Tradesmen - Website recommendations?

davidjwest

Is there a website where you can find good joiners/roofers etc from?

We need some work doing and rather than picking at random out of the paper I'd like to make a more informed choice. I have tried Google and found one site which has "reviews" of tradesmen but you have to write a review before you can read any, which seems a bit pointless especially in my case as I've nobody to "review".

Anyone?

Thanks!

If anyone knows a good joiner or roofer in the Leeds area then please let me know!

whitelabel

davidjwest wrote:

Is there a website where you can find good joiners/roofers etc from?

We need some work doing and rather than picking at random out of the paper I'd like to make a more informed choice. I have tried Google and found one site which has "reviews" of tradesmen but you have to write a review before you can read any, which seems a bit pointless especially in my case as I've nobody to "review".

Anyone?

Thanks!

If anyone knows a good joiner or roofer in the Leeds area then please let me know!

contact your local trading standards

they wont be able to tell you if any company is bad or how many complaints they have received etc but they will be able to give you list of companies in your area which people have given good comments on or are members of theire aproved traders list

davidjwest

Thanks for the advice, I will get in touch with the TS.

I've actually decided to make a website for this type of info anyway, if I get time!

What type of info would be relevant though? Obviously name of company/person, type of trade (eg roofing), locality, comments etc.

I'd probably use a rating system so you could rate each tradesman/company out of say 5 for things like, quality of workmanship, price, reliability etc but what else would people like to see?

Rex_Mundi

The idea of a trades website is a good one, but you would have to really think out how to go about it.

If a dodgy builder saw your site as a way of getting free advertising. How are you going to stop him writing in as a happy customer and giving his own details? Unless you physically see some of the builders work, you are never going to be sure that they are any good. So easy for a dodgy builder to ask a couple of friends to write in and recommend them. If someone hires a builder they've found on your site and he turns out to be a bad'n. They are going to spread the word that the site is worthless in its recommendations. It would be your reputation that suffers even though you offered the info in good faith.

Far better idea to start a site like this for your local area. This way you can start with builders where you can see the results of their work and speak to people that have had work done by the builder in question. That way you can guarantee that the recommendations on your site are good ones.

As I said, the idea is a good one, but if you don't think it through carefully you could end up promoting exactly the kind of tradesmen that you want everyone to avoid.

davidjwest

Rex_Mundi wrote:

The idea of a trades website is a good one, but you would have to really think out how to go about it.

If a dodgy builder saw your site as a way of getting free advertising. How are you going to stop him writing in as a happy customer and giving his own details? Unless you physically see some of the builders work, you are never going to be sure that they are any good. So easy for a dodgy builder to ask a couple of friends to write in and recommend them. If someone hires a builder they've found on your site and he turns out to be a bad'n. They are going to spread the word that the site is worthless in its recommendations. It would be your reputation that suffers even though you offered the info in good faith.

Far better idea to start a site like this for your local area. This way you can start with builders where you can see the results of their work and speak to people that have had work done by the builder in question. That way you can guarantee that the recommendations on your site are good ones.

As I said, the idea is a good one, but if you don't think it through carefully you could end up promoting exactly the kind of tradesmen that you want everyone to avoid.

Absolutely, the above had occured to me as well as many other issues, including if a builder sues me for libel as someone has slagged them off!

There are ways to reduce the chances of this type of abuse but it isn't foolproof. However if someone did abuse the system in the way you mentioned and people used them after reading my site, their own follow up reviews would quickly weed out the culprit and it would be quite easy to spot I suspect as well.

I imagine for example the average tradesman might have one or two reviews written about him a month let's say, if he suddenly started getting 5 excellent reviews a week it would look a bit odd!

Anyway, thanks for the comments, keep them coming please!

For example, what criteria would you say are important when giving out "ratings"? I was thinking quality of workmanship, punctuality, cost etc, any more?

StockportGerbil

Hi!
British Gas have some sort of approved list of tradesmen accessable from their https://www.house.co.uk website. Having said that the builders I contacted about getting quotes for a loft conversion done couldn't be bothered to call back or come round when they said they would and maybe I was unlucky.

I've asked in the new regional boards for recommendations for Garages / mechanics in my part of the world and got some helpful replies.

Regards

Kev

davidjwest

OK, I've a very simple script in place for this, you can have a play if you like:

Tradesmen Test Site

So far there is only one "review" in there so you can view that or enter some data of your own - only use test data for now though please, just make it up as you go along!

When searching if you leave the postcode box blank it will show you all the data in the database, or you can search on postcodes (only the first half, eg LS19)

Feedback and comments are welcome, but don't mention the presentation yet as I've given that very little thought until I get the database working 100%

Lemoncurd

If you have a local site for your area https://www.netmums.com has a household help page with local recommendations. Some areas with established sites have loads of great recommendations although other areas don't have many so it depends where you live.

superfly_2

https://www.tradesmen-recommended.co.uk just seems to be a business directory where tradesmen pay to advertise

davidjwest

superfly wrote:

https://www.tradesmen-recommended.co.uk just seems to be a business directory where tradesmen pay to advertise

You can sign up as a householder and then advertise what work you want doing. Tradesmen then approach you offering to do the work.

I personally don't like it this way round, I'd prefer to do the approaching after selecting the most suitable person/company to do the job, hence my idea.

I suppose the site makes money from tradesmen signing up, getting work etc, seems a little bit wrong to me though. They make money from tradesmen, so why would they want to block anyone who wasn't up to scratch.

Anyway, after signing up a week ago and advertising my jobs I've had no response.

scottishlizzie

Last year someone local to me launched a website called wordmouth.com trying to provide the sort of service you have described. I have just searched for it and unfortunately it appears not to be live anymore.

I started typing this to tell you about it - and then thought I better just check it is still going and it obviously isn't - sorry! Good idea though.