mybuilder.com - any good?

vivajustice

I hate these sites. I tried them a few times thinking i could get a bit of extra work, but to have other tradesmen quoting a ridiculously lower price than me just put me right off! I charge accordingly to the work involved, and put a price which is competitive, but still allows me to make some money. With sites like mybuilder and all the others, your price ends up 50% less then your normal wage, just to stand a chance of winning a job! So i decided to build my own site and promote my company myself, with a low yearly cost, and i can see all my stats myself!

So far it has worked very well. my site has been live since the start of january, and already im having inquiries. To all the tradesmen out there who are using these sites, or fall for the sales calls of people selling you a website for x-amount promising you success, save your money and build one yourself! Buy some books with the money you would spend on these services and read on how to build sites..

baldelectrician

I had a yellow pages rep call me yesterday

She was told, in no uncertain terms that I was dropping my spend in Yell / Yellow pages by 70% as they were very poor value for money

I agree with you and now spend some on the savings on buying domains www.myhammer.co is one of mine (quite ironic).

When it forwards look at the title at the top of the screen

My business is now established and I get a bit from word of mouth, so as a result I am cutting back my advertising

I buy up domains that could be relevant to my business, such as www.niceic.co as this pops to my site and helps searches

jasonmymail

I've used MyBuilder 2-3 times - the quality of workmanship has been variable.

I'm sure there are many good builders who are members - the point of the site (I would assume) is to highlight those that are genuinely good, and weed out those that are not so good, or just plain bad.

In order to acheive this the feedback mechanism has to be honest and run with integrity - sadly neither is true.

I had a leaking pipe in my bathroom, found a plumber through the site, we discussed the job (at some length on the phone) and agreed for him to come and do the work the next day. He didn't turn up, not only didn't he turn up but he didn't even call. When I called him he said he'd changed his mind as didn't feel up to the tiling part of the job.

So this guy's profile wasn't truthful (advertised tiling), he agreed to do a job he wasn't capable of and didn't even call me to cancel... in my book that deserves negative feedback.

When I posted feedback it was withdrawn by MyBuilder for reason of 'not meeting their feedback criteria'. I complained to them but of course never received a reply, so this guy is still on MyBuilder with 100% feedback.

Truth is these sites are fools gold - set up with the promise of giving you confidence in your next choice of builder but actually they will always protect their income source (the builder) as first priority - sadly leaving the punter frustrated and often of pocket.

A shame as I know their are good builders on the site but you can't necessarily tell who they are from the feedback which undermines the whole point.

Good as a marketplace but don't rely on the feedback as it's likley to be inflated.

Just my experience...

crayola

Very hit-and-miss. The first time I used the site I ended up hiring some total cowboys, but that was for a fairly specialised job that I think the respondents simply saw and decided they could wing (when they couldn't, it turned out).

I have since used it for more straight-forward work like painting and while the response was a little amateurish (I had to re-do the skirting boards myself!) it was by far the cheapest quote we got! What was good about it was that it seemed to home in on very local tradespeople and that most could start right away.

So on balance, by all means use it for straighforward jobs that will get plenty of replies, but I'd only resort to it if you're on a tight budget.

data1234

I have been a tradesman on my builder for some time.
None of there tradesman are vetted in any way. Anyone can register and say what the hell they are like.

My builder team are amatuers and dont have a clue how to look after the tradesman that are reputable and customers that get screwed have no comeback what so ever.

This is a cheap site that only benifits mybuilder and they do nothing for clients or tradesman.

Steer well clear

Moomum

We are currently renovating our new house and don't kow anyone in the area to give recommendations, for this reason we have used mybuilder and have had no tpruble so far. Lots of people from various trades have given quotes and we have chosen the ones we wheel most suitable. So far have used wallpaper strippers, electricians, plumber and plasterer from there with no trouble at all.

timlaz

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'm a gassafe engineer and fully agree with your post, your better of spending the cash on some decent advertising. I have tried using ratedpeople.com, same type of outfit. we pay up front for 'administration', then pay per lead. Up to 3 tradesmen can quote on same job, 2 are bound to be losers. This is just a scheme to make the middleman millions. Ratedpeople made 50 million alone last year. The head exec Chris Burke used to work for Paddypower before ratedpeople (gambling) and before that BT (we know how crap they are)

Today I posted a fake ad for a combi boiler and a guy phoned me who on closer inspection didn't have his gassafe qualifications.

Avoid avoid avoid

abankerbutnotafatcat

We have just moved in to a new area aswell and have a lot of need for various tradespeople. At first we were emailing and phoning around a lot - getting no response or being told they were too busy. When we heard about mybuilder we welcomed it as a way of being put in touch with tradespeople who had capacity to do our jobs. We don't hold much stock by the recommendations as we realise they can be manipulated but hope that we will be able to find someone local, competent and trustworthy to work with us. We didn't realise that tradesmen had to pay but we have genuine work that needs doing and that we are happy to pay the going rate for.

Plasterer

If there are any trades out there reading this please DO NOT USE A COMPANY CALLED STRUCTERED SOLUTIONS (EXETER)!!!!! I did £2500 of work for this company and they never paid a penny - they also did not pay the steel erectors for £6000 and a carpenter £3000. You have been warned!!!!!

mrcol1000

We brought a house last year and previously being in rented properities never needed any trades. We used My Hammer and saved a load of money. We googled people before we hired them just in case. The feedback can be made up but then it can be genuine too. Have found that for small jobs its perfect and you can get a much lower quote as clever people fit the small jobs in around the big ones. For instance we needed a small electrical job doing and approached some local firms who quoted around £100. We then found a guy who was willing to do it before he did a bigger job for £30. No problems and high standard. We will be using him again and skip putting work on my builder.
Also we have found that about 50% of the people who quote when you make an appointment to come and take a look or hire for the job don't bother to turn up. So if tradespeople have problem with customers then they are just as bad.