Rated People website

Tony2323

Rated People is pretty good and I've had some good jobs off it. I've been on RP since Christmas time and it's really kept me in work in these hard times. However some of the things people go on there to get a quote for are to be honest POINTLESS AND A WASTE OF TIME AND MONEY. For example...I'm a roofer,I have to pay up to £12-£14 a lead in some circumstances. Maybe a bit lower if a small job. Somepeople go on there for a quote for a slipped roof tile!!!!! or guttering blocked and over flowing!!! Or flat roof needs a repair, when called they say they only want to spend maximum of £30!!!! Come on!! WORTH IT?!!

To be honest a roofer out the back of the free paper or yellow pages would suffice for some jobs.

wt_plumbing_and_heating

I am a tradesman and have used rated in the past when work was slow and found it to be a complete waste of time. problem is when you go and price a job for someone the jobs already cost you money just applying then you have to sell yourself and recover costs. if the work a customer advertises on the web site gets quoted for and that seems cheap then the risk is yours to take as no one who considers them self professional would sell them selfs short. i quoted a job for a customer off rated and took a tiler along to do a full bathroom quote, spent 3 hours working out the price, phoned the customer to be told she wanted the quote in writing which now gives them grounds to barter with the next tradesman through the door but being as i payed to qoute the job in the first place means im losing money not just work. if the money they charge came from successful leads then that would make sense, once again someone behind a computer trying to make money from someone else doing the hard work.
and one last thing, if you want a quote for a job thats fine, if your wondering how much things cost phone someone and dont waste trademens money and time

dacouch

WT P&H when someone asks for a quote in writing and you suspect they want it solely to use for Dutch Auctioning a good trick is to agree but tell them it will take a week or so to send. This often stops them using it against you with the next tradesman

dumycs

I have the same issue !!!
I said i no longer need their service... And saturday charged me 47 quit. Membership fees. I called them today and they told me that no refund will be issued because i should told them before about membership.
thing that i`ve already done it. how did you`ve got your money back ?? please let me know.
Cheers.

sanky wrote: »

beware rated people....all of the above has happened to me.. This company is out for themselves only. They are overpriced and very unfair in thier reasons to not credit you.
i have spent a small fortune with this company and recieved good ratings off customers, but, they are just to expensive. They are not a viable business solution, you will give them more money than you recieve from "rated leads."
to add insult to injury i emailed them to close my account and i instructed them to take no membership fees from my bank, followed this up by calling them and speaking to thier staff..... They still went on to steal £47 from my account and will not pay me back.

dont touch this company with a barge pole...(please listen to me and all other posts)

Stoptheripoffs

I wish I'd looking at this site before using ratedpeople.
After having a small job- just 4-5 metres of laminate flooring- horrifically done by someone sent by ratedpeople I was surprised to find that the organisation 'do not interefere between trader and customer'.
I had input on their site for a 'flooring specialist' - but did not get this at all.
The trader only presented himself as 'ratedpeople' not giving his own or business name. As I'd not used the site before I thought this was normal. And I assumed all the tradespeople had been thoroughly checked out - particularly as the site has joint promotions with radio stations and newsapapers.It was because of this I paid up without checking the finished work.
Ratedpeople did pass on the trader's name to me. I'm in the process of taking him to court. I've notified ratedpeople,via their website offering photos of the tradesman's work- but received no reply. Without an email address on site I couldn't even just send them the photos.

brightsparky

I joined Ratedpeople from Dec2010 and now I am not satisfied their service as reason I have buy and gather the first customers lead from £14 as bought £14 for customer details, contacted and travel for visit to take quote and given quoted as few days later it declined that other tradesperson buy £4 or £8 than me or first tradesperson buy - i found that it is not fair price and waste of money. I will decide to quit with ratedpeople or online job bid like as myhammer or mybuilder etc and I prefer mouth to mouth with hearing customers and Handyman group as it is not problem with my deafness -
I think rated people make money for tradesperson who declined their quoted and not recommend it as waste of money.:mad:

angryandy wrote: »

This is a website that puts you in touch with tradespeople. the idea is that you put a review of the work done so that other people can gauge the competence of the tradesperson. The only problem is once you have put a rating for someone they wont change it for any reason. This causes problems when you put a good rating for a job done and then a month later it all starts to fall apart, as has just happened to me. I have spoken to them and they will not do anything about it. If you do use it make sure it is for very simple jobs that can't go wrong a few weeks later. I've just had a tiled floor laid and the tradesmen wont relay it after it has gone wrong and there is no way i can let other customers know.:mad:

kdr1966

I have now been signed up to rated people for 5 wks, since the start of June & have found it very hit & miss..!
In that time i have bought 5 leads, 2 i have won & completed the jobs with 5 star ratings from the customers for both, 1 where the contact number didn't exist, 1 that retracted the chance of me even quoting for the work claiming she had shelved doing the job & 1 who wouldn't let me quote as i hadn't got any ratings related to the type of work he had advertised..!
In the cases of all three where there were problems i reported them via the phone to RP but as has already been mentioned they didn't want to know over the phone & made me make my contact with them over the net. Each case took them exactly 1 week to investigate & each time they told me i had been successful with my appeal & granted me a free lead but did not take into account how much the original lead or the new lead cost, they just set the old one off against the new one..!
Another problem i have found is that although they send you leads via both e-mail & text they almost always seem to send you the text half an hour or more before the e-mail, so anyone who only receives the leads via e-mail is loosing out, but anyone like myself who has e-mails sent to their mobile doesn't get that till much later than the text due of course to the fact that e-mails are totally free, but texts are bought in bundles from RP..!
For a company that was set up by a disgruntled customer fed up of being ripped off by tradesmen it does seem a little hypocritical ..!
That said up to now i have only spent my initial £10 membership fee, plus £15 or so each lead which has been added to each price & have recouped much more than i have laid out & so will continue to pick & choose what jobs i want to pitch for until my membership is up & i will then decide which way to go..!
kdr

Raider01

Hey to all you guys out there that may wish to use Rated People, then watch out for this Guy: Frank Keddie of Spikes Garden Services. He half does jobs and then leaves you with a mess to clear up after him. Not reliable in the least, so don't be mislead by what his ratings state.

He had a good team of workers working for him, but now works on his on or with a female. When he done my Garden, he promised me the earth would move (in phrase) by the work he would do to it. Little did I know that he would leave it half completed, bare and dead looking.

Watch out for him, and, don't trust him in any way, shape of form.:(:(:(:(

smothy

I recently paid £41.12 for a wall rebuild offering a budget of between £15-30k. Jobs like this are like rocking horse droppings...or rarer.

The phone number was a no go, the address was a Hospice who had never heard of the customer, it was a no lead. I queried it, RP investigated, then they offered me a one lead credit in return. I stated I wanted credits to the tune of £41.12, they said it is not company policy to do this.

In short, I rang Consumer Direct (trading standards) and they stated that RP are in breach of contract. I paid for a service which was not supplied, the one lead credit does not count, it is the monetary value that is to be refunded, although they are under no obligation to give it in cash.

RP still maintain that I have got all I will be getting, so I have given them 5 days to refund me or Trading Standards have said they will look into the case for me.

Perhaps if enough of us go this route, RP will have to tighten up thier act.

Casscat

This thread has been quite illuminating as I had no idea how Rated People worked. I think if consumers realised that tradesmen have to pay to join up AND pay per lead they might be a bit more careful about the jobs they post. I have recently listed a job for the first time as I am moving house and need a lot of work doing at the new place. Because I don't yet own the property and need to get various people over there to quote for work (electrics & plumbing as well as the carpentry I advertised) I am trying to limit the number of people I have traipsing through the property. I listed my job as being circa £4k but in truth I am anticipating £6-8k. The first firm to contact me was in Surrey and I am in Hertfordshire - the daily commute for a two week job would eat up many, many hours of their time. The second firm had really unattractive (to me) examples of their work on their website - totally inappropriate for a listed property and not at all what I was looking for - and that put me right off. The third seems to be what I'm after (reasonably local, good examples of period style joinery on the site and able to take on all the work listed on my schedule including cabinetry, sash window overhaul and flooring) and he is now preparing a quote. Upon listing the job I was hassled relentlessly by firm no.2 to the point where the guy actually got quite aggressive towards me over the phone. He was very angry about not being given the opportunity to actually price the job. Okay, now I know that he paid for the lead I can partly understand his annoyance, but as a consumer using the site there is no obligation on me to allow all respondents to quote if I don't wish to. I would have wasted even more of his time had I asked him to go to the property because I could tell that there was no way I was going to commission him - the handiwork profiled on his web site and his unpleasant manner put paid to all prospects of that. If a job is listed on Rated People then it is up to the respondents to try to win the opportunity to quote and thereafter to be awarded the contract. I'm fairly certain Rated People give no guarantee that all leads will result in actual quotes which just stresses the value of good marketing and a good attitude. Once you have the lead you have to sell yourself and your services to the prospect so a well crafted email, an attractive and professional web site and a reassuring and warm telephone manner will count for a lot. The responses on this thread lead me to conclude that there are misunderstandings on both sides of the process where Rated People is concerned.