mybuilder.com - any good?

dawyldthing

I'll give my builder their do.

Got a gas man to fit a boiler and radiators 5 years ago when I moved in.

Put an ad for an electrician to redo the electrics - had one bloke that said it would take a week as he would have to keep checking it or somethung. Eventually found someone we were happy doing it off it.

Then the other day my mum managed to snap the hinge on her window which I managed to close but it needed fixing. Found a bloke on facebook, agreed a price and a day - messaged to say he couldn't get, could he come a few days later. He never got back in contact. Put it on my builder as I didn't want mum getting cold - same day bloke said he could do it, sent a price through (was £20 more than the facebook bloke mind) but said he would come next day and within 24 hours of putting it up it was fixed.

So it has its uses to get a rough idea of prices as I put a few other jobs up I thought I'd been doing and got people messaging with rough prices

Cloth_of_Gold

I thought I'd report back on what happened in the end. None of the people I contacted through MyBuilder responded, even though I put a detailed job spec on the site and it was a few thousand pounds worth of work. As I described above, the site passed my details onto 3 other people, one of whom I invited to quote. He did come round and gave a quote but it was lacking in detail and he wanted quite a bit for materials, most of which I was supplying anyway, and a very high fee for removing the building waste (which there wasn't that much of).

In the meantime I had found CheckaTrade and someone I found on there came round and gave an estimate. Two others provided an estimate without coming to view the job. These two were quite high (one very high) so I didn't pursue them. The first one was ok and as they seemed to know what they were talking about it I accepted, subject to clarification of a couple of points. However, despite having accepted their quote in principle, and chasing them, I heard no more from them.

I then tried Trustmark but there was no one very close to where I live. I did nevertheless contact the three nearest. One didn't reply to my message and the other two said I was too far away. By this stage I was getting desperate and so I rang a local builders' merchant who gave me the number of a company who regularly use their business. I have to say I didn't have much hope that this would work but I rang the number anyway and someone came down and had a look. I was impressed with him and when his estimate came it was similar to the earlier one I had accepted and so I gave him the go-ahead. Although the work took a little longer than I had anticipated they did a good job and were polite, friendly, hardworking and reliable and I am going to use them for other jobs in the future.

My experience then was the websites were of no use at all and although I got the job done in the end it was really down to pot luck.

sansin

Sometimes its good but if you get any dispute woth builder and try to post negative feedback on mybuilder, company try to removes that and favors trader as per my observation. It's clear company makes profit from traders and not from customers so they would favor.

Myrimiahome

Have used mybuilder couple of weeks ago. Ended up hiring a cowboy builder who left with my money and damaged my house. This guy had 80 reviews 99% positive. When contacted Mybuilder.com complaint service, after numerous attempts as these guys don't provide phone numbers to call them back so you have to agree a call time over email and they will, eventually, call. Eventually as I have been left hanging a couple of times. Anyways when called they basically said that they couldn't do anything for me as they take no responsibility over who they advertise on their website. I have challenged them on the 99% positive rating as I couldn't believe i was the only person to whom it happened. They have been very evasive in their response. When asked if they checked the credentials of the builders all they could tell is that he had provided his ID. In other words they dont perform any checks on the people they put you in touch with. When asked if they remove builders from their website if the person is taken to court by customers their answer was that they wouldn't. In brief I would not recommend using this website. There is no bullet proof website but I would advise to use a website where builders are checked (reviews, insurance, ID ect....) even then get them to put you in touch with customers they did a similar job for and check insurance numbers, VAT registration etc... Heavy for small jobs but worth in my view as like in my case you can end up paying a very heavy price when not doing the screening.

nazbrown

Please, can I have the contact details of this tradesperson?

W_build

I de registered from my builder after 6 years. In that time I've been shortlisted for around 50 jobs. Each costing £30 + vat. Each job had around 3 builders short listed. So my builder made around £4500 in short list fees. Of the 50 only 20 or so had the job done. We won 10 of them. Out of the 10 nine left positive feedback so we had 100%. Feedback at that point. The last job valued at £15000 was 90% complete when the client became very awkward because we were on site when the customs and excuse raided his premises for import of illegal tobacco. At that point he wouldn't let us finish the job and ending up owing us £2500. He then left negative feedback dropping us to 85%. We asked MyBuilder to remove the feedback but they stated they wouldn't without the customers consent. As a result we have de registered from my builder. We are very busy from our own recommendations and don't want our good reputation to be tarnished via my builder.

seatbeltnoob

drjohnson wrote: »

mybuilder.com is very poor. It is expensive and a poor service. The industry is suffering enough with taxes and high fuel costs without some internet entrepreneur trying to rake in 5% of a mans bread and butter. These websites should be boycotted.

I find most people on there tend to over quote to compensate for this. I get names of builders on there when they pitch but do nto shortlist them so they dont get charged. I then google the name of the contractor and locate their website/email/internet profile and talk to them directly.

For small jobs it's double the price, a sink fitting was quoted £200 on average, we found someone on gumtree who did it for £100.

Cooker hood installation was quote all the way for £150-£375+vat. I didnt even want a full installation, I just wanted the hole made. Quotes were ridiculously.

I bought a drill from screwfix for £60 with a clutch, a core bit for £35 and a long drill for £20 and did the work myself and have a drill that I can use in future.

pgoncalv

I used mybuilder and had some good results. It is not easy to get recommendations and very local builders for large work, often there are only a handful of tradesmen that are busy anyway.


But despite being careful I had issues. A couple of things to beware:
- feedback would only be shown if you hired the trader. So with some traders, if they think you are following the advice you find on sites like moneysaving and they are after less careful or vulnerable customers, they will may mess you about and miss appointments or quote over the odds. I estimate that some traders quote 20 jobs and get one interested customer. The thing is that mybuilder will not publish this feedback and so the best traders may be crowded out.
- also if you engage a trader independently that you eventually find to be listed in mybuilder and you want to give feedback, this will need to be accepted by the trader (they are essentially customers of mybuilder). So a lot of rosy reviews I have seen are fake. I also know of traders that get feedback well before the job is finished, I wonder why that would be?


Checkatrade does publish verified feedback independently of how the trader was engaged, I have found that while usually being more expensive tradesmen, they are better quality. But the issue of not turning up or quoting ridiculous or not at all is common.

Cloth_of_Gold

I've used the person who did my bathroom several times since for various jobs. He was a really lucky find but unless you can get a recommendation from someone that you trust and lives reasonably near you then you just have to take pot luck.

pgoncalv

Radsteral wrote: »

try www. myworkman.co.uk, the best so far, and unlike rated people, its simple and honest.. with rated tradesmen you get a flog of calls for a month non stop !

I tried using this site recently. It seems as if the people listing here were handpicked for oddities.
- The ones that quote tend to live very far from you: beware
- Most ask for money upfront : beware
- There is a very small number of "tradesman" that always respond: beware
- Most quote well over the market price: beware
- They all appear to be good tradesman, but in the end they are salespeople dressed to look the busy tradesman. They quote so high (2x or 3x the rate) that it is obvious they will easily subcontract to someone that can do a good job. What is odd is that the references make it seem the salespeople do the job themselves.