mybuilder.com - any good?

tonyE1

I used mybuilder to find someone to install a worktop for me, basically 2 mitre joints. I got quotes ranging from £70 to £500. I went with the £70 which was from a young portuguese guy who had worked as a fitter at B&Q for 7 years. He did a top class job in a couple of hours and offered to finish off some other work ex gratia. The job was very small and I was very detailed about what I wanted and yet some people wanted to come round to give a full quote. The fitter understood exactly what I wanted and gave a quote in the right ballpark so I trusted him to know what he was doing. For me mybuilder was perfect and I will be using the guy again for further work.

baldelectrician

johnjackson wrote: »

That is bad management on their side.

I'm sure that the .co domain would of been offered to them in the first place, but they must of thought that they did not need it.

You should also be careful as myhammer could be a registered trade mark. I just checked their site and there is a TM logo under their main logo, but it might be that the "any job, any time anywhere" part of it is a registered trade name/mark.

Intellectual property law can be very expensive if you get it wrong

20 years ago, you could make money from registering similar domain names, now companies just call their lawyers!

Thing is - if they want to buy the domains (myhammer and mybuilder) for £800 then that is vastly cheaper than the lawyers and court fees.

johnjackson

baldelectrician wrote: »

Thing is - if they want to buy the domains (myhammer and mybuilder) for £800 then that is vastly cheaper than the lawyers and court fees.

Unless they go to court and win, in which case you could be paying their legal bills and their court costs

Not sure about IP law, but I have a friend that was taken to court by a tenant. He went to court and lost, he had to pay his lawyer, the other lawyer (legal aid lawyer) and any legal costs.

baldelectrician

With the .co domain names there was a period of 12 weeks where the existing owners of the companies were informed the new endings were for sale.

This period ended and they went up for auction on the open market, this would go against the companies should they take court action.

myhammer have said they are not interested and so have mybuilder. The sites cost £20 per year each and have a decent number of hits each month- this increases my page rank and it's well worth it for £40

The equivalent google adwords would cost £50 per month each

littlemissfavored

I had a leak last year I gt the plumber from mybuilder.

I also used my builder for the paint/decorating job after the leak. Workman was super, clean, trustworthy and did a fab job. Also using them for window installer.

I have only positive experiences so far.
Sometimes someone may recommend and it could go either way. Or you get a lead online- it could go good or bad. Such is life.

This is the digital age, if I am looking for information/workman I will use all available means, however I also take the neccessary precautions as well and ensure my family safety etc
I guess in this case it is a matter of choice....

Wesley-gas-services

sparky883 wrote: »

As a tradesman i hate all of these sites and the so called customers who use them,We were a little quiet the other week so i credited our "My workman" account with £20-00 allowing us to quote on 5 jobs-Yes we do pay!!!! its £4 to get hold of your E-Mail or Phone number,Anyway out of these 5 jobs we E-Mailed all of them and had no replys (our ratings are good) also could only get hold of one by telephone-I think most of the "customers" are dreamers or just want advice or hope to pay little of next to nothing for the work. Why assume these sites provide good tradesmen when there are no checks and anybody can join.

I agree. Same boat. Many out there want really top work for little return. Making living on these sites is difficult as it is. Rated people especially charge from! 4 pounds a lead and this escalates to some 20+ for any decent work.
And if potential lean doesn't like the quote, we traders loose out completely.

My recently setup firm in ilford, London, servicing east and north London kicked off with quotes visits and paid leads which don't guarantee anything but you paying out of pocket. I really don't know if it's worth registering with mybuilder.com - 20 pounds a month for a trader annd leads are to be paid for £4-£25:eek:

Heres prime dilemma for consumers and traders alike, to use this middleman or not. Work isn't guaranteed for traders, nor ratings, as many of you agree, need to be genuine...:mad:

I guess, tough time cals for tough measures, but paying out so much to get any work, just to get a customer who wants to "save up" further.... I think I will be making a pass on this...


Middlemen website like this eat up chunk of any potential profit.

I guess I will just rely on google ratings from variety of websites and sources. See for yourself. Wesley gas services at your service.

Wesley-gas-services

littlemissfavored wrote: »

I had a leak last year I gt the plumber from mybuilder.

I also used my builder for the paint/decorating job after the leak. Workman was super, clean, trustworthy and did a fab job. Also using them for window installer.

I have only positive experiences so far.
Sometimes someone may recommend and it could go either way. Or you get a lead online- it could go good or bad. Such is life.

This is the digital age, if I am looking for information/workman I will use all available means, however I also take the neccessary precautions as well and ensure my family safety etc
I guess in this case it is a matter of choice....

True, before I started my trade, I used these sites myself, very handy nonetheless.;)

MarySum

I've used it to find someone to look at our boiler. I agree it's probably not perfect, and I didn't realise how much companies had to pay to be on it, but it's a good solution to a problem that a lot of people must have - finding recommendations for tradesmen.

People always say the best way to get someone reliable is to get recommendations from family and friends, but if you don't have family and friends nearby who employ people to work on their house, it's a bit limited! Mybuilder.com has got to be better than just doing a google search, which just tells you which company has the best SEO strategy. And at least the reviews are helpful, even if some have to be taken with a pinch of salt.

ormus

a very large pinch of salt.

about 10 kilos.

thursday

I have used mybuilder.com quite a few times and would definitely use it again.

But, as for everything, one needs experience there too.

One of the most important things I learned is that one has to be very very cautious with tradesman that have far too many recommendations. Pay attention to frequency of their recommendations, this will tell you if tradesman is finding only new work, and therefore has no return work.

Most good tradesman have return customers and do not use this way to find work too often as it is costly for them. Those are the ones one needs to screen for.
Also, always check authenticity of any recommendation as I'm sure this can be abused.

I managed to find there spot on tradesmen with average number of recommendations that are now permanently on my list as well as total rubbish tradesman with 35+ recommendations.....

hope this helps