Do you use RatedPeople?

it is all to do with trust, when that person walks through your front door you have to make a judgement call. harsh but that is life.
 
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Agree - it IS to do with trust but we can all be taken in when, with the benefit of hindsight (and a lot of hassle), you realise that these 'trusted workmen', have blatantly lied. Looking back, there is little I could have done differently in making my choice but that's because the workmen I chose to use were deliberately setting out to deceive and so provided 'appropriate' answers to the questions I asked. This is not the fault of Rated People as such. It can happen no matter how you source a trade. A liar is a liar.
 
Just finished 2 complete bathroom refits and knocked through a lounge/dining room wall. Got all tiling decs etc. and extras. 3 jobs, four and a half grands worth, the leads from RP cost me less than £50, which I wrote into the quotes.

Works for me!
:D
 
Just finished 2 complete bathroom refits and knocked through a lounge/dining room wall. Got all tiling decs etc. and extras. 3 jobs, four and a half grands worth, the leads from RP cost me less than £50, which I wrote into the quotes.

Works for me!
:D

hows does the payment system work? does the customer pay you, or do they pay Rated People who then pay you?
 
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Ironnaz:

At the risk of sounding like an advert for RP, you, (and maybe two others) buy the customers details for, say, £20 for a £1000+ job.
You MUST use your judgement as to whether it's worth following the lead. Isn't that the same with any job enquiry?
You then quote as normal, hoping your quote is the customers favourite, and the customer pays you direct if you do the job.

As I said it works for me, sometimes, but BE CAREFUL!
 
You need balls of steel - or Iron Nads to get onto one of those sites ;)
 
I used rated people and check a trade for a roofing job. 5 out of the 6 were useless, for example not even knowing what WBP was. The vast majority of ratings are suspiciously similar I'll never use these sites again. If you want my trade get on the web, yellow pages or rely on word of mouth. All good small trades I know keep themselves fully occupied through their own reputation and don't need to advertise.
 
I used rated people and check a trade for a roofing job. 5 out of the 6 were useless, for example not even knowing what WBP was. The vast majority of ratings are suspiciously similar I'll never use these sites again. If you want my trade get on the web, yellow pages or rely on word of mouth. All good small trades I know keep themselves fully occupied through their own reputation and don't need to advertise.

70% of my work comes from advertising in local paper. 5% from my website 25% from word of mouth and repeat work.
 
I've done a few jobs from there and got referrals from it, I will use it sometimes just to make new contacts, it can be quite hard to turn a decent profit from the initial job. foot in the door ****
 
I use it but I've moved to a different area, I'm proud of what I do, I try to make sure the customer is happy with my work, and it has helped me in the past, there are things about it which could be improved, but that's true of most things.
I do get good ratings and I have seen some bad ones (left for others) which have not been removed, but I'm not saying that doesn't happen
 
Surely when a trader gets too many bad reviews they are removed from the site taking their bad reviews with them?

The whole point of these sites is that they vet out all of the bad traders, no?
Err, no. There's plenty of evidence of people getting bad reviews then just disappearing to reappear under a different name, or threatening legal action to get the reviews removed and succeeding

From a trades point of view these sites are a complete rip-off. An example: one week when I was on I paid for three job leads. One was for replacement kitchen worktops, etc. where the customer on initial questioning turned out not to have a budget, all she wanted was "some idea of how much it was going to cost". When I gave her a ball park figure she was genuinely shocked (I quoted a tad under £300 for 2 x Duropal 40mm worktops w/masons mitres - not bad I thought), apparently she had hoped to get three worktops pulled out, new ones installed, including mason's mitre joints for under £100..... Because she'd seen some similar worktops in the B&Q clearance centre a few months previously. The second one was for a built-in wardrobe which "had to come in for less than the price of going to IKEA". As if. For those wastes of time I had to cough out something like £20, which Rated refused to refund as they had given me "duly qualified leads". Yeah. Right.
 
I've looked at these sites. The rating system is flawed. If you get someone in to do a job you do so because you can't do it yourself, fair enough thats how we all earn a living, but, you then give a rating without any knowledge or qualification to do so, you literally judge the tradesman and what the job looks like, its like me judging come dancing.
Personally i don't want to be 'judged and rated' by someone who has no clue having been continuously marked, appraised and tested during my city and guilds by experienced tutors i know i can do a job to a good standard.
An 8 for me is a good score, a 10 would have to be absolute perfection but i continually see lines of 10/10 thus proving my above point.

No matter how good we are at our jobs it only takes one low mark to put off potential business, we will all meet clients that bending over backwards for isn't good enough, i've had two in 12 years, one ( i later found out) was on a bottle of vodka a day and the other over expected on the budget allowed, I'm sure they would have both given me a low mark.

I also looked at trustmark, a good idea but you have to be a member of a trade body which for me the two options were a builders guild (who are a joke) and the Painting and Decorating Association. Both are expensive to join and offer me no other benefit except being able to join trustmark.

I would welcome any inspection and criminal check and would be able to supply written references to a body such as local council that genuinely wanted to supply a list of good honest tradesman and would happily cover costs of these checks but i'm not lining someone else's pockets who have profit at heart not protection
 
I use RatedPeople as a trademan. Starting out doing painting I had no rep other than friends and family so decided I would use RP to buy some leads.

Well I have had 60%+ of the leads bought refunded as they were terrible. People wanting quotes on a house they hadn't bought yet, some cancelled within hours of saying they want a quote, some not being in at an arranged time and others just being un-contactable.

Had a few good jobs from it. Not sure I will keep my membership going though.

Building a rep really is hardwork so would recommend using sites like RP as one of many avenues to getting work.

My brother tried MyHammer for plumbing and heating work and he said that was not good at all. I have read mostly bad reviews, in that apparently many people can quote for each job (RP limits to three). Customers just sit back and wait for the cheapest which we all know is not always a good thing.

From a customers point of view get your three quotes for comparison. Possibly from different sources. Recommendation is always best.
 
Looked into going with RP recently, joined up, got my free 30 days membership & £50 credits. Spent 2.5 - 3 hours looking for a sensible job to come up.
Punters out there posting jobs take the p*ss big time. Wanting a 2 storey 7x3m extension with a budget of £20k!!! WTF that all about. £20k will get you a very nice 7x3m single storey, with change left over to to buy a new kitchen & equipment & to decorate it.
Eventually found one to go for. A loft conversion with a £15k budget. It'll come to more than that, but the lead is with my free £50, so nowt to lose.
I'm gonna see how this quote goes, and if I get the work, I may keep the subscription up but just make sure I buy sensibly budgeted leads, at £50+ a throw I cant afford not to.
 
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