Great 'how to find decent tradesmen' hunt

Payless_2

Alasdair_Bell wrote: »

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

Would you have anything to do with MyBuilder? As I said before they weren't much help when my joiner did a botch job and then refused to answer my calls

Lukey_lukey

I'm a builder with a good reputation. I can tell you that you must ALWAYS go through recomendation and ask to see their work first. If they are any good then they will have clients that will be more than happy to let you veiw it. That's aslong as they can prove it's their work obviously ( I take photos if i remember while actually doing the work there). I really advise against using sites online to find "good" tradesmen, they are full of phoney info. If possible always go for a small company(prefereably someone that works on their own or in a partnership) they should be cheaper and tend to put more effort into their work. I keep below the VAT barrier so I can already be that much lower than any bigger company.
If you do all of the above then you shouldn't need to haggle as they'll give you the best price they can. If you haggle it may only result in them cutting a corner somewhere to get that money back. Get in writing what they are going to do. I do a break down, not down to each item but down to each stage of the job so the clien doesn't get any of these "extras" at the end of the job unless they do actually add something while I'm working there. And NEVER pay upfront!!!!! Us builders have accounts so we don't have to pay for building materials straight away.

And ALWAYS, ALWAYS supply them with tea if you can :P We love that kind of treatment!



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MAMMA_P_2

I work for a Home Improvement Agency in Lancashire which supplies lists of recommended local tradesmen to anyone living in our area. The tradesmen have to be checked out by Trading Standards and we request three references from recent jobs. We monitor the standard of their work and check with clients after each job that they are happy.
Our umbrella organisation is Foundations and if you want to find a Home Improvement Agency in your area, I would suggest you contact them or click on their website which is foundations.uk.com.

Lukey_lukey

MAMMA_P wrote: »

I work for a Home Improvement Agency in Lancashire which supplies lists of recommended local tradesmen to anyone living in our area. The tradesmen have to be checked out by Trading Standards and we request three references from recent jobs. We monitor the standard of their work and check with clients after each job that they are happy.
Our umbrella organisation is Foundations and if you want to find a Home Improvement Agency in your area, I would suggest you contact them or click on their website which is foundations.uk.com.

References can be made up. There has to be proof of their work like them in a photo doing the work.
I've had to go over lots of work that was done by builders recomended from these type of sites that say they have been checked by trading standards etc etc and also over builders work who were recomended by the local COUNCIL. TOO many back-handers are going on in that area.

fluffpot

Interesting thread. As an electrician who doesn't advertise and gets most of my word of mouth I would strongly suggest the friends and family route.

However if you are new to an area, Which local is a good bet- I'm not a member, but have been 'posted' on it by happy customers and now get a fair amount of work from this. I have also been 'posted' on a few local discussion forums which have a tradespersons thread - so might be checking out if your patch has one.

Finally I had a bit of run in with Mybuilder because they continue to have tradesmen/women claiming they can carry out major electrical work, when they don't have the proper qualifications/Part P memberships. However, my builder said it wasn't their responsibility to check this! Pffft!

Fluff

MAMMA_P_2

To Lukey Lukey

Have you ever dealt with a Home Improvement Agency? If you had, you would know that we are not a "site" but our Agency in particular is a registered charity staffed by extremely professional caseworkers who go far far over their remit to help people. Perhaps you should check us out before tarring us with this brush?

If you do want to contact us, our Agency is in Accrington, Lancashire and is called Homewise.

Taffybiker

When I was looking for a local aerial installer (my old one was definately no good) so I could switch to freeview, I spent quite a while searching online looking for recommendations and reviews but in the end decided I was getting nowhere.
I am lucky enough to live near an aerial manufacturer. I paid them a visit and asked them to recommend someone. They gave me a couple of names and numbers, with a clear strong bias towards one in particular.
So I phoned the number and told him his supplier had recommended him. Result! He turned up on time, did the job well and charged a reasonable rate.

dan_m2k

We bought our first house a year or so ago and we've had a load of terrible tradesmen through the door, both by recommendation and ones we found ourselves.

Our experience of ratedpeople and the like hasn't been a positive one. Of the jobs I posted there, I got sketchy and dubious replies and the only guy that showed up I asked him to leave as he obviously saw pound-signs at the amount of work the house needed and assumed he would be getting it all.

The plaster we know and trust came as the result of him canvassing for work around the area, he's local and we gave him his first job on the basis that if we were not happy, he'd walk away without payment. This was very successful and he's since had a load more work from us as he's done a great job.

A sparky through recommendation seemed dangerously under qualified and expensive and awful to get hold of. Needless to say he didn't get the work. One I found randomly through google came, sorted it in double quick time and was nice and cheap.

Finally, the gas plumber that seemed okay, got down to fitting our new heating (did a good job, later re-inspected by someone else) but didn't come back with the paperwork we needed as his Corgi got withdrawn shortly after doing the job for bad workmanship. This was after checking on corgi's website etc which showed no problem.

In summary. Get a load of quotes both recommendation and direct, define (in writing if you can) what you want doing and trust your gut based on their response to the quote. A written specification of work seemed to scare off the dodgy tradesmen as there was no scope for them pulling a fast one. Also being on the premise of immediate payment on successful completion made a lot of guys act promptly and do a decent job. It also gives you a number of price-points at which you can select based on your expectation and weeds out any that are very much over or under the price you "should" be paying for a decent job.


Luckily now we have a group of tradesmen we trust to do work but always keep to the rules we've defined above. Hope these help someone.

Lukey_lukey

MAMMA_P wrote: »

To Lukey Lukey

Have you ever dealt with a Home Improvement Agency? If you had, you would know that we are not a "site" but our Agency in particular is a registered charity staffed by extremely professional caseworkers who go far far over their remit to help people. Perhaps you should check us out before tarring us with this brush?

If you do want to contact us, our Agency is in Accrington, Lancashire and is called Homewise.

No I haven't but I know any good tradesmen doesn't have to go down this route. All the tradesmen I use don't need to advertise or use agencys. Recomendation has always been enough.

polka.dot

Checkatrade.com
I used it several times and always happy with the results.