Checkatrade

Leif

NonGeographicalMan wrote: »

That would potentially mean that CheckaTrade is effectively corrupt and dishonest or at best severely lacking in ethical integrity and good judgment given the many claims they make for the genuine nature of the reviews on their website.

On Ebay the seller pays the piper but as only buyers and not sellers can now leave Negative Feedback it does not take long for a dodgy but regular trader to have his feedback score rack up a fair few strongly negative reviews.

This may only take that trader's feedback score down to 98.8% (many buyers are still afraid to leave negative feedback because they wrongly think it will allow the seller to leave negative feedback about them). However as a broad rule of thumb if an Ebay trader has sold 1,000 items or more and they have a Feedback score less than 99.8% then don't deal with them as the reported Negative Feedbacks are only the Top of the Iceberg. It is the fact that on CheckaTrade even very well known local cowboys do not have even one serious negative review about them that tells its own sad story.:eek::mad:

In my own case I had cowboys bodge a bathroom refit. CheckATrade concluded that in addition to the £3,000 already paid, I owed further money to the cowboys, but as a gesture of goodwill, the additional money would be written off. I had to remove all tiles, and discard the bath, and have the entire room redone. Trading Standards subsequently agreed that the work had been done to below the legally acceptable standard, and that I was due compensation. I eventually received £1,800 compensation thanks to Trading Standards, which still left me out of pocket by ~£1,000.

I think CheckATrade is an unethical organisation, with questionable business practices, and I am not convinced they are legally entitled to make the claims they make on their advertisements. They support the trade, and when the trade does awful work, they try and smooth talk the customer into thinking that they have sorted it out. When asked about what conversations they have had with the trade, they hide behind the Data Protection Act, and refuse to say anything. Whenever asked why they could not do such and such to help customers, they hide behind legalese, saying that they cannot do such and such. But they are the ones who created the Terms and Conditions for their members. :mad: I would say more, but I don't want them to have cause to have this thread removed.

I have been told by several people who claim to be CheckATrade members, that it is easy to leave fake feedback. I cannot verify that claim. But even when the feedback is real, if a few weeks later the work falls to pieces, CheckATrade do not allow you to edit your review. You can withdraw it, but you cannot change it to reflect the fact that the work was poop. I suspect most people cannot spot poor work. I was lucky, I had people here point out many faults I had missed, such as not priming plaster prior to tiling, which was a serious fault.

Oddly enough I had one builder from CheckATrade, and I thought most of the work including a boiler installation was decent. When I found out that the gas pipe was undersized, they agreed to replace it, and they did so within a couple of weeks, without argument, which was very good. I would not have been able to add that to a CheckATrade review, as the site does not allow that, and curiously they are no longer on CheckATrade anyway.

Professor_Dent

Just to give you further insight into Checkatrade, not only do they not allow negative comments on their website, they do not allow you to post negative comments about Checkatrade.

On Mumsnet there was a lengthy thread just like this one, in which members complained about Checkatrade, and how neg reviews somehow never made it onto their site. Guess what? Checkatrade hit Mumsnet with a legal letter forcing them to remove the posts - and then tried to get them to hand over the identities of the members who had posted these comments! What a nice crowd.

leveller2911

Professor_Dent wrote: »

Just to give you further insight into
Checkatrade, not only do they not allow negative comments on their website, they
do not allow you to post negative comments about Checkatrade.





On Mumsnet there was a lengthy thread just like this one, in which members
complained about Checkatrade, and how neg reviews somehow never made it onto
their site. Guess what? Checkatrade hit Mumsnet with a legal letter forcing them
to remove the posts - and then tried to get them to hand over the identities of
the members who had posted these comments! What a nice crowd.

I blame the steady stream of gullible idoits who are taken in by their sales pitch. They would be better off spending their money on a few thousand printed flyers...Or blowing it all on the roulette wheel..

I wonder if anyone has complained to trading standards about Checkatrade.

NonGeographicalMan

Professor_Dent wrote: »

On Mumsnet there was a lengthy thread just like this one, in which members complained about Checkatrade, and how neg reviews somehow never made it onto their site. Guess what? Checkatrade hit Mumsnet with a legal letter forcing them to remove the posts - and then tried to get them to hand over the identities of the members who had posted these comments! What a nice crowd.

Clearly MoneySavingExpert is made of sterner stuff when it comes to resisiting vacuous and cheap to send lawyers letters making threats of potential legal action that they have zero serious intention of carrying through. This thread as well as the long running SD&R/Adaptive Affinity fake £15 cashback scam and the slowly growing thread about repeated problems with online only Aviva motor insurance subsidiary QuoteMeHappy show that MSE is not easily intimidated by unfair threats from companies who repeatedly stick two fingers up at consumers.

It is extremely sad that there are some businesses who only see business as a way to make money for its directors and shareholders and whoe do not seem to see operating fairly, responsibly and ethically as also being an inherent part of the process of running a business.

Unfortunately the bully boys often get their way with having comments removed from smaller web discussion forums. I had the same experience with a cowboy local car body repairer that used substandard paint and numerous other bodged repair techniques and had accumulated 20 or more dreadful and clearly genuine reveiw over a five year period. Yet when the dodgy repairer threatened legal action reviewcentre caved in on the basis that as none of us had been to court against the repairer and legal judgments in our favour this meant they could not risk letting our comments remain.

Some of these website are much too timid about standing up to bullying legal threats. If there is an organised campaign to slate an organisation the negative comments will accumulate much more quickly over a shorter period and the content of the posts will all be similar and they will also tend to be short as they do not represent real personal sagas. Lengthy stories accumulated over a very long period are a sure sign of genuine posts.

Being of the wrong gender and age group I never have patronised Mumsnet (even though I do listen to Radio 4 Womans Hour on occasion) probably just on the basis that the idea that mums have anything much in common other than breastfeeding, childcare and school issues is really somewhat absurd. The idea in particular that they have something in common as consumers outside conventional childrens goods purchases also seems to be a preposterous idea.

I bet a site that called itself Dadsnet would get shut down on the basis that it was sexist. Of course as old steretypes do still persist (especially in the UK far more than the USA) there does seem to be a shortage of female patrons of car discussions forum or sites discussing the history of the railway system. Nonetheless any female members who wished to discuss thes issues would be welcome.

ossie

I wished to complain about a CheckAtrade member who had glowing Ten out of Ten reviews. He was threatening and abusive on the phone because we cancelled 2 days later and it was logged by the Police in case of repercussions. Trying to complain without a repercussion from the member is impossible. CheckAtrade need to get their act together or their business plan will no longer exist as people will not trust their reviews. I no longer trust them!

marybishop

Have a look at the 'Buy With Confidence' scheme run by Trading Standards www.buywithconfidence.gov.uk.

NonGeographicalMan

marybishop wrote: »

Have a look at the 'Buy With Confidence' scheme run by Trading Standards www.buywithconfidence.gov.uk .

Looking at the current map it doesn't seem much use so far if you don't live in the South East or South West. It also doesn't seem much use in Central London (a notorious home of cowboy workmen).

Adam_Callow

hi all,
I just wanted to say that from feedback we saw from this forum and similar forums, with the help of over 1,000 Expert tradesmen up and down the country we decided to build a site to help Expert tradesmen and the public.

it is free to use for both customers and tradesmen.

this means that we don't rely on any income from members.

All reviews are allowed on the site and never removed.

We have partnered with manufactures and builders merchants to advertise on the site to ensure we can keep it live and busy.

We were tired of expert tradesmen being ripped off and the public being victim of rogue builders gaming the system.

We go live soon and i know some people that read this would like a deal..so if you google ' I Need An Expert.co .uk ' then you will find our site and we are giving away £10 vouchers at the moment.

We love working with our members, we wored with over 1,000 tradesmen to build a site they love and allows HONEST feedback.

We saw that certain sites were increasing their fees and only pushing up prices for customers.

We are on a mission...sorry for dropping in the middle of this thread but it made for very interesting reading..

There are thousands of great tradesmen out there, trust me.

Adam_Callow

this has been edited as i accidentally posted the same post twice. sorry guys.

leveller2911

Adam_Callow wrote: »

We are on a mission...sorry for dropping in the middle of this thread but it made for very interesting reading..

There are thousands of great tradesmen out there, trust me.

Your 1005 correct Adam there are thousands of good,hardworking,honest tradesmen out there and its sad that the industry has been tarnished by the few cowboy,rogue traders.

Having said that why did you feel the need to post the web address when the rules clearly state your not allowed to post spam. Your website may be just what the industry needs but you haven't done a good job of selling a website to people who are looking for honest tradesmen when you broke the forum rules with your 1st post...

Gotta be honest with you Adam, I would be wary of anyone promoting any website,let alone one that relies on "honesty"...;)