Rated People website

lockstock007

I am a tradesperson and initially joined a company called Servicemagic- what a waste of time, bar the first lead,the rest (7) jobs, nobody returned my calls or emails. Fortunately, I changed my credit card, nothing to do with this company, but it did stop them helping themselves to my hard earned- I cancelled with them,even though they begged me to stay, promising to work with me on the leads.

I have just switched over to rated, I feel it's better run than the previously mentioned, but still has very similar faults- Some customers -have a notion of a job,they may or may not want doing, they just want a 'ball park' figure so that sometime ( maybe) in the future, they may think about having the work done. I advertise in two local trade magazines and when the customer rings you up, they want a job doing, they will more than likely ring one,two,three or even more, you accept that, but at least you know the job exists and they are going to have it done,you let your selling skills, your keen pricing etc do the work,some you win, some you don't, but that's a level playing field.

I have tried to get a refund for a job where a customer was reluctant for me to go out and price the work, it was a barn that needed a new concrete floor, I wanted to see site access, whether the barn was just one big floor or separate rooms, and a whole other range of concerns that help you,along with the actual material and labour costs, arrive at a price. She just wanted a 'ball park' figure for the work-she let in know that she had received a quote outside of rated, so I dare say she was just using my figure as a guide line to see if she had been quoted a reasonable price.

The refund has been rejected and I have been issued with a what I would presume as a stock warning that I am going to be monitored for any further requests for refunds. A warning shot across my bow,so to speak.

Just been 30 miles to price a plastering job, the woman was pleasant and I have given her a price, so here is hoping. I will give rated a few more weeks, but I am not holding my breath.

Fizzy243

I used rated people for the first and last time last week. I thought it could be a trusted site...silly me! Needed three rooms painted. I only got one reply and checked out the guys website and he seemed okay. But! What a hash job I got - he was in too much of a hurry, I think, to get it done in one day. Paints splashes all over the place, painted over door hinges, old paint showing through the new stuff, cracked one of my tiles and to cap it all he painted round a fridge instead of moving it or asking me to move it for him. Normally do this sort of thing myself but I had too much to do. This experience has put me right off getting decorators in ever again. This site is no different from sticking a pin in the yellow pages and what make it worse I was probably charged for it as well. Whatever he paid for the contact was probably added to my bill.

timdf911

As I expected I had a call from RatedPeople about my negative feedback I had posted on their site about one of their tradesmen Premier Loft and Extension of Southport.
I had left polite accurate information with a link to scanned documents showing the county court judgement against this contractor. RatedPeople removed the feedback.
I asked if the contractor had contacted them and asked for the feedback to be removed - they wouldn't answer and instead said it was against their T&C to post contact details or links.
Makes me think even more that RatedPeople is all about the money.
Don't use them - rely on local recommendations.

tonyleech

Hindsight is a marvellous thing - wished I'd googled Rated People a little bit more before using their services and one of their 'rated contractors'.

Foolishly I thought that rated people vetted their contractors before sending out customers details to them.

I recently used ratedpeople and the service and contractor looked good so I went for it and employed their person.

What a disaster - the contractor only did a part of the job, made promises to finish later etc. but never did.

Had to employ a local guy to put the job right and finish it off.

Guess I'm partly to blame for being too trusting and not checking more deeply and paying more than I should of in advance to the first contractor.

Lessons learned - no more website contractors for me (especially Rated People) - local recommendations only from people I can trust.

wary

I've read this and the Trustatrader thread with interest.

If the accusations of sites suppressing negative feedback for commercial interests is true, then the whole thing stinks. However, it seems that some tradesmen also get a bad deal ...

A few years ago, we were after some decorators, and my wife put an advert on one of these sites which resulted in our details being passed to 3 tradesmen. When she explained to the first that we wanted most of the house decorated in a week and hence it wasn't a suitable job for a one-man-band, he rightly made the point that we should have said in the advert as this had cost him £25 + VAT. This was the first we knew of there being such a cost to the trader (although in retrospect we should have guessed). Another who came around made the point that specifying over-£2000 on the advert (as opposed to "unknown"), it had cost him more.

It worked out well for us as we had two quotes of around £2000, compared to the £3500 quotes we'd obtained independently. We used one of them and whilst they weren't A1 perfect, we were happy with the job. We actually refunded the other his £30, partly because he looked the sort who could easily turn nasty and partly because I felt bad that we'd wasted his money.

The point I'll make here is that I think these sites should make clear to customers how the fee charging system works, so they ensure that all pertinent details are included and they'll think twice before using it for obtaining ballpark figures etc ... although I realise that not all customers will be as conscientious as us.

dacouch

wary wrote: »

The point I'll make here is that I think these sites should make clear to customers how the fee charging system works, so they ensure that all pertinent details are included and they'll think twice before using it for obtaining ballpark figures etc ... although I realise that not all customers will be as conscientious as us.

It's in their (Rated) interests to get as many tradesmen quoting even for ball park figures and the higher the figure you suggest the more they can charge the tradesmen

age_the_builder

Well all i can say to date its like pulling teeth! i talk about bad tradesmen what about customers,i think that they think that all tradesmen are there just to give free advice and quotes ,not realising it costs us money to do these things.
The other day i traveled a 45 mile round trip to see a guy about a job,got there on time only to be told that he wanted a quote there and then so he could ring the person that just bought his house so he could give them a cost of putting right a wall so the sale dident fall through.
He never mentiond this over the phone when he contacted me,so i polightly told him it cost me for his details ect only to be told that he thought rated was a company that just sent people out to quote free of charge!! :mad:....im slowly loosing the will to live;)
I just wish rated would charge customers ,even a small charge just so they dont waste peoples time and money.

timdf911

As I had previously posted I had a bad experience with a contractor found on RatedPeople (Premier Loft and Extension Ltd Southport) and had left accurate feedback including a link to the County Court Judgement against said contractor.

RatedPeople called me back and said it was against their terms and conditions to have hyperlinks and they were going to delete my feedback but said I could post a follow up - which I did.
I made mention of my dissatisfaction and the CCJ against Premier Loft and Extension as a warning to others.
However I now find that even this has been deleted with any notification to me.

As this point Premier Loft and Extension appears to have good feedback on the RatedPeople site - despite my best attempts to level accurate feedback.

To my mind this proves that RatedPeople is all about collecting money from trades people with little to no concern about the quality of tradesmen on their site.

/Rant :-)

CKhalvashi

I used one of these sites for a garage to bung 2 new tires on S-Max no.1 (about to get rid of no.3 for something the same underneath, but a bit classier).

The car had 2 new tires on it and old tires moved to front (garage reckoned that they had 5,000 miles left in them). To my horror when the car went in for MoT the following morning, not only were the front tires illegal (and not just by the 250-ish miles the car had done inbetween, but a sharp, fast turn either way would have possibly been lethal (serious axle problems)!!!

This isn't hard to spot, and had I not seen it for myself, I wouldn't have believed how dangerous the car was left, especially as my work vehicle is also the main family car!

I trust my instincts and book it into a main dealer now for major bits, and an independent garage that friends recommended for smaller bits, as online reviews don't seem to be worth the paper they're written on after that!

CK

wary

CKhalvashi wrote: »

The car had 2 new tires on it and old tires moved to front (garage reckoned that they had 5,000 miles left in them). To my horror when the car went in for MoT the following morning, not only were the front tires illegal (and not just by the 250-ish miles the car had done inbetween, but a sharp, fast turn either way would have possibly been lethal (serious axle problems)!!!

Sounds unusual. Ordinarily I would expect these tyre places to replace tyres that strictly don't need replacing if anything; but you've had the reverse experience!