Calm down boys!!!
Now firstly, Check-a-trade is simply a service that you pay for that allows you to have a section on their website and to be listed under your trade for local searches. It ranks highly on Google and is heavily promoted on telly. They also send out quarterly directories to local areas, from memory Brighton (where I live) is made up of 20 or so smaller districts (hangleton, portslade, moulscoombe, kemp town, center, hanover etc...) the directories are taylored to those districs so you are often only one of five or six in there.
When you do a job you get your customer to write a comment there and then on a card and you then freepost it off to checkatrade who vet it to see it is genuine and then write it up. The reason there are no negative reviews is two fold:
1. because if your customer writes a negative review in front of you on the card that YOU are then supposed to post, it ain't gonna go anywhere near a post box is it, it'll just get torn up for roaches!
2. if a customer goes online to write a bad review, you will be contacted before the review is posted to see what your side of the story is. Again, when Check-a-trade rely on YOU for their custom, they aren't going to allow bad reviews to affect YOUR business on THEIR site, in turn making you leave and stop paying THEM money.
It is not a lead generation service and it costs as near as makes no difference £700 per year to join.
From what I hear and see it
does work!
I have a few pals who are on it (a plumber, a chippy and a plasterer) and they get a large amount of work from check-a-trade, so they do swear by it. That being said, it is almost exclusively aimed towards the domestic market so it is the 5WWs paradise!
I don't use it for two reasons:
1. I don't do much domestic work no more
2. I loathe the very idea of paying some pi$$ ant obscene amounts of money for doing what I can essentially do myself with my own website and with my local trading standards directory. The very term 'middle man' gets my blood boiling and the sole purpose of business' like check-a-trade (regardless of how well they are marketed, run and how well they perform for themselves and their customers) is to rip off the hard working tradesman at the expense of providing genuine quality work for the public. Scumbags!!!
There, that wasn't too hard was it?!
Correct facts presented. My opinion based upon those facts also presented. No argument to be had