No Rogue Traders Here

judygarland

I'm thinking of using this company and I would be interested to hear from anyone that has used them (either as a trader or a consumer).

Have been using Rated People and am looking at what else is out there.

Cheers

macman

What company? No link posted.

spirit

I haven't had very good results with Rated People. I found that they didn't instill me with confidence re the job i wanted doing (bathroom refit).

I now use Checkatrade as it works differently. you put in the type of trades you are looking for and you can see what other customers have rated them on a number of key issues, like price, cleanliness etc.

I had some tree surgeons i found on there last week and am happy with the work they did.

Leif

That looks very interesting. I am very cynical about most schemes.

I had two companies from CheckATrade, one lot were cowboys, I threw them out mid way through a bathroom refit. CheckATRade did nothing whatsoever to help me get compensation. Ifinally got £1800 compensation, as they were also on a Trading Standards scheme called Buy With Confidence. Unlike CAT, TS take complaints seriously. The second company fitted a boiler and did some building work. I thought the boiler work was good. Today Worcester Bosch visited to carry out a minor warranty repair on my boiler, and discovered that the gas pipe between the meter and the boiler is too small, and hence my 30kW boiler can only operate at 25kW. Had there been other appliances on the gas line, it would have been a serious safety hazard.

6 months ago I had the boiler serviced, by a chap who did my neighbour's boiler. Anyway, he did not even take the cover off. WB confirmed that he could not service it without taking off the cover. I found out later he was on CAT. So my conclusion is avoid CAT like the plague. Companies on CAT are useless. I've had 3, 1 were cowboys, 1 made a serious mistake installing a boiler, and one pretended to service a boiler.

I suspect RatedPeople are rubbish too. There are so many reasons why these schemes are scheisse, the main one being that the companies that run them do not give a fig about you, the customer. They ignore complaints, and do not help you get recompense. CAT did nothing to help me get recompense, other than chat to the trades, and accept what they said.

The NRTH scheme might actually be good. It does not guarantee that the trade is good, but it does mean that if they screw you, Trading Standards will mediate, and if they do not play ball, they will be removed from the scheme. I know Trading Standards are overworked and underfunded, and liasing with private enterprise might be a good way to help the consumer. I did say might though.

macman wrote: »

What company?

No Rogue Traders Here.

judygarland

Leif wrote: »

That looks very interesting. I am very cynical about most schemes.

I had two companies from CheckATrade, one lot were cowboys, I threw them out mid way through a bathroom refit. CheckATRade did nothing whatsoever to help me get compensation. Ifinally got £1800 compensation, as they were also on a Trading Standards scheme called Buy With Confidence. Unlike CAT, TS take complaints seriously. The second company fitted a boiler and did some building work. I thought the boiler work was good. Today Worcester Bosch visited to carry out a minor warranty repair on my boiler, and discovered that the gas pipe between the meter and the boiler is too small, and hence my 30kW boiler can only operate at 25kW. Had there been other appliances on the gas line, it would have been a serious safety hazard.

6 months ago I had the boiler serviced, by a chap who did my neighbour's boiler. Anyway, he did not even take the cover off. WB confirmed that he could not service it without taking off the cover. I found out later he was on CAT. So my conclusion is avoid CAT like the plague. Companies on CAT are useless. I've had 3, 1 were cowboys, 1 made a serious mistake installing a boiler, and one pretended to service a boiler.

I suspect RatedPeople are rubbish too. There are so many reasons why these schemes are scheisse, the main one being that the companies that run them do not give a fig about you, the customer. They ignore complaints, and do not help you get recompense. CAT did nothing to help me get recompense, other than chat to the trades, and accept what they said.

The NRTH scheme might actually be good. It does not guarantee that the trade is good, but it does mean that if they screw you, Trading Standards will mediate, and if they do not play ball, they will be removed from the scheme. I know Trading Standards are overworked and underfunded, and liasing with private enterprise might be a good way to help the consumer. I did say might though.



No Rogue Traders Here.

Blimey, sounds like you have had a nightmare!

The reason for my posting was due to my local Trading Standards ceasing their in house free scheme and asking all traders on their list to move to "No Rogue Traders Here". The only thing is, it is very expensive. You pay an annual subscription, £10.00 per lead and then 3% of the turnover of the job!

judygarland

macman wrote: »

What company?

Sorry the company is "No Rogue Traders Here". I think they may be a Midlands based company.

I would be really interested to hear people's experiences of using them both as a consumer finding trades using them and also as a trader.

keystone

All sites of this nature are a menace. Traders get on their books by paying to be there. As long as the site gets the dosh they don't care two hoots. I refuse to use them - mind you I don't need to.

Cheers

judygarland

keystone wrote: »

All sites of this nature are a menace. Traders get on their books by paying to be there. As long as the site gets the dosh they don't care two hoots. I refuse to use them - mind you I don't need to.

Cheers

Our local council has run a scheme where they interview you, check 3 references from customers, check a trade reference, inspect your insurance policies etc and then add you to their list for free. Then when people call, they pass on your number. What we liked about it was, if a customer had 3 quotes and they were priced about the same, they would choose our business over the others because we were vetted by Trading Standards.

The Council have now said they are no longer going to offer this service and they are going recommend we sign up to "No Rogue Traders Here". We don't really need to use it as a lot of our work is recommendation and then the rest comes from our website and a local paper ad. It's really annoying as all of our stationery has the logo on for the scheme that is being scrapped.

From a business point of view it's a very expensive way to obtain work should you need to have to use companies like this. In our line of work, the profit margins are tight and if 85% of the turnover is paying for materials, it doesn't leave much to pay their 3% fee which you have to pay if you complete a job through them.

We have previously used Rated People for the odd day we might need to fill and you have problems with a lot of timewasters on there. I had one person who just wanted to know how much something cost, not because they were going to have the work done, but just because they were just curious! You also get given dud telephone numbers and turn up to quotes and the people are not in and they never answer the phone again! All of this after paying for the lead!

Leif

judygarland wrote: »

Blimey, sounds like you have had a nightmare!

The reason for my posting was due to my local Trading Standards ceasing their in house free scheme and asking all traders on their list to move to "No Rogue Traders Here". The only thing is, it is very expensive. You pay an annual subscription, £10.00 per lead and then 3% of the turnover of the job!

Yes, a nightmare. The kitchen people were great, and the stove people were great too. You say it is expensive, why not just add on the cost to the quote. As you say later, if it offers people reassurance, they will pay that extra money. Out of £2,000, £60 for reassurance is not expensive.

Leif

keystone wrote: »

All sites of this nature are a menace. Traders get on their books by paying to be there. As long as the site gets the dosh they don't care two hoots. I refuse to use them - mind you I don't need to.

Cheers

In this case I suggest you actually look at the web site, and find out about the scheme before you form an opinion.

It looks to be the same as the Trading Standards Buy With Confidence scheme, which is not the same as CheckABodger, RatedBodgers and MyHammer (in the hands of a bodger).

judygarland

Leif wrote: »

Yes, a nightmare. The kitchen people were great, and the stove people were great too. You say it is expensive, why not just add on the cost to the quote. As you say later, if it offers people reassurance, they will pay that extra money. Out of £2,000, £60 for reassurance is not expensive.

You have to pay £10.00 per lead! Three people will buy the lead so you have a 1/3 chance of getting the job. If you then do the job, you pay 3% of the turnover. So say you have a job that you bill to the customer at £1000 and you have spent £850 in materials, you lose £30.00 of your profit, it's also cost you £10.00 to buy the lead and then you have paid your annual subscription which works out at £30.00 a month. You are not left with a lot after that. Margins are so tight nowadays that you are constantly undercut. Prices have been driven down because people just havent got the money.

Also, you could carry out 6 quotes and only get one because there are people working for next to nothing. Those 6 quotes will have cost you £60.00.

I'm just gutted our Local Council have scrapped their free scheme and wish that they had set something up rather than farming out to an organisation who's primary objective is to make a profit.