Rated people worth it?

beatboaby924y · Oct 1, 2011

I've recently joined rated people but not sure if it's a con or not yet.

For those who don't know you basically pay a quarterly charge £40 for emails of people in your area needing work done. You can also get text messages at 100 for £10.

If you want to quote for the work you have to pay for a lead which is a percentage of what the customer thinks the work will cost for the customers phone number. Up to 3 people can buy the lead but no guarantee that you or anyone else will get the job.

It just seems as though you have to cut the price to the bone to get the work or lose your lead money cause the customer will nearly always take the lowest quote.

Just starting to seem to me that the only ones making money is rated people.

Any thoughts on this?

SPARTYKUS · Oct 2, 2011

In summary sounds cobblers

Kiers1970 · Jan 17, 2012

They are advertising before Corrie now, they must be raking it in.

SPARTYKUS · Jan 17, 2012

Still cobblers.

fulla · Jan 17, 2012

i to joined last year, found that customers had no clue as to how much most jobs were worth and as such you had to pay a lot of money for the lead. also i found that jobs got emailed up to 2 hours before they got texted so by the time you ring the job customer already had someone to do it.
remained a member for 3 months never earnt a penny and duly cancelled my membership

Spazz · Jan 17, 2012

I have been looking into it as well
Pricing structure:
£10 for the 1st 3 months
£40 per every additional 3 months
from £4 per refural you want to look at
The customer is charged £1.50 via text charges to confirm their number
If 20 people quote for a job - only 3 contractors quotes get sent to the customer - The three who quote for the job with the highest rating with Rated people.

You cant get ratings unless you get work from them
You cant get work from them unless you are the only one or 1 of 3 who quote for a job - if more than 3 quote for the said job you wont be considered.

Complete WASTE OF MONEY in my personal opinion.

1shortcircuit · Jan 17, 2012

I'm going to go completely against everything that has been said now lol

I have been using it since November. In the beginning I wasn't winning much but I have switched on to how to make it work for me.

I concentrate on looking for the "My lights aren't working" or "My sockets are tripping" ... Reactive works.

All this work usually gets done for a hundred quid or there abouts.

I have noticed with the more expensive jobs that not only is the fee alot higher but you get more competition AND the client also gets tradespeople from outside rated people to quote which just means you have possibly quoted (one example of a job I saw) 34 quid to go and view a job, spend hours preparing your most competitve quote only to be told "sorry I decided to go with another quote"

Like I said, I learnt this early on when I travelled 22 miles to look at one job and then about the same in the opposite direction to get neither. Now I only operate within a 6-7 mile radius unless I really like the look of the job.

I have made money out of it but this work will never make you rich, I'm just hoping that all the good feedback leads to additional work from word of mouth. I will still renew the first quarter.

I'm not convinced this TV/radio advert will be as good for the tradesman as Rated People make out though.

Manny · Jun 25, 2012

My experience with HATEDPEOPLE.
I have a renewables business which is not doing well and I decide to make an experience of 2-3 months on RP to get new customers on my electrical services. So for the last 2 months we worked with RatedPeople. Initially we were willing to offer jobs for good prices so we could build up good rates and eventually we could start pricing on regular SUSTAINABLE prices.

I had other businesses before and I am really into control cash flow, income and costs. It seems to me that load of tradesman, majority I think; don’t calculate their costs, depreciation of assets, operational investment, marketing, etc. Folks get happy when they see some money in their hands and don’t calculate how much it takes to get it!

My opinion based on my calculations, is in agreement with some other preview opinions, this service is very good for the customer and for the provider RP and the tradesman gets squeezed from all sides!

The best you can do working for HatedPeople is to pay for your operational cost! That’s all, if you lucky! I didn’t see a way to profit from this! If someone is saying they profit, either they have a super Mama and have ZERO costs or they don’t know how much their real operational cost is!

Here are some numbers based on around 45 jobs as a trial experience for a period of 2 ½ months:

We won 42% of the leads that we bought! That was because on those jobs we underbid other quotes to get the business, which is a ‘bad practice’, the so called race to the bottom...

We got refund about 21% of the leads that we bought, which was good, however the other 37% of the leads that we gave a quote were straight LOSS! Good for RP and the customer obviously, not good for the tradesman!

From that, we only made a decent profit in 18.15% of the worked jobs! However we will need to deducted the loss of the 37% of lost leads, which becomes another cost together with the operational cost. UNSUSTAINABLE!

Our daily rate working under RP average was £53.07 per day after material costs, now we just need to deduct taxes and our OC from this... That will takes us to the negative side of the force Luke. UNSUSTAINABLE!!!

The important thing to consider is the operational cost, for example my personal cost is low. I don’t have a mortgage and my cost of living is very low! If we consider only the following things: My personal cost, Van and tools depreciation, running fuel, electrical association membership, business phone; all that would add to a total of £30 OC per day. So I wake up negative £30 every working day! My poor business partner OC for example is way higher than my, with a baby, wife not working, a mortgage and van finance his OC is at least 3 times higher!

Also, we had to add as a extra cost many of the 37% lost leads, since we had to drive to vary locations to provide quotes, and obviously fuel and time was lost. Double loss!!!

RP sells the same job 3 times least, they profit every single time! The customers get jobs done for peanuts and the taxman always gets its share.

85% of the time that we tried to quote the job for a ‘decent’ price, we lost the job! We actually had the customers several times disclosing WAY cheaper quotes from other tradesman, like some kind of service auction, who can do it cheaper? Perhaps you come down another £5 to get the deal… The calls that we got as a word of mouth generated from RP jobs, didn’t result in new jobs, because the customers wanted VERY CHEAP prices and we refused to do so.

It became clear that this system is good for the electrical wholesaler, is good for the customers, is good the taxman, is good the economy, is VERY good for provider RatedPeople and it doesn’t seem fair for the Tradesman, which gets squeezed from all sides and ends up paying all the way.

Ah, I forgot, we still didn’t get paid for 9% of the jobs that we done… Perhaps some will become loss, as a triple whammy deal! WOW!

Anyway, this was our experience and things can be different in other areas. (We covered SE England and London.) We found the experience valid, however not sustainable! We may do some more work for RP in the future, however I am tired to lose money, this service has not generated new customers or new work outside of their system for me up to now.

Best luck to all.