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

[Gary Gemmell]

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.

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?

None they are all crap
Bark is the only one that looks ok but you cant trust any reviews online these days or any tradesmen - the ones i have got in for quotes before i do the work myself is legion and every one is awful except for 2 out of 23 that is some bad percentage.

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!

 

[Tony Way]

Never needed to use any of the listed routes to market. I am on NextDoor, but only for general village things.
Always just relied on a cheap advert in the Village magazine and word of mouth. I don't want to line someone else's pocket in a race to the lowest price.

 

[GMES]

Never used any of them to be honest so I cant vote.
All my work comes from word of mouth and contacts I've built up over the last 20 years, I only do Industrial and commercial and I think all the above are geared towards domestic trades.

 

[Baddegg]

My builder.....complete con you can’t even verify the jobs you are bidding for exist and even if you manage to win the bidding there’s no assurances the customer will even talk to you, some very bad tradesmen on there as well

Trust a trader.....couldn’t organise ---- up in a brewery....they approached me with an offer of free membership, so I thought why not, first job comes through contact with customer made etc and then they block me from talking to the customer because they havnt run any checks, why let me speak and arrange things with a customer and then stop me? Waited two weeks and nothing from them.......never agian

Check a trade....I can’t lie I’ve had nothing but good experience with them, I have recently gone back on there after leaving for no other reason than I had work booked up for 6 months in advance so didn’t see the point in paying £140 when I couldn’t take anymore work, even now after a months free trial I can’t keep up with it, doing multiple trades helps a lot as I can turn up for one small job and end up quoting for a lot more..

Nextdoor neighbour app is another one I pick up bits and pieces off of but being local I end doing the little jobs off there for free or a cup of tea for an oldun when I can squeeze it in...

Use a free webpage on face book which seems to work really well and I’m told I have instagram and twitter accounts that my daughters are running for me....

I would like a more professional web site but not sure I need it as I have no intention of being to big and drowning in stress....life’s to short ?

 

[2004nc]

Could you add a "none" button please - I don't use any, they are a waste of time...

 

[Midwest]

I am about to contact the latest electrician, found via MyBuilder, for the next job, we'll see.
All the tradesmen I have used via MyBuilder have all been excellent.

SteveN

Thats the problem with all this. Word of mouth is great, if someone is talking to you; perhaps the next best thing is to go blind into one of these web sites, with the advantages & pitfalls previously mentioned. What did we do for these instances, before the world wide web!

 

[dseselectric]

There's not much for me to add that hasn't been said already. Word-of-mouth and getting into bed with other local trades such as plumbers and builders are best for business, but neither is quick and easy if you're just starting out. These days, anyone should have a website, even if it's a basic affair knocked up using a tool such as Wix or that you pay a third-party like Yell to create and host. If you're a one-man-band, include a picture of yourself and your van, and show your contact details including the registered office address so potential clients can see you're legitimate and that you look like you're doing the business.

The likes of Twitter, Facebook, Nextdoor, and Instagram are also good ways to show off your work, connect with your peers and to promote yourself to potential local customers. We're not all comfortable with such platforms of course, and if you're posting a picture of your work then you'd better check it's right or risk being torn apart! Social media can be stressful and turn toxic, so only use it if it works for you.

As for these middleman operations, I'm on record as being against them, but I appreciate they work for others. Most are expensive and they may jack up the price once your profile has too many reviews for you to lose, but they offer a quick way to build up a reputation, at least for the users of their individual sites. If you get on with them and the revenue they generate outweighs the overhead of membership, then it makes business sense. Personally, I don't want to make a bunch of slick kids sitting in plush offices even richer from the sweat off my own back.

One issue I had as a member of Local Heroes a few years ago was that 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. These days, I'm with Which? Trusted Traders, and although it doesn't get me much work directly, their logo on my estimate paperwork probably helps to swing the bigger jobs such as rewires my way. I also use their review function exclusively now as my GMB, Yell, FreeIndex and TrustPilot pages were all vandalised by fake reviews and had to go. I no longer show in a cold Google search anymore, but I don't think I ever got much business that way anyway. I did once pay for Adwords, and it was the quickest thirty quid I lost outside of happy hour at my local. It was pretty much Google coming back saying "Yep, we've promoted you somewhere, now watch the calls come in!"

They didn't.

Freeindex and Yell are good directory services to have a free listing on, but another good source for local work is a parish magazine if you have such. Better than a leaflet drop, it goes through all your neighbours letterboxes, and everyone looks inside. The old dears use it like Google as their tradesperson search, those new to the area go by it and even those who've been here for years will pick up on your presence. Again, it's good to show a picture of you and your van so they can put a face to the business and clock you going around town. You want to get the locals used to seeing you, and it pays to have a liveried van. If you live in a city, check surrounding villages on your patch for such publications.

These 'checked', 'rated' and 'trusted' sites usually only perform the most basic of checks, and they then let members loose onto their client base who will ultimately end up as the ones who do report back as to whether anyone is trustworthy or not. If not, the client has their pants pulled down and none of these sites will be taking any responsibility for it. As others have said, you end up competing with builders and kitchen/bathroom fitters for electrical work, and we all know people usually just want something cheap that works, never mind if it's actually safe in the event of a fault...

 

[happysteve]

I've never paid for any on-line advertising. I bat off any cold calls asking if I want to sign up to anything... my view is that if they have found my number, so can potential clients.

I wrote my own web page in static HTML - it just has my logo, a mug shot, and a few words about where I serve, the sort of work I do, Terms of Business, and the kind of person I am.

I have a Facebook page, on which I have photos of work done, occasional posts about dodgy stuff I've found, and reviews left by customers.

I have a Google "My Business" page (which is free), with a couple of photos, and a few customer reviews.

Although I don't engage much directly on social media beyond the odd Facebook post (roughly one a month), a lot of my clients do... there are groups for local people to let others know what's going on, have a moan about the coucil/yoofs/roadworks, ask for recommendations etc; when my name pops up, it's handy to have a Facebook or web page for people to land on, peruse, then contact me.

To be honest, I'm still really surprised when people say, "I found you on the internet" because I have such very low expectations... an HTML page that was last updated a year ago, it's not exactly state-of-the-art "SEO" is it?!

Every time I email an invoice and certs (or receipt and certs if the customer pays by cash or cheque), I sign off with:

PS If you feel able to leave a testimonial for my work, you can do so on Facebook or Google: (then the links).

That, word of mouth, and some traditional paid advertising in local free magazines has worked well for me so far. Your mileage may vary

 

[Sisyphus]

I've been through quite a few '3rd party' on line vetting agenices, and worked for a number of '3rd party' national maintenance companies were I am.

I've concluded them a waste of time, and so we have a 'no 3rd parties' clause now

~S~
[automerge]1576018670[/automerge]
I guess that's a bit terse of a reply.

The trades were proliferated with all manner of internet 3rd parties here after the last housing crash

They knew we were hungry, would sign onto anything

The problem is, they not only started vetting us, they evolved to creating standards for us as well

It got a tad to 'big brother' for many of us you see

~S~