Rated People website

mrlucky

im a tradesman, i was recruited into rated people at the end of december 2010, 3 month trial for £10, sounded great, i was sure the bloke on the phone said after 3 months well send you an email to renew your subscription. well after a few weeks i found the buying of bids for quotes never worked for me so i gave up wasting the £4, £12 etc and forgot about it, hoping when i got the email to not renew. 3 months later i had forgotten all about it, id have seen an email from them as i kept a folder with them in. stupidly i never noticed £48 going from my account, i didnt use them for the entire 3 months, this week ive checked my statement and seen £48 has been taken out from rated people, startled i went to their site and logged in, found out id been billed for the previous 3 months too. so wondering why i decided to phone them, got a rather snotty young gent on the phone who told me it was all my fault and i should have put more details on about what i do etc(id had probs with leads not ringing back when i left messages) anyway i said i wasnt happy and he said id be called by someone from the customer service team.
few hours later someone did ring, i told him i hadnt recieved emails asking to renew, he said theyd been sent and it as my email accont that had them as spam and deleted them, i said why have original emails not gone to spam as i still had them, indeed as we were on the phone 2 leads were emailed through to me, anyway i felt i was getting nowhere and something he said stuck in my mind, he said we send emails 14 days before any money is taken out :T i then asked him when the last email was sent, he said 25/6/2011, my money was taken 7 days later!!!! i pionted this fact out and he immediately apologised and said the money would be refunded within 3-5 working days :T:T:T im going to check now if the other payment was the same 7 days later.
needless to say my account has now been terminated

coogey

I am the owner of a home improvements company and have communicated with RP with a view to using their services and am shocked!

They are not interested in our past performance , our insurances or our skills but rely on customers to rate after the event. This is clearly madness, from a householders point of view - do you really want to be a guinea pig to lousy workmen so that you can tell others your bad experience for them to avoid the same?

Good sites should check a company's credentials before unleashing them and then they can get rated to go up or down in users estimation.

Be wise - customers should safeguard themselves by making sure that any business has Public Liability Insurance before work commences. They should check the internet for any adverse comments. And get detailed written information concerning the products being installed plus work time schedules and payment sequences.They don't need to be shown a previous job as they will only be shown a possibly rare good one.

Incidentally, we belong to Veka Network that monitors every job we do and will only send out guarantee cover to customers when they have signed off that they are totally satisfied. We are audited for customer satisfaction every month and marked out of 100%. Once a year, a surveyor is sent out and randomly surveys 5 installations.
If a customer is not satisfied, a member of Veka staff is appointed to oversee getting the job up to scratch. If we do not complete the job satisfactorily, Veka will fix it and bill us for the cost. If we cease trading, another Veka Network member is funded to carry on the guarantees at no further cost to the customer at all. And they have nearly a £1,000,000 cash on hand to protect customers. Now, surely, thats unbeatable customer protection. And we are so grateful and lucky to be part of such an incredible network for the last 4 years after 5 gruelling months of checks on our company standards and status..

MrsGrumpy

I had a plumber recommended by a neighbour. he (the plumber) explained proudly that he was a member of Rated People. Work was Ok, but had significant problems trying to get them to fix faults that resulted (including some dangerous ones) and got a lot of abuse over the phone so eventually decided to cut my losses. looking at the guy's rating i seem to be the only unhappy customer he's ever had so must conclude that either (1) people don't post negative comments (2) these get removed or (3) I was just unlucky and a normally reasonable tradesman swore at me copiously and slammed the phone down on me when I asked politely if he might like to come back and look at the live electrical cable his son had scorched with hot solder as I was a bit concerned for my safety.

I don't rate them myself!

Occams_Razor_2

Lotuspete wrote: »

Can anyone tell me how you check feedback on the rated people website ?
I have just has a shower installed by a cowboy calling himself a plumber and
never checked his feedback, when i log into the site it now has no details of the job i posted. I just wanted to see what other people had to say about this cowboy.
but don't know how to check his feedback without posting a new job.

Pete.

you can't and that's the point. People suggesting you can easily manipulating the ratings don't know what they're talking about.

I've used them once, for a total house renovation that cost over £100K. I was happy with the builders, not everything was perfect but overall it was worth doing.

the key thing is that the builders exist outside of this system, and you have the same if not higher risk without some sort of validation. your builder gives you a reference, what are the chances they give you a bad example?

the real point is that you cannot see random ratings, you put in a job, and you get matched with 3 tradespeople - whose ratings you can see. you cannot choose or browse who you want, so you cannot pick up your mate's business and give it a ***** rating 10 times over.

I am on this thread, because I am using rated people for wardrobe build I need downstairs, and the thread came up on google. Rated People is not perfect, but this nonsense from some people with chips on their shoulder is quite unbelievable.

you cannot 'easily' manipulate the ratings, and you cannot just browse whomever. there is a distance between you, the website, and the ratings.

Occams_Razor_2

Gary_McCauley wrote: »

We decided to put the rated people website to the test, Our company asked a long standing customer to use the website and log a job. Our customer registered an emergency job at her address, only to receive a call from a contractor three hours later, the contractor was 35+ miles away, when we are no more than 1 mile away!

in a way this is a feather in rated people's cap, you could easily be trying to manipulate the system and you failed.

whilst you probably weren't trying to do that, it is illustrative of a wider point.

this is a good thing.

Occams_Razor_2

dacouch wrote: »

Roggi, actually it is possible to manipulate the references / ratings on rated people, see earlier posts.

actually your earlier posts demonstrated no such thing, despite your repeated claims to the contrary. as anyone who wishes to read back can easily see for themselves.

Sorry if I seem a little fiery today, but I am shocked at the utter nonsense being posted by fantasists and tin foil hat walter mitty types.

Tradesman who don't like the process. fine
Customers who have trouble with the rating process. fine
People without any experience, pretending to know how it can be manipulated based on no knowledge? not so fine.

Heck, if you want to slate them as many people have, at least have some experience or knowledge of the subject matter.

Occams_Razor_2

jafsie wrote: »

I have just been ****** by these scam artists I wish I had seen this "Rated people"scam merchants thread before I fell for it last week.

A plasterer was supposed to come on saturday and sunday to do a job, all he did was dump 4 bags of plaster in my living room and now I'm told he has gone on holiday for 2 weeks.

AVOID THE RATED PEOPLE SITE LIKE THE PLAGUE:mad:

I am confused, because this couldn't happen out of the yellow pages or the local press?

what does this have to do with the RP? or do you think RP employs their own tradespeople?

Occams_Razor_2

MrsGrumpy wrote: »

I had a plumber recommended by a neighbour. he (the plumber) explained proudly that he was a member of Rated People. Work was Ok, but had significant problems trying to get them to fix faults that resulted (including some dangerous ones) and got a lot of abuse over the phone so eventually decided to cut my losses. looking at the guy's rating i seem to be the only unhappy customer he's ever had so must conclude that either (1) people don't post negative comments (2) these get removed or (3) I was just unlucky and a normally reasonable tradesman swore at me copiously and slammed the phone down on me when I asked politely if he might like to come back and look at the live electrical cable his son had scorched with hot solder as I was a bit concerned for my safety.

I don't rate them myself!

how did you get to see his rating? you say you didn't get him from RP (from a neighbour).

bonnanbuidhe

Occam/s_Razor wrote: »

I am confused, because this couldn't happen out of the yellow pages or the local press?

what does this have to do with the RP? or do you think RP employs their own tradespeople?

You are indeed confused. Advertisers in the yellow pages and the local press choose what to say about themselves, whereas with Rated People the business name implies that the tradespeople have been rated for competence and reliability. Your comparison does not hold.

hollydays

RatedPeople.com wrote: »

Hi MrsGrumpy, we are sorry you had a bad experience with one of our tradesmen.

People do post negative comments, and they do not get removed but homeowners can change them if the tradesman makes amends. The best part is that only genunie customers who have found the tradesman via RatedPeople.com can rate them - as you must know as you weren't able to rate your plumber.

If you had found the same plumber via RatedPeople.com you would have been able to rate his work. If he had found your job via our site he would be aware of this, it encourages them to proivde a good service because they know that they are accountable if they don't!

We were here to help homeowners find a local and trusty tradesman and help those good tradesmen build their reputations. The indsutry is full of untrust and we want to change that

One of our support team will be happy to look into your plumber RatedPeople.com file and investigate just encase anyone else has has had a problem - we do weed out the bad ones! Just get in touch if you would like us to look into it for you.

The RatedPeople.com team

Why have you posted on this thread as the official representative, under a different user name to the other "official" representative? You need permission to post.