Are buywithconfidence.gov.uk tradesmen allowed to skirt the review process like this?

bluedoganchorite

So after searching on the site and contacting them for a quote, the relevant company said they only did work on new builds nowadays. If this was true why would they still be active on the gov site at all? They would have direct government contracts. The reason for the lie was because he mentioned that he knew another tradesman that DID still deal with the general public, someone that didn't have any online presence or computer knowledge, someone he helped get more customers.... can you see where this is going?

Both of them came to the house independently, probably to try to cement the fact that they are from seperate companies. The quote I got was the most overpriced and sneakily written pos I have ever seen, as if by someone that was raised in an orphange run solely by tech support scammers. It also mentioned halfway through that it was an estimate.

However there obviously will be gullible people that pay the 50 thousand for a new bathroom and complain when they realize half way through the !!!!!! are asking for lots more money. But they can't leave a bad review because it's technically another company/tradesman that they were dealing with. If the patsy company gets a bad review, they will make another one for the next victim. On the quote it was made quite clear that the patsy tradesman was the sole proprietor of the patsy company.

The main company has 5 stars on the gov site, it sickens me to think about the number of people that they may have ripped off.

Doozergirl

Sorry, but what?  

canaldumidi

Why not feed back your concerns to the scheme? There's little anyone here can do.......

https://www.buywithconfidence.gov.uk/contact-us/

Megaross

All of these checkatrade type places are crap, there's always a way to cherry pick reviews and skirt round the process.

Fact is with tradesmen, if they were that good they wouldn't need to be advertising.

Bendy_House

Is it possible for you to leave a review for the original company, outlining what actually happened when you contacted them? Ie, expose what appears to be a scam. (But keeping it unemotive and relating it in purely factual terms...) Just relate exactly what happened, but don't draw any 'conclusions'.

Bigphil1474

OP, you should take a look at your local council or trading standards website. Ours has a trader section where they actually audit the traders who they list and it's not a site you can just pay to go on. It was initially designed to help OAP's get access to trusted traders, and has expanded from that. As others said, complain to buywithconfidence. 

FreeBear

Bigphil1474 said:

OP, you should take a look at your local council or trading standards website. Ours has a trader section where they actually audit the traders who they list and it's not a site you can just pay to go on. It was initially designed to help OAP's get access to trusted traders, and has expanded from that. As others said, complain to buywithconfidence. 

buywithconfidence.gov.uk is the (supposedly) Trading Standards vetted business list, not a checkatrade type. Still, the OP's experience doesn't inspire confidence.

casper_gutman

Slumbershade said:

Its considered sub-contracting and within the rules probably.

If it was subcontracting, the OP would have a contract with the original company. It sounds like the whole point here is that those involved will say that he has no contract with them, they just gave him the details of a third party as a favour.

I bet if you try to leave feedback about this they'll fight hard to get it removed on this basis.