Discuss Checkatrade,Mybuilder, Myhammer ratedpeople etc etc.. Your views? in the Australia area at ElectriciansForums.net
I use MyBuilder solely to fill in gaps in my work diary, and although I've done well from MyBuilder overall, the site, however, is not without its pitfalls. My main gripe is customers who invite you to do work for them, but for reasons best known to themselves, do not then respond to your attempts to contact them. Women are by far the chief offenders. Since no refunds are issued in this event, you've lost the money you paid to obtain the lead when this happens.
My main gripe is young men fresh out of the training colleges turning-up on the site offering their services at ridiculous, cutthroat prices. After recently quoting for a job that comprised of installing two flush-mounted twin sockets in a bedroom and swapping an old halogen PIR fitting for a 30 watt LED equivalent, the customer declined my quotation, telling me in the process that "a lovely young man" had submitted a price of £75.00. I've also come across young men quoting £80 for carrying-out an EICR on a three-bedroom house, and offering to install two smoke detectors and one heat detector for £100. Seriously. I guess that those who quote such ridiculous prices are still living at home with mum and dad, and can only offer these crazy prices because they don't have the business overheads and personal costs that most other established self-employed electricians have. Fortunately, most of my customers prefer experience to cheapness.
While MyBuilder can be useful for filling in the gaps in your work diary, you're certainly not going to get rich using the site. Competition is fierce, particularly for the lucrative jobs. Expect to find yourself in direct competition with eight other electricians when rewires are up for grabs. But with the lead fee for such jobs costing as much as £35.00 plus VAT, you'll end-up severely out-of-pocket if you keep losing these jobs after quoting, or if you fail to make the shortlist (maximum of five) in the first place. I'm based in North Lanarkshire, but have to compete for jobs with guys from as far as Stirling and Ayr!
As for Rated People. I'm now in the final weeks of my membership. Rated People has become much too expensive and are no longer a cost-effective means of generating job opportunities. For a start, you have to pay £15 a month plus VAT in membership fees to remain on the site. Should you cancel your membership, all the positive feedback you've built-up disappears and you have to start all over again should you ever rejoin. The cost of the leads are ridiculously high, with the lead fees for rewires costing as much as £45 plus VAT. All you get for your money is the customer's contact details. Rated People do, however, issue credits should you, for whatever reason, be unable to quote for the job e.g. someone else has been hired. There is a catch though .... you receive a credit that you have to spend on the purchase of another lead rather than a refund of your money. Big difference!
Another pitfall of Rated People is that unless you pay them an additional £10 (plus VAT, of course) to receive 100 texts which notify you of job leads, you then inevitably discover that almost all of these leads having already been sold by the time you receive an e-mail alert. And if you do decide to receive these text alerts, then be assured that you'll be spending more time each day with your mobile in your hand rather than your pliers or screwdriver. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
Oh how I wish we could return to the pre-Internet days when all you had to do was place an advertisement in Yellow Pages and/or your local newspaper and put a card in your local newsagent's window then sit back and wait for the phone to ring.
Reply to Checkatrade,Mybuilder, Myhammer ratedpeople etc etc.. Your views? in the Australia area at ElectriciansForums.net
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