Anyone use my builder for work?

[rolyberkin]

Joined up to see what it is like, looks like a bit of a cattle market. The customer posts a job, you express an interest and then if they shortlist you, you pay a fee even if you don't get the job. Can't get my head around it but quite compulsive viewing

 

[buzzlightyear]

if they shortlist you, you pay a fee even if you don't get the job.

so what is the point in that ,you has well give the monies to a tramp down the road .

 

[rolyberkin]

I think it is a match the buyer to the seller service, very sceptical though. It works on a feedback style system so not sure how you get off the blocks as a new supplier? May as well just burn money. I have joined will throw £50 at it as an experiment/investment and give the forum an update in a month.

 

[Octopus]

Can't get my head around it but quite compulsive viewing

You need to get out more .....

 

[rolyberkin]

I cannot believe the amount of people out there that cannot put up a shelf or curtains, one today wanted a picture put up? WTF!

 

[buzzlightyear]

I cannot believe the amount of people out there that cannot put up a shelf or curtains, one today wanted a picture put up

probably ring local hero then .

 

[PEG]

We are only a couple of steps away,from Fixed Odds Gaming machine type job searching,where a bookie has a set of machines,say plumber,spark,plasterer,and you put a tenner in,hit the button,and if you get three little neon-drivers in a row,you win that £22 job,the other side of Helman province...

I told me missus 25 years back,the day would come,where people would be watching simple fools,shaping foolishly,fly-on-the-wall style,on the telly,and calling it entertainment...and along came the brain-dead viewing dross we have today...

 

[Des 56]

if you get three little neon-drivers in a row,you win

 

[Gavin John Hyde]

I have a mybuilder page. Im very very selective in what i opt for. I only go for jobs where i am down the road say i can pop around within the hour to either quote or do the job. Customers like that. I find they will pay market rate then. I wont entertain rewires etc off there... people quote silly prices..

 

[JAWS]

Before I decided to go down the electrician route I used mybuilder for electricians, you can tell those with experience and qualifications to those who haven't as the prices used to vary considerably. Had one chap who was willing to drive 12 mile to sort a fluorescent light out which stopped working, quoted me £20 all in with not even knowing what was wrong.

 

[MDJ]

Joined up to see what it is like, looks like a bit of a cattle market. The customer posts a job, you express an interest and then if they shortlist you, you pay a fee even if you don't get the job. Can't get my head around it but quite compulsive viewing

I wouldn't give a Builder the steam off my ----.

 

[Rpa07]

I wouldn't give a Builder the steam off my ****.

Ah, welcome back MDJ - we’ve missed you and yer smooth tongue!

 

[rolyberkin]

So just over one week in to the mybuilder experiment, so far I have spent £31 on buying in leads, won three jobs, completed one (fitting doorbell) and got paid £30 although the client did give me a £5 tip! For the first time in my relatively short electrical career a customer haggled me down on price by £10. I undercut someone just for the sheer hell of it and have had two official reprimands from my builder staff re the content of my e mails. I do have a feeling it is all a crock of rubbish! Apart from that its all going well!

 

[Toneyz]

All I would say is it works for some people and the make a reasonable living with the jobs some it doesn't.

 

[camerabloke]

All I would say is it works for some people and the make a reasonable living with the jobs some it doesn't.

Have you got any experience with it ant

 

[Toneyz]

Have you got any experience with it ant

Not at first hand but from a few people that do a lot of work through one of these setups maybe not My Builder but similar.

 

[rolyberkin]

Okay after a very short play with my builder I have now asked them to take my details off the site. It is to my view a complete waste of time and money, if I can give anyone advice please think twice about getting involved with mybuilder.com. Due to the business model it will end up costing you vast amounts of money even if you don't get jobs, the amount you get charged is driven by customers clicks and your prices will be driven down by other local trades. The only people who profit are mybuilder.

 

[telectrix]

all these lead charging organisations are in it for the money. customer posts a job. no specific details of what's involved, the parasite charges you for the lead, you call the customer to quote over the phone without knowing how much work is involved, some chancer undercuts you and gets the work for peanuts, you're out of pocket . i tried rated people for a bit. pay a fiver for a lead to a fault. it's 40 miles away and the customer gripes at £40 for going all the way there and fixing it. better off buying some beer and staying in bed.

 

[JK-Electrical]

I've used My Builder for three years and have completed 110 jobs through the site earning 100% positive feedback in the process. Using My Builder been a very profitable exercise indeed.

When a Google search is done using the search criteria of "electricians Glasgow", My Builder is second-ranked in the listings. Clicking on the link to the My Builder website will reveal Glasgow-based electricians who are registered on My Builder. Yours truly is third-ranked. Potential customers are then able to read the positive feedback that previous customers have posted. This means that I receive a lot of invitations to quote for jobs, most of which I decline as I'm very selective indeed about the jobs that I take on.

I get a lot of EICR and smoke alarm installation work via My Builder, but for the same reason that GJH mentioned in his post, I decline all rewires that I'm invited to quote for as I just can't compete with the stupid prices that the "we've rewired thousands of houses and we can rewire your house in a day even though we can't find the wet leaves that are causing your RCD to trip" firm and the rest of the college boys on My Builder are banging in.

The fee to get shortlisted for a rewire on My Builder is usually around £30 plus VAT. So at £36 a pop, I'm just not interested. It is amusing, though, to see the same seven or eight guys slicing each other's throats to try and secure the rewiring jobs when they come up. They have more money than sense. They are to My Builder what mug-punters are to Ladbrokes.

Ditto consumer unit changeovers. I very rarely touch these jobs either as there will always be some smart-arse college boy who will quote the customer £200 over the phone and not bother to do any pre-changeover testing. The chances are the customer won't get an EIC either. I'm only interested in local jobs where I can get my quotation in quick before the bottom-feeders can get a look-in. Overall, I decline more jobs than I accept as I have other sources of work and am not dependent on My Builder. Indeed, I've only done four jobs from My Builder so far this year and don't envisage doing any more in the foreseeable future.

 

[rolyberkin]

I have actually despite my last post still been using it selectively over the last few weeks and you very quickly learn what to bid on and what to steer clear of. I have had a few results where a £3.30 job has turned into a few days work so the cost of leads has been far outstripped by what I have earned. The same happens around here with the same old local sparkys going after every job, a definite race to the bottom. I think it is useful to fill in a few days here and there if work goes a bit lean once you build up a bit of feedback.