Rated People website

Rex_Mundi

Ottokar wrote: »

Dear Andy, I work for Rated People, so I am sorry to hear that you weren't quite happy with the service from us. Ratings are very important to us and we believe they are the best information to let you judge for yourself whether a tradesperson is right for the job. We don't let customers rate more than once and we don't let tradespeople respond more than once, in order to provide a fair reflection of a tradesperson's work. I understand that some jobs only show their true worth over time, as in your example. I will take this as feedback into our development process to understand what we can do about that, as we continue to work on imrpovements to the system.
Regards,
Ottokar

You say the reason for only allowing one review is because it provides a fair reflection of a tradespersons work, yet Andy wants to add an update because he has found the work he had done was not as good as he first believed (the word shoddy comes to mind). In the meantime, any users of your site will read about how good this person is without being able to know that he was unwilling to put right a job that went wrong. They will get an unfair reflection of his work.

I suspect you would not want too many bad reviews on your site because this would put tradespeople off paying you to advertise there.

This is yet another example of why this type of website is not very good for recommending trades.

elephantman_2

rated people just got slated for this in the guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2008/jun/01/consumeraffairs.internet

i tried this new one mybuilder.com which works a bit more like Ebay, i'm doing my bathroom and have got quite a few repsonses on their, and i've got two guys coming round to quote to do it. any one used this?

Jules22

i've just used rated people and got 2 builders coming round.

one came today and i found him to be a very genuine person who had no problems with any of the questions i asked.( i need to know everything!)

i have found rated people to be godsend as builders are busy or rude at not turning up for appointments.

brightonman123

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:

can you do a new comment?

lynn2

I have just come across this thread via Google....I have just accepted two quotes from Rated People. I will let you know how I get on.
In the meantime, are there any more people here that have used Rated People?

KimKim_4

Andy, I employed a "tradesperson" from Rated People and it was a disaster.
Warning to others - if you are looking for a tradesperson in Buck, Bed, Herts and North London, don't touch CKempCarpentry http://www.ckempcarpentry.co.uk/
It does a good impersonation of a carpenter but it will cost us £600 to put right the problems he caused in my kitchen

hollydays

I see yourlocaltrades from https://www.yourlocaltrades.co.uk has removed all his posts now,,

Rated_People_company_representative

Hi All,

Thanks for your comments in this forum. I, like Ottokar, work for Rated People and I wanted to give you a quick update on what we've done to make the Ratings System a lot fairer and more effective for everyone who uses it. I also want to make clear a few of our views on what others have been saying in order to justify the way things work at ratedpeople.com

1) You can now leave as many follow-up ratings as you like for the tradesperson you choose so that if circumstances change, you can change your rating and comments so that everyone is given a clear view of how things went.

2) You can't change an original comment or initial rating because we don't think that would be fair either - the idea of a 'follow-up' rating means that you can see the whole story and not just the last thing that was said.

3) It's right what everyone is saying: we don't vet our tradespeople but this is because vetting online or in fact anywhere is really easily corruptible. We believe that the only way everyone can find the right tradesperson or indeed the best sort of customers, is through a closed Rating System like the one we have developed.

4) We ensure that only those who have had direct dealings with each other through our website can rate one another. You'll see that in this rapidly changing online environment, there are opportunities to publish whatever you like about anyone or anything but we've managed to develop a fair system of feedback that's different from a lot of what's already out there.

The overall intention of ratedpeople.com and how it works for 1000's of people a week is that they manage to find a rated, reliable and trustworthy tradesperson to do a whole host of different jobs. We think that the way our system is designed will eventually eke out the bad tradespeople through the power of honest feedback and customer reveiws. We're still a young company, finding ways to improve all the time so I'd really appreciate your feedback on how you think we can make things better.

Look forward to hearing from you,

Sophie

Hal

I have just posted a job with ratedpeople - I will let you know how we get on.

Saltydog

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:

Same thing happened to me. I rated my tradesperson very highly, but a small leak developed in the toilet he had fitted, and he would not come back to fix it. Eventually I reported the matter to the local Trading Standards office and by following their advice the guy came back and fitted a new toilet, which has been fine.

The fault was with the toilet, not the plumber, but his reluctance to come back and fix the fault caused me 3 months aggravation and it only took him an hour to fix the problem.

Rated people is a good idea, but they should changed their attitude to faulty work which appears within the warranty period

Saltydog:mad: