CheckaTrade | MyBuilder | RatedPeople | TrustaTrader etc - Who's with what and why?

[Dan]

CheckaTrade | MyBuilder | RatedPeople | TrustaTrader etc - Who's with what and why?

Thought I'd start a poll off to see if we can see who's with what type of rate-my-builder website, if at all. And which ones seem to work, and if they do, why etc.

I've also put some other options there to see where people are spending their time and money on marketing right now, should they not be spending it with the big few common names.

Current options are:-

• MyBuilder.com - MyBuilder.com - Find trusted builders and tradesmen - https://www.mybuilder.com/
• Federation of Master Builders - https://www.fmb.org.uk/
• CheckaTrade.com - Checkatrade: Find a tradesperson you can trust - https://www.checkatrade.com/
• RatedPeople.com - https://www.ratedpeople.com/
• TrustaTrader.com - Find Trusted Traders and Local Tradesmen - https://www.trustatrader.com/
• TrustedTraders.Which.co.uk - Find traders near you with Which? Trusted Traders | Which? - https://trustedtraders.which.co.uk/
• MyJobQuote.co.uk - MyJobQuote.co.uk - Get quotes from Local Builders and Tradesmen. - https://www.myjobquote.co.uk/
• Yell.com - Yell.com - the UK's leading online business directory - https://www.yell.com/
• Google Adwords (Google Paid Listings) - Google Ads - Get More Customers With Easy Online Advertising - https://ads.google.com/
• Own Website with Natural Google Listings (No Ads Bought)
• Social Media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc)
• Reply with any other options and I'll add them to the list.

My personal opinion on this, after reading so many threads on all our forums, is that they're a middle-man where one isn't needed. People who need jobs doing on their homes could search Google before they came about, and they'd find tradespeoples own websites. And it all worked fine. The full amount of money that the tradesperson charged went to their business. And it wouldn't cost much to get a website online and running well.

Now though, there's an annual charge, or a percentage of the job, going to a company that's spending millions on advertising and has directors driving around in expensive cars, salesmen on commission selling to existing customers and new ones, trying to get more listing features or whatever.

BBC covered a couple of them here: Fear over trusted trade website profiles - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-42783279

You can get yourself a website using Wordpress, and update it yourself. Optimise it quite easy. Rank in Google naturally (no paying for ads), and get business coming in from it.

Or you can work on getting your listing with one of these companies up. Some of them encourage you to email your existing customers. Which obviously means there's no assurances the feedback actually comes from genuine customers then, you just get 20 free gmail accounts and send yourself the link to leave 10 star feedback so that when people search the website, your listing looks awesome and your feedback is spot on. Not seen a single listing ever with bad feedback on any of them.

That all said, I've not got a listing with a single one of them.

So I thought I'd run a poll, and have this handy thread for others to read and contribute to ongoing.

Feel free to discuss anything at all, pricing, experience, feedback, customers, type of work coming from them, whatever.

Please be constructive should you have criticism.

If a company you're with isn't in the poll, let me know, and I'll add it.

Please feel free to vote on as many of the options as you use yourself for your marketing.

CheckaTrade | MyBuilder | RatedPeople | TrustaTrader etc - Who's with what and why?

 

[PEG]

None they are all crap

Its sad to say but its very hard to find any tradesman who does a 101% job these days
A site with genuine good tradesguys would be great

This sit from what i have gleaned has a superb number of really knowledgeable and helpful guys
Perhaps you should set one up yourself!
I personally have never employed a tradesman ever as my dad taught me plumbing buliding car mechanics etc etc etc but i know my neighbours would pay to have access to good tradesmen as virtually 100% of them have had bad experiences

They recently had a hamilton accie in who claimed he was plumbing and electirican and fitted a simple led pir outside light to existing wiring and charged £260 for less than an hours work - the light then failed after less than 2 weeks and yip he has not come back so they had to spend more money on another guy who came and fitted another light - no idea how long it will last either as it looks cheap chinese pish as well!

PS There are two great ones on youtube and they actually have the decency to reply and help me out when i need some advice!

Dereton - great plumber old school and a nice guy
Ultimate Handyman - Top builder and a nice guy too!!!

It's a regular part of every day duties,sadly...

Went to a small holding,to fault find,on a job where the dude who did the original install,has evaporated. Straight away,i see some major errors,in the submain earthing,and subsequent circuits.

Informed the client,and their message regarding my findings,to the installer,gets an immediate call back,to say it is "all a matter of opinion..." and also,he will come directly,to see what was wrong.

No point flapping...got my drawings,pictures,etc,just in case i'm taking another trip to Sheffield,chatting to our safety friends

 

[Dan]

@Dan
Can we have a ,,,,, I'm fantastic and dont need any of the above as an option ??

Anything for you my dear.

 

[captaincaveman]

I now rely on word of mouth and at present my customers are something like an 70% repeat customers. The rest are coming through my (rather crappy) website.

I have used 'local surveyors direct' which I paid per quote and they weren't bad. No other middle men. If a customer mentions checkatrade etc, I remind them that they are NOT the customer for these companies - the tradesman is, as he pays their bills (and there's no way they want to lose their money no matter how bad the tradesman is!)

My favourite source is google as it is all in your own hands. You choose how much you pay, where and when you want adverts shown and can pause it at any time. Only down side is, for good results, you need to spend sometime honing your adverts otherwise you will get people phoning you to fix their Volvo electrics because you haven't put autoelectrician as a non keyword (and at £ per call - ouch)

 

[mat_coley]

I've never paid for any form of advertising, majority of my work comes through word of mouth. I do have a Facebook page though which is free to set up and proven a very handy way of getting my name out there and getting recommendations.

 

[Gary Gemmell]

Here check these pics of our so called electricians work
Spot the disasters

1) Used black cable cos it was all he had left in his van - no trunking or white cable to do the job properly
And how did i know - cos he just chucked his empty reel into my plastics bin

2) Drilled through the double glazing and yip its now lost its vacuum seal

3) Checkout those leccie tails in the cupboard - not even recessed behind the backer board and not soldered or properly connected just tied together i dont even think the tape is electrical - and the kid in our building puts his bike in tha tcupboard - those tails are live when the time clock switches on

3) Didnt even hoover up his drill mess

 

[reggie17]

CheckaTrade | MyBuilder | RatedPeople | TrustaTrader etc - Who's with what and why?

Thought I'd start a poll off to see if we can see who's with what type of rate-my-builder website, if at all. And which ones seem to work, and if they do, why etc.

I've also put some other options there to see where people are spending their time and money on marketing right now, should they not be spending it with the big few common names.

Current options are:-

• MyBuilder.com - MyBuilder.com - Find trusted builders and tradesmen - https://www.mybuilder.com/
• Federation of Master Builders - https://www.fmb.org.uk/
• CheckaTrade.com - Checkatrade: Find a tradesperson you can trust - https://www.checkatrade.com/
• RatedPeople.com - https://www.ratedpeople.com/
• TrustaTrader.com - Find Trusted Traders and Local Tradesmen - https://www.trustatrader.com/
• TrustedTraders.Which.co.uk - Find traders near you with Which? Trusted Traders | Which? - https://trustedtraders.which.co.uk/
• MyJobQuote.co.uk - MyJobQuote.co.uk - Get quotes from Local Builders and Tradesmen. - https://www.myjobquote.co.uk/
• Yell.com - Yell.com - the UK's leading online business directory - https://www.yell.com/
• Google Adwords (Google Paid Listings) - Google Ads - Get More Customers With Easy Online Advertising - https://ads.google.com/
• Own Website with Natural Google Listings (No Ads Bought)
• Social Media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc)
• Reply with any other options and I'll add them to the list.

My personal opinion on this, after reading so many threads on all our forums, is that they're a middle-man where one isn't needed. People who need jobs doing on their homes could search Google before they came about, and they'd find tradespeoples own websites. And it all worked fine. The full amount of money that the tradesperson charged went to their business. And it wouldn't cost much to get a website online and running well.

Now though, there's an annual charge, or a percentage of the job, going to a company that's spending millions on advertising and has directors driving around in expensive cars, salesmen on commission selling to existing customers and new ones, trying to get more listing features or whatever.

BBC covered a couple of them here: Fear over trusted trade website profiles - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-42783279

You can get yourself a website using Wordpress, and update it yourself. Optimise it quite easy. Rank in Google naturally (no paying for ads), and get business coming in from it.

Or you can work on getting your listing with one of these companies up. Some of them encourage you to email your existing customers. Which obviously means there's no assurances the feedback actually comes from genuine customers then, you just get 20 free gmail accounts and send yourself the link to leave 10 star feedback so that when people search the website, your listing looks awesome and your feedback is spot on. Not seen a single listing ever with bad feedback on any of them.

That all said, I've not got a listing with a single one of them.

So I thought I'd run a poll, and have this handy thread for others to read and contribute to ongoing.

Feel free to discuss anything at all, pricing, experience, feedback, customers, type of work coming from them, whatever.

Please be constructive should you have criticism.

If a company you're with isn't in the poll, let me know, and I'll add it.

Please feel free to vote on as many of the options as you use yourself for your marketing.

CheckaTrade | MyBuilder | RatedPeople | TrustaTrader etc - Who's with what and why?

Hi Dan,
Thanks for getting in touch.
Over the past few years, I've been registered on two such sites, MyBuilder (which I'm still on but hardly ever use) and Rated People (which I no longer belong to.)
I'm sure you know as well as I do how these sites work although there are minor differences on membership, bidding for jobs that are posted, etc.
I'm not a big fan because generally when jobs are posted. it a bit of a 'bun-fight' with other electricians applying for them and unless you're really quick off the mark, you could be way down the pecking order.
I will only really look at getting work via these sites if my job list dries up and things are a bit slow. Fortunately for me, over the past couple of years I have has enough work coming through via recommendations and referrals, so haven't needed to look on those sites for work.
I hope this feedback helps?

Regards,
Reggie17

 

[Marti]

without a direct interface with the client, it could be hard to suss out quite what the job was. It's all very well a job being posted saying 'new socket required', but I need more information to give any idea of a cost, and going through a third-party rather than being able to speak with a client directly was a pain.

Sweary-free gospel from DS and spot on. How on earth can the most sugar'n'caffine soaked code monkey writing a portal page expect a realistic quote from job descriptions like "fit a socket" or "lights don't work"! Just asking a painter to paint the fron of my house while sober needed a paragraph - size, location, height, current finish etc!

 

[EricMark]

My daughter found a handy man using one of those sites, and it was clear he did not know his own ability and tackled jobs he simply could not do, OK we all make errors, but when she tried to complain it became clear the site was nothing more than an advert, and they did not rate any of the tradesmen on their site.

With the exception of electrical scheme members and gas safe, people who join these rate a tradesman schemes are people who are short of work, people who are short of work are often short of work because they give a poor service, so in the main I would only use a rate a tradesmen site if I was really stuck, when I see some one is a member of one of these schemes I avoid them, and look elsewhere.

I would say if you do join, at least try and hid the fact your a member.

I know there are some people who were working for a large firm, and have decided to become a sole trader, and have not built up a word of mouth link to find them work, and these sites can get them started finding them jobs.

However I am writing as a customer, not a tradesman, if I want a tradesman in my new home, first port of call is the Pub, once I found the first tradesman I wanted, he recommended the next and so on.

So in the Pub told you want Tom, he is good and does not charge the earth, however once you are running and safe, it may take some time to get him back to finish the job, and they were spot on. You will not get that from rated web site, and if they do their job and show the bad reviews, well taking a long time to finish the job is not really a bad review, it means he has prioritised some one else because he has seen their job is urgent. Which is what he did for me.

 

[phil 01]

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

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Some threads that might be handy for anybody else looking into joining one or more of the rated people type websites. Please feel free to link to other threads you found handy yourself if you found some.

I was asked recently to check a property that “my builder” had sent a spark to quote to change all the sockets and switches in the house, he managed to talk the client into all kinds of extra work, most of it quite shocking, I.E fitted a new kitchen, it was ex- display quite shocking, fitted a bathroom and install a light switch in there, the list goes on, though he didn’t do the switches and sockets? My friend who’s a builder and myself managed to turn the place around, when we had finished I was standing in her new kitchen with her crying in my arms she was delighted. My builder covered a lot of the costs, these companies are not vetting people, they are letting criminals into people’s home by not doing the proper checks

 

[Dan]

It's nice to see electricians using their own websites well.

I'm gutted so many are still doing social media though. I tend to find the work going around on those sites all want mates rates and they're always a bloody friend of a friend of a friend.

But we're getting there I think. Less Check-a-Builder type stuff and more own websites is the way I want to see it go. Sod these directories off.
[automerge]1576609759[/automerge]

Checkatrade members furious over shake-up

Tradesmen could previously list their personal phone numbers and email addresses on their Checkatrade pages for customers to contact them.

www.thisismoney.co.uk

 

[Ziggie]

Hi Dan
Have not used any but may need to soon.
My plumbers whom I have used seem to be quick at doing big jobs but don’t bother turning up for small ones!

i understand the logic but really want a preferred plumber and electrician

 

[Dan]

Hi Dan
Have not used any but may need to soon.
My plumbers whom I have used seem to be quick at doing big jobs but don’t bother turning up for small ones!

i understand the logic but really want a preferred plumber and electrician

You can post your jobs on our forums you know. Gimme a shout when you're ready and I'll link you to them.

 

[Grey Master]

Did Yell for a while but soon kicked them into touch, got one job from them!
Had no end of hassle from Check-a-trade trying to sign me up, ended up threatening legal action if they didn't leave me alone.
Joined several local Farcebook groups to pick up some recommendations but stopped trying. All the people jumping on there seem to be struggling for work -at least one of them is at home whenever I go past their house.
All my work is word of mouth and I'm busy (present crisis aside) occasional work from my website but not much.
The best advertising is recommendation! And it's free!

 

[Teddy Lop]

Word of mouth for the most part here. Have picked up a fair few clients responding to recommendations from local area/neighbourhood websites, which seems to be a the millennial equivalent of chatting to your neighbours and asking for recommends.

Dabbled with rated people around ten years ago during a lean spell, if it came back to that I'll go flip burgers rather than sell my skills that way. I mean paying for an opportunity to quote based on what the client thinks his job value might be. The only value would be long term client retention and his further word of mouth recommends - but lets be honest, if they go to RP and get a decent job they'll probably remember the RP site rather than the individuals details!

 

[michaelw6]

i must admit all my work over the years is word of mouth.
I once tried rated people but they just ripped me off, and im trying social media but im not to good with that!