Great 'how to find decent tradesmen' hunt

fimonkey

I don't know how to find a good tradesperson other than word of mouth, but I would advise against employing 'a friend', or 'a friend fo a friend'.

My partner is a carpenter and 99% of his work is word of mouth. However when we first met a few of my friends wanted work doing and he quoted for them. They expected 'friends discount' (which he did his best to accomodate) and didn't seem to realise that this was his living. They also changed plans mid way through the work (as some customers do) but then complained to me "as a friend" when it then took him longer than he originally quoted to complete the job and I found myself as a very unwilling go between who eventually told them to sort it out themselves (which they did, but mixing friends with business is no fun).

As they are still (my) friends, they expect my partner to drop by and continue to fix things for free that he would normally charge for. He does it out of the goodness of his heart (depsite me telling him not to).

I've chosen a very long winded way to say "business and pleasure don;t mix"!

ani_ka0

You cant beat word of mouth in my opinion, I would always 'phone a friend' for a recommendation.

If not possible you have to rely on the websites where you can check reviews on people - this would be the next best thing.

COSTLYPETROL

After being ripped off by several "tradesmen" we have now a list of tradesmen whom we can trust.

After the "builder" ..made the garage door opening too narrow...laid the lentils upside down....only laid 26 blocks in 1 day...we discovered the photographs of "jobs" shown to us were of other builders work with his LandRover included...an unmistakeable green one with a white roof.

We got our current builder by asking him where he had worked and then going to those jobs where the people were only too happy to recommend him but they were also glad to have someone to talk to.....people do not talk enough to each other.

Prior to the 26 block builder we had the "builder" who was recommended by someone who thought he was a good one. When left with a vacant house for three weeks he managed to cook many meals, bed his girlfriend , leave the shower running, dirty all the towels and he didn't apply the silicone he was paid for.

View their work and ask the employers is most definitely the way to go.

Hope this helps someone

Alasdair_Bell

A good site for recommendations/tendering is mybuilder.com All the tradesman are rated by previous jobs so you know what the quality of their work is likely to be. All that and it is run by an ex builder

alilane_2

The trouble with some sites is that the trades people have to pay to suscribe to the website and you are not therefore receiving a true wide range of quotes.
I have found a new start up site that appears to be doing something similar, but offers a free subscription allowing anyone to quote for the work. It also allows you to rate the tradesmen in the same way. It's a uk based site called coverthemarket.

iamcornholio

Alasdair_Bell wrote: »

A good site for recommendations/tendering is ..... All the tradesman are rated by previous jobs so you know what the quality of their work is likely to be.

No, and that is the problem.

How can someone rate quality of work if they are not aware of the standard which it should conform to?

One only has to look at the various "reviews" of any product on the web, written by lay people and you see see an abundance of "awsomeness" and other superlatives, and then you get a load of "totally useless" quotes when the item did not meet some pedantic criteria of the reviewer. This totally skews the review to the point of irrelevance

Its easy to see great reviews from some little old lady when a guy turned up, did a mediocre job (the lady was short-sighted) and then the guy offers to put the milk bottles out as a favour and the lady thinks he's the bees knees.

Then you might get a master craftsman who just happened to be five minutes late, and then he is labled "unreliable" by Mr Pedant

Web based "good builder" schemes are just tapping into a falacy that we can all just log on to the web and find a good builder instantly. And those of us who don't know any tradespeople, where we would have previously just stuck a pin into a page of the Yellow Pages and got some random person of unknown quality, we are now just doing exactly the same but it's just a bit more "hi-tech" - so it must be better eh?

The shrewd entrepreneurs have just seen a gap in the market and have tried to fill it by providing various lists of "registered" builders ...... all without any adequate vetting or guarantees of good work, and more importantly absolutely no warranties from the web company at all.

Edit

I don't know of any of our contractors who use these web schemes ... and thats from a list of over 40. In fact many small builders don't even know what the internet is - and they don't need to either
IME, from the jobs I have visted where someone has been acquired from a web scheme, the job has been high priced and/or substandard. It seems to me that the people who join these schemes are the ones who can't get work any other way, and that is why it is a worry.

marge20

My husband is a plumbing and heating engineer and never advertises he gets all his recommendations through word of mouth(so he knows then he will get paid) and he will only recommend workman that he has worked with and has seen their work as he is gas safe registered people sometimes use the gas safe website to locate register gas engineers as they know what appliances they can work on. We had windows and doors fitted through recommendation and because of past experience I was dreading the work to be done but they were top banana:T Reccomendation by word of mouth all the time and not some one who knocks on the door I always go looking for my workmen they never come knocking on my door all I can say is they must be extremely quiet if they have the time to do that:exclamati

Mrs_DS_2

I would also highly recommend Checkatrade for reliable trades. My husband is on checkatrade and in order for them to accept you in the first place they get references in writing from some of your previous customers, they come to meet and interview you, they check you are Gas Safe Registered if you say you are, they require a copy of your public liability insurance certificate and they continually monitor the customer feedback that your customers submit about you.

If my husband is too busy to be able to do work for a customer (which he frequently is because he is so good at what he does!) he refers them to the checkatrade website.

He gets about 90% of his work through word of mouth or checkatrade and is always in demand.

I would agree with what others have said about getting costs down - don't always go for the cheapest quote unless you are sure that what you are getting is what you want and that you have a good rapport with the tradesperson. Hubby has done many jobs where the customers have supplied their own sanitary ware for bathrooms etc to save a few quid and because it is cheap there are usually problems with it ie faults etc. This usually means that the customer has to go back to the supplier and arrange for replacements, which can then delay the work of the tradesperson. If he then has to run over the timescale given he is within his rights to charge for his extra time as it is not his fault. On the other hand if he is supplying the products and there is a problem then it is up to him to sort out with his supplier and should not result in the customer having to pay for extra time taken to complete the job.

Take a look at: www. checkatrade.com

Ainsleyfatcat_2

A roofer, a roofer. My kingdom for a roofer!
I can't tell you how many of them Ive had down to give me a quote for a simple roof repair. They never ring back when you've given the go ahead or give you a stupid quote amount ie. over £1000 when others have quoted under £500, don't send the written quote when requested and when reminded, still don't bother (I don't ask for one now as I think that they don't like doing it). I finally thought I'd found the one, seemed genuine (mind you, don't they all!) and the quote seemed reasonable (around £300). He said that he would contact me in about two weeks, five weeks went on, no contact, so, I rang him up on fifth week asking what was happening, had he fogotten me (softly,softly). No, he hadn't and he would contact me in about two weeks. Well, that was four weeks ago and I still haven't heard anything. What do you do. Do you have to ask for a completely new roof to actually get a roofer to come down and do a job! It is so frustrating!:(

scubatony

SailorSam wrote: »

Is there any correlation between the decline in decent tradesmen and the rise in Diy.

As an Electrical Contractor of some 37 years employing 15 electricians, all the Contractors talk amongst themselves and the talk is while ever the "sheds" ( you know who they are). . . .are selling consumer units,cable,switches, sockets etc, you will never be able to police the good and the bad.
"Part P" was a good idea,it got rid of a lot of cowboys the rest have just gone underground.

Reference this thread,from an electrical prespective.

Ask the electrician is he a member of any organistions

• N.I.C.E.I.C . for their website go to google and type the letters
• E.C.A . for their website go to google and type the letters
• J.I.B . for their website go to google and type the letters

From a plumbing point of view,dealing with anything gas related

• Gassafe .for their website go to google and type the letters

I think you will get the idea,if they can not or will not show you registration do yourself a favour

WALK AWAY

You can only DIE once :A

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