Does MY HAMMER encourage cowboys???

[lloyd1980]

Hi all

Just a quick qestion to guage peoples opinions on sites like MY HAMMER, etc
For those of you who arent aware you join MY HAMMER, they email you details of jobs with what the customer has deemed a fair price
for example

Need a rewire on my 3 bed house, 16 sockets, shower, new fuse board and new 2 way switching all in brushed chrome

suggested price £1500 in VAT ( I know but this is the stupid prices public post on)

what happens then is tradesmen bid on the work and lowest price generally gets it

have seen rewires been won for £1100 inc VAT

other work like outside lights, new 10mm shower feed, new board £300 inc VAT

you scroll down to the people winning this work and one fella didnt even have any electrical qualifications he had a City and Guilds in Wood Work
No joke lads this is what is going on right now

its faceless quoting so in my opinion every cowboy up and down the land were rubbing their hands when this site launched, There is no way these clowns can be doing the job properly at the prices they bid at - no way

The most ironic thing Ive seen in ages was when I watched Cowboy Builders last night on Channel 5 and MY HAMMER were proud sponsors of it

I did smile

what do you all think

Lloyd

 

[lloyd1980]

forgot to add - when ever a customer posts must supply a certificate and be registered there are never any bids for the work

funny that eh ?

 

[rossiboy]

I thought exactly same mate. I look at the prices people are putting down for quotes and for the life of me i cant work it out! I see maybe same bloke as you Llyod applied to replace a CCU he had a City and Guilds level 1 in woodwork and joinery!!


I think it encourages cowboys big time because anyone can apply for the work!

 

[lloyd1980]

its absolutley scandalous mate

I might post a fake job on there and see who comes knocking then rig the house with cameras while I pretend to know nothing about elektrick and see what he does

 

[Voltimax]

A letter has been sent to channel 5 about the fact there are non registered tradesmen getting work from this Myhammer.

 

[acat]

In my experience wanting to advertise as much as possible all these websites either do it for nothing or require payment the one thing they all have in common is not one of them has asked for any proof of my qualifications or work standards.


Chris

 

[lloyd1980]

I registered with local traders and too be fair they only take on 6 of each trades person in each area, I wangled a deal where i got 2 areas for price of 1 cost me 105 quid for 6 months, first job i made 300 quid and quoting for second on sat - joined 2 months ago and they actually made me send in copies of my certs so they seem ok

This MY HAMMER business is originaly german - check out the german DAS ME HAMMER!!

the web site should be cut off, im sure its the same with gas safe work, any old clown just doing work on boilers etc

its unbeleivable, as I said any customer ( apart from taking the pi ss with the price inc VAT they post) is expecting competant tradesmen to get in touch, so you cant blame them, but mr no electrical quals but I have a city and guilds woodwork level 1- quoting for a mains change takes the biscuit !!!

I think we should all form a group and send complaints to channel 5 and trading standards about this

outside lights new radial for boiler and new spot lights £ 110 inc VAT

this is rediculous

I urge you all to check out this my hammer site and see the chumps who are posting for work !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Spudnik]

Ive just looked an it is an absolute joke.

Trouble is, there will be "tradesmen" making a small living out of it.

 

[john25]

Cant get onto the site for some reaso mate it keeps saying its too Busy .

 

[wattsup]

My hammer is no different than any other advertising medium, yellow pages don't ask for proof of qualification, nor do any newspapers. To be be fair and playing the devils advocat, some do cheap jobs because they 'obtain' cheap materials

 

[rocker]

As I've posted in another post somewhere, I'm a silly mug who bought an 'obligation free' 3 month membership, and am having a hell of a time cancelling it before I do have any sort of obligation i.e. a 12 month contract. To be fair when I put myself on there it said I had to send them proof of qualifications, but it did let me trade for about a month without doing that, and what would stop me closing my account and starting another one every month??

Went on there for a while as a basic free member and got one or two jobs, but found that there were a lot of 'premium members' sending private messages to jobs that I was quoting on (something basic members can't do) and once the job 'auction' ended and my quote won, the customer didnt contact because someone else had aready priced up and done the job! Got this premium thing (£60 plus vat for 3 months) when I was really hard up for work and I find that people are quoting ridiculous prices (£800 for a three storey rewire, the person quoting would also have had to travel 70 miles to the job and back every day, yea right), they are obviously cowboys, rip off merchants or are drasticaly inflating their quotes when they see the 'extent of work'. Also loads of people without quals - as you said it looks like myhammer will let you continue trading as long as you have a qual, and that doesn't have to relate to the job you're quoting on so you get FENSA guys doing boiler works and chippies doing sparks. Total load of rubbish, and now I've sent them loads of emails to cancel membership which they haven't answered so now I'm going to have to ring their premium rate phone number. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. Oh and the couple of jobs I've got since having the expensive membership were done with basic quoting which I would have won with basic free membership.

 

[Amp David]

I stuck a job on there for people to quote on just to see how low someone would actually go.

Its was for a house with 8 circuits, nothing mentioned about MEB or the location of the CU/age of installation.

Some clown quoted 200 quid. So I emailed him to ask what type of CU he would use and if it'd be certificated. He tells me he only fits Hager CUs and he'll fully certify it.

Now, can someone please tell me how this guy makes any money?

 

[Adam W]

Ironically MyHammer profess to exist to help customers find a tradesman who isn't a cowboy.
The customer rating system is a nice idea but a customer's idea of a 'proper job' might not always be one which is done correctly; a customer may give a poor rating to a sparks who tells them they can't have what they want because it contradicts the regs, while they may give a high rating to a cowboy who appears professional because smiles politely, turns up on time in a shiny new signwritten van, does a superb job of tidying up after himself but installs incorrect cable outside safe zones and whose idea of testing consists of a bang test.

A socket wired in bell wire or coax will probably work perfectly well if it is only used to charge a phone, but plug in a vacuum cleaner a few years later and you could have a fire, by which time Barry Bodgett has got his 5 star rating because he did a cosmetically tidy job, and done one.

 

[m25maintenance]

same as rubbish rated people, ur mate can rate u, easy. i aint buying no job. Find local recommended tradesmen - ratedpeople.com. go see u buy jobs

 

[lloyd1980]

I stuck a job on there for people to quote on just to see how low someone would actually go.

Its was for a house with 8 circuits, nothing mentioned about MEB or the location of the CU/age of installation.

Some clown quoted 200 quid. So I emailed him to ask what type of CU he would use and if it'd be certificated. He tells me he only fits Hager CUs and he'll fully certify it.

Now, can someone please tell me how this guy makes any money?

its beond me,

I did breifly think of joining them but them when I looked at how I'd end up paying the customer to do their work I thought twice,

I get the members point about doing it with nicked materials but even so how do you then do a job and certify it with the rediculously low INC VAT price jobs are won at

They CAN NOT be doing the job properly, and I bet that 3 storey rewire won for 800 quid just gets the socket and switch fronts changed , new board and the old cable left in place

and its true that customers will rate you on what they can see so as long as mr yee haw cowboy hoovers up, smiles, looks smart in a shiny leased van, all sockets and switches are perfectly straight they will be happy, until they turn on the cooker an hes re-wired it in 1mm

it should be renamed MY COWBOY