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?

 

[weps]

Never pay middlemen to get contact details. A scam every time, paid for by you.

 

[FatAlan]

I used a site called Bark.com where you pay to respond to leads. Use was based on some leads that my wife picked up for her dog day care business. I don’t recommend it for trades as customers appear to be graded on potential value of jobs (very flawed as only the tradesman can give a quote) plus you lose money if another tradesman responds faster. Additionally a responded to several alleged leads but no customers ever responded to confirm whether or not they had found a spark. I have some suspicions that leads were fictitious just to use up points I’d paid for. Very dodgy business model so steer clear. More fool me!

 

[telectrix]

i tried rated people for a while. was winning leads for small jobs, i.e. a £40 call-out 60 miles away. only upside was if i claimed a credit for a £4 lead, RP gave me a lead credit that i could use to buy a £20 (rewire) lead. they soon got wise to this though, and stopped it. they're all scams, ripping us off to line their own pockets.

 

[Marti]

Our local authority operate a trade scheme through their trading standards office. It came highly recommended but, when I looked into it, the outrageous fees were only a few hundred short of Check a Trade's "think of a number" pricing strategy. To add insult to injury; they then added a "Covid recovery" package which looked better value until you read the small print at the end. They were just delaying the "admin fee" until next year. That's the admin fee for them to do the job they were supposed to be doing in the first place via your council tax and prosecuting poor quality / dangerous trading!

I don't profess to know the answer but racking up fees to the various schemes looks like a way to work harder for the same year end margin, and it margin, not turn-over that matters.

 

[ENLOUBAR]

Ratedpeople is a waste they sell their leads way too expensive for the value of the jobs. Most of the leads are sold on other sites for less eg. MyJobQuote. I had an account with Ratedpeople and it was pointless people go on Ratedpeople to get bottom prices, like one person said earlier they were jobs for rewires for £1000 loads of them. The other thing with Ratedpeople they do not roll over unused credits unless you phone them and request it, this should be automatic.

CheckaTrade need to sort out how they handle reviews. People who don't pay their bill fully shouldn't be allowed to leave feedbacks. All reviews should be verified in person before they go live.

MyJobQuote needs to have a better way for trades to communicate with clients, most times the job quote details are vague and need a couple of questions to clarify things. There reject codes are not detailed enough. Their lead prices are ok but I do think a lot of the higher price leads are fake (ones with higher job value). I do like the fact that if you dispute a lead they are normally happy to return your credits after checking to ensure your claim is genuine. They also roll over your credits automatically so if you don't use your credits you don't loose them like you would with Ratedpeople.

I did do a little with British Gas platform Local Heroes and I am sorry 20% cut was too much. It wasn't 20% of the labour but 20% of the total job so that means double VAT on your materials (20% VAT and 20% commission). The good side is it opened the door for a lot of good clients that I currently have they respect and value your service.

There goes the four that I have experienced using. By far MyJobQuote is my number one choice. The only one I would not touch again or recommend is RatedPeople.

Anyone has any experience with Which? Trusted Trader?

 

[Marti]

Check-A-Trade appear to be consistent..consistently annoying every trade and service paying client since since Homeserve bought that golden goose and cooked it. Spoken to so many trades from sparks to locksmiths, plumbers and painters who have found better, cheaper alternatives. Tried the budget alternatives to C-a-T when I started and spent more in fees than I earned. Race to the bottom with little chance of a repeat call. The scheme run by the local trading standards(Buy With Confidence) seems to be winning converts. Anyone else used that?