CheckATrade any good?

Leif

Without having done a survey, I suspect CheckATrade is pretty good. I find I get better service from ebay sellers, often one (wo)man outfits, than other online sellers because of the feedback system. They really do care about the feedback.

I finally got the itemised invoice from the builder, with a couple of items listed twice thus adding £2K to the sum, but he was quick to correct it when the errors were pointed out, and I paid the outstanding sum. A little gentle pressure is working. It would be interesting to know how many issues is typical when people have building work done.

evoke

I have used a lot of these trade-review sites for posting jobs and getting work done on my house.

I am very sceptical about some of the feedback. A lot of the initial feedback seems to be from mates of the tradesman who big each other up. On a couple of these sites that provide ratings for tradesman, I check for the following:

1. How many jobs won versus how much feedback. If people decline to leave feedback then that's usually a bad sign. A tradesman can have a 100% feedback rating based on just 3 jobs out of 50 won. The other 47 customers didn't leave feedback - hmm...very suspicious as far as I am concerned.

2. Check the date of the last feedback - it could have been from a year ago and the tradesman has done a dozen jobs since then and nobody left him feedback for those. Again, very suspicious.

3. Check the types of jobs that were done versus what you need to get done. If a heating engineer has only every replaced a radiator valve and you're looking to get an entire central heating system installed then he may not be the man for the job!

Hope that helps someone out there!

Leif

evoke: Very good points. The bathroom fitters I will use have good feedback, and it is regular and up to date. They are a two man band, so it looks like most customers give feedback.

It can be hard to judge because the size of the firm influences the meaning of feedback. A and B might both have 10 good reviews, but if A does 10 times as many jobs, then clearly B is probably the better company. Also it is possible that most work is done for trade e.g. a builder does bathrooms for a house builder, and gets no feedback, so there is no way to judge.

As for fake reviews, well on CheckATrade there is checking up at the start, and possibly random checking later on, though that is a guess.

As you say, reviews are to be read with a critical eye, and ones thinking hat on.

dmacdonald_2

I have just used a plumber, electrician, plasterer, kitchen fitter, tiler and heating guy all off Checkatrade and am delighted with them all. As a very keen eBay I discussed Checkatrade with them all and they echo what others have said. It generates them enquiries BUT they reply on good feedback. A small number fiddle the system but all feedback is validated by email confirmation. There's also a hidden section where the traders can comment on us, their customers, but not specifically by name or absolute address. As with eBay though you need to choosy and careful.

genuine-tradsman

have been called in to put right work done by checkatrade members or not done i should say a few times now
would never rec them if you want a good tradesman fully vetted go to tradeing standards they have a list of local tradesman
people will not complain as they do not want comebacks this has happened in the past

Leif

I will add further experiences, even though I have described them in another thread. I did not ask the builder to do my bathroom as I found him too difficult to deal with, and too many niggling issues. Unfortunately the people I got from CheckATrade to do the bathroom turned out to be incompetent bodgers, and dishonest. I threw them out after one week, when lots of trades who saw photos pointed out serious mistakes, such as cement based tile adhesive used directly on unprimed plaster, and tiles almost falling off. Anyway, I posted a review with 1/10 for quality. They posted a response which said "We used an adhesive which does not require primer according to the manufacturer's datasheet, any faulty tiles would have been replaced, we were prevented from inspecting the work, we have refunded some money and we are hoping to resolve the issues." Every single claim in that response (which I have paraphrased to prevent you finding the review, this has yet to go to court) is false. I have shown documents to CheckATrade including letters from the bodgers which prove that the response contains lies, and CheckATrade will not do anything. My view of CheckATrade is that if you want to employ a bodger, they can provide one. I should add that SOME trades are very good. Unfortunately a significant proportion are bad, and cannot get repeat work on personal recommendation hence they use CheckATrade. I will not add further comments about CheckATrade until after the court case.

anotherbaldrick

I have referred to the Checkatrade directory for several tradesmen including new condensing boiler and chimney sweeping for the wood burner. They have all been good and I now make it my first point of reference when needing something done . I have no pecuniary connection with the guide, just find it works for me !

NonGeographicalMan

I'm sorry but I just don't believe that the Reviews on Check A Trade are in any way honest or reliable. It looks to me like a scam where any trader can set himself up and make it look like he has hundreds of contented customers not one of whom has ever been unhappy or felt ripped off.

I have just been looking at satellite aerial installers and this is a well known difficult area with even the simplest job like replacing an LNB usually resulting in a £200 bill. It is an area that also inherently encourages dodgy workmen because some of the work is quite dangerous (climbing old roofs to fix aerials to chimney stacks etc) but the money that can be earned is very large.

So looking up satellite installers in my area every single one of them has a customer satisfaction score way over 9 and 95% of the reviews score the installer at 9.8 on every point. Now may be I have an over cynical view of humanity but I think its really very unusuall for customers to give a 9 or 10 out of 10 rating on every point. Any site that was realistic would have plenty of reviews for some traders with scores of only 3 or 4 on some on the points even if it was only on value (since good quality workmen can often still be very expensive). But instead all we get is a choice between installers with average scores of 9.8 out of 10 to 10 out of 10. This just isn't at all credible.

A couple of the contractors I have even spoken to on the phone and it was clear that they wanted to charge as much as possible and would scarcely even bother turning out to a property if they couldn't get £250 off you. Despite that all their customer reviews say they are delighted with them and such nice chaps. I really don't believe that all customers of all tradesmen apart from me are in reality that happy with them.

This is Britian after all where loads of workmen don't hold any professional qualifications at all and can often be exceedingly rude to customers if they take issue with the quality of their work. Or does CheckATrade have some special magic formular where only the angels of the profession are allowed to have a listing on their website?:think::silenced:

EDIT:- I just found this discussion on the diynot forum at http://www.diynot.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=2025775 which seems to take a far less rosy view of the business practices of checkatrade. I think this thread has clearly been hijacked by either CheckATrade employees or several of the tradesmen who advertise there.

davilown

The issue I have with check a trade is that feedback is generally given within 2 weeks of the job being done, missing any potential issues. I had 20m2 of Karndean put down in my kitchen and wish I'd gone with a personal recommendation rather than check a trade.

I have two extension going up soon (subject to PP!) and will be using personal recommendations and Which rather than checkatrade.

NonGeographicalMan

davilown wrote: »

The issue I have with check a trade is that feedback is generally given within 2 weeks of the job being done, missing any potential issues. I had 20m2 of Karndean put down in my kitchen and wish I'd gone with a personal recommendation rather than check a trade.

I agree that more significant problems may only emerge later with some jobs like roofing, plumbing or tiling (or even with a humble aerial or satellite dish) but even so there is just no way that a normal selection of customers would mark their workman this high in the real world.

Although I know there has been grade inflation in Academic exams in recent years it is still just not in the nature of people to give a 10 or 9 out of 10 mark for every point of assessment unless they are being financially induced themselves in some way to do so (i.e. give me a 10 out of 10 score on CheckATrade and I will knock 15% off the labour on your bill). A normal person would consider either 7 or 8 out of 10 to be quite a generous mark for competent work and even 6 out of 10 as not being that damning. A normal person would only give 9 or 10 out of 10 for really exceptional quality of work and/or at a really good price.

Also the guy who was viciously attacking the original customer of a tradesman posting back on page 1 of this thread sounds to me like he is some kind of cowboy workman himself who is in the habit of launching nasty attacks on customers and their own psychological makeup and motivations in the event that they ever dare try and give a bad review of his work. We all know who these people are and they are just the same kind of people who resort to leaping out of their White Vans and trying to force you out of your car out on the public highway if you dare so much as flash or toot them after they cut you up or dangerously overtake you on a blind bend in to oncoming traffic. The reputation of the average British tradesman (i.e. poorly qualified and prone to bodging jobs) precedes him and presumably this is why they need CheckATrade to pull the wool over the eyes of more naive customers.

My only further thought on CheckATrade is that its reviews are so clealry lacking in any possible form of credibility that I am amazed that serious action has not yet been taken against it by Trading Standards and by the OFT under the Entrerprise Act. So far as I can see the entire point of CheckATrade seems to be to lure unsuspecting members of the public in to using Cowboy Tradesmen.