

PJ

 

[RS2OOO]

Use the money you would have spent to get a good website of your own and it will pay for itself within time.

I totally agree with this. In fact, if you use something like self hosted WordPress as the basis for your website it's completely free and you can have something half decent set-up within a couple of hours, all for a tenner a year hosting costs.

If all you sparky's on this forum collectively put a site together (therefore national coverage), I think you'd do rather well.

I've got a basic Word Press blog, that alone brings in £100 a Month in ad revenue, and it was never my intention to monetise it. If I used it to sell my "knowledge" (regulation prevents me), I'd easy 10x that.

 

[imago]

I thought I'd drag this thread back into existance as I joined checkatrade so I thought some feedback would be in order.

I joined them when a customer mentioned about their tie in with 'Cowboy Builders' on TV. They don't generate or sell leads, they simply collate customer feedback and advertise their existance. They check all of your qualifications, memberships and insurances. You need references from trade suppliers and customers to be allowed membership. Yes the fees are high, but no higher than some other advertising methods. There are no guarantees or promises for work or leads.

So, the main question I suppose is have I had work from it? Then, is it worth the fee? Yes to both in my experience. The customers that use it are already in the frame of mind for a quality service, not the lowest price. They can read on the screen who you are, what you do, etc and they know it's been checked. When you go to quote it's up to you to sell yourself/your company, so it's not a magic solution. The work I have had from it has been steady, and they have been 'quality' clients.

I have also found that people out of the area needing work in the area use it. A shop fitting company down South are refitting a shop in Birmingham, they looked on checkatrade and rang me. I looked at the job, sent them the quote, and they want me to do the work. Another was a landlord in London who needed work on a flat he owns in Reditch. Same story. So I've had domestic work, letting agent work, and commercial work.

Once the job's done you give them a feedback card which they fill in and send back, or they can fill in an online form. Checkatrade check the feedback comments and contact you if there are any queries or something looks amiss. So dodgy practice is much more difficult to carry on there.

All in all it's been good for me in the short while I've used it, and I would recommend it if aksed.

 

[Guitarist]

Once the job's done you give them a feedback card which they fill in and send back, or they can fill in an online form. Checkatrade check the feedback comments and contact you if there are any queries or something looks amiss. So dodgy practice is much more difficult to carry on there.
.

Does this mean that you could potentially choose not to have low ratings by telling them that it must be sour grapes, or a competitor?