Discuss CheckaTrade | MyBuilder | RatedPeople | TrustaTrader etc - Who's with what and why? in the UK Electrical Forum area at ElectriciansForums.net
When customers told me they could get it cheaper, I agreed with them. I then asked for a pen an paper, they thought I was going to give them my quote. After they gave me them I picked up my case and turn and said, make sure you get there name and address because you will get a cheap job and possibly dangerous. I then started walking away. The number of customers that called me back. If you can drop you price you overcharged to start with. I never dropped the price.I've used both mybuilder and ratedpeople to find tradesmen for a refurb I did after moving to a new area and not having any recommendations or knowing anyone.
I can only comment on using them as a user rather than a provider as i'm a DIYer.
I found a totally mixed bag from total cowboys (you really couldn't make some of the stories up) to decent qualified tradesmen.
People are reassured by the rating system and seeing feedback from previous 'customers'. I found this to be fairly worthless in actuality as it is easy to game the system (for the unscrupulous) by getting friends/family to leave you feedback or creating fake accounts and leaving yourself feedback. In reality, i'd say as a user, it's as much a stab in the dark as doing a google search or any other random localised search.
I heard from a couple tradsemen that they were always battling with the fact that most people just went with the lowest quote (by no means the main factor for me personally). I'd recommend sticking to your usual pricing and if the customer just wants the cheapest they're probably not the customer you want to work for. They'll soon find out it's not the best tactic when hiring!
Or rank your website higher than theirs. Which should be easy to do for your own business name. I assume some of your customers were trying to contact you via their website rather than your own or something?If registering with mybuilder, be aware that your registered name will be linked to them via google searches (which are usually towards the top of the listings) for years !, even if you never do any jobs through them. To get your name removed from their database is v.hard work which requires letter writing/signatures and its a pita. Moral of the story is dont bother in the first place !
That's the way to do it. Well done.When customers told me they could get it cheaper, I agreed with them. I then asked for a pen an paper, they thought I was going to give them my quote. After they gave me them I picked up my case and turn and said, make sure you get there name and address because you will get a cheap job and possibly dangerous. I then started walking away. The number of customers that called me back. If you can drop you price you overcharged to start with. I never dropped the price.
Or rank your website higher than theirs. Which should be easy to do for your own business name. I assume some of your customers were trying to contact you via their website rather than your own or something?
Did you end up needing to write to google to do a result removal? Or write to mybuilder to get them to remove the name from pages?If I googled my own business name it would come up towards the top linked to mybuilder. Even after deleting the mybuilder account, I found the name stays on google for years until you write a letter (not an email or phone call). I dont do CEO optimisation ectect so have not tried to rank my website higher than theirs. But still that how it is, I thought there was a law against that sort of stuff but it aint sunk in with mybuilder
Non, don't use any, but would consider my own website and advertising.CheckaTrade | MyBuilder | RatedPeople | TrustaTrader etc - Who's with what and why?
Thought I'd start a poll off to see if we can see who's with what type of rate-my-builder website, if at all. And which ones seem to work, and if they do, why etc.
I've also put some other options there to see where people are spending their time and money on marketing right now, should they not be spending it with the big few common names.
Current options are:-
My personal opinion on this, after reading so many threads on all our forums, is that they're a middle-man where one isn't needed. People who need jobs doing on their homes could search Google before they came about, and they'd find tradespeoples own websites. And it all worked fine. The full amount of money that the tradesperson charged went to their business. And it wouldn't cost much to get a website online and running well.
- MyBuilder.com - MyBuilder.com - Find trusted builders and tradesmen - https://www.mybuilder.com/
- Federation of Master Builders - https://www.fmb.org.uk/
- CheckaTrade.com - Checkatrade: Find a tradesperson you can trust - https://www.checkatrade.com/
- RatedPeople.com - https://www.ratedpeople.com/
- TrustaTrader.com - Find Trusted Traders and Local Tradesmen - https://www.trustatrader.com/
- TrustedTraders.Which.co.uk - Find traders near you with Which? Trusted Traders | Which? - https://trustedtraders.which.co.uk/
- MyJobQuote.co.uk - MyJobQuote.co.uk - Get quotes from Local Builders and Tradesmen. - https://www.myjobquote.co.uk/
- Yell.com - Yell.com - the UK's leading online business directory - https://www.yell.com/
- Google Adwords (Google Paid Listings) - Google Ads - Get More Customers With Easy Online Advertising - https://ads.google.com/
- Own Website with Natural Google Listings (No Ads Bought)
- Social Media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc)
- Reply with any other options and I'll add them to the list.
Now though, there's an annual charge, or a percentage of the job, going to a company that's spending millions on advertising and has directors driving around in expensive cars, salesmen on commission selling to existing customers and new ones, trying to get more listing features or whatever.
You can get yourself a website using Wordpress, and update it yourself. Optimise it quite easy. Rank in Google naturally (no paying for ads), and get business coming in from it.
Or you can work on getting your listing with one of these companies up. Some of them encourage you to email your existing customers. Which obviously means there's no assurances the feedback actually comes from genuine customers then, you just get 20 free gmail accounts and send yourself the link to leave 10 star feedback so that when people search the website, your listing looks awesome and your feedback is spot on. Not seen a single listing ever with bad feedback on any of them.
That all said, I've not got a listing with a single one of them.
So I thought I'd run a poll, and have this handy thread for others to read and contribute to ongoing.
Feel free to discuss anything at all, pricing, experience, feedback, customers, type of work coming from them, whatever.
Please be constructive should you have criticism.
If a company you're with isn't in the poll, let me know, and I'll add it.
Please feel free to vote on as many of the options as you use yourself for your marketing.
CheckaTrade | MyBuilder | RatedPeople | TrustaTrader etc - Who's with what and why?
TBH its still there, I emailed mybuilder and the response was i need to write to them asking for removal, I did write but no response and no action. I have not pursued it since but will doDid you end up needing to write to google to do a result removal? Or write to mybuilder to get them to remove the name from pages?
You can fill in a form with Google and get them to remove any personal details from their listings. And then the page you say you want taken out of Google rankings will not be shown for the particular personal detail you were being shown for (i.e. your name).TBH its still there, I emailed mybuilder and the response was i need to write to them asking for removal, I did write but no response and no action. I have not pursued it since but will do
The easiest way to beat MyBuilder at their own game is to have your own website and do whatever you need to do to get your website ranked above theirs in Google. It's not that difficult to achieve.If registering with mybuilder, be aware that your registered name will be linked to them via google searches (which are usually towards the top of the listings) for years !, even if you never do any jobs through them. To get your name removed from their database is v.hard work which requires letter writing/signatures and its a pita. Moral of the story is dont bother in the first place !
Apart from Yell.com and my Own website, I use Trading Standards 'Buy With Confidence' scheme and also a local homewatch schemeCheckaTrade | MyBuilder | RatedPeople | TrustaTrader etc - Who's with what and why?
Thought I'd start a poll off to see if we can see who's with what type of rate-my-builder website, if at all. And which ones seem to work, and if they do, why etc.
I've also put some other options there to see where people are spending their time and money on marketing right now, should they not be spending it with the big few common names.
Current options are:-
My personal opinion on this, after reading so many threads on all our forums, is that they're a middle-man where one isn't needed. People who need jobs doing on their homes could search Google before they came about, and they'd find tradespeoples own websites. And it all worked fine. The full amount of money that the tradesperson charged went to their business. And it wouldn't cost much to get a website online and running well.
- MyBuilder.com - MyBuilder.com - Find trusted builders and tradesmen - https://www.mybuilder.com/
- Federation of Master Builders - https://www.fmb.org.uk/
- CheckaTrade.com - Checkatrade: Find a tradesperson you can trust - https://www.checkatrade.com/
- RatedPeople.com - https://www.ratedpeople.com/
- TrustaTrader.com - Find Trusted Traders and Local Tradesmen - https://www.trustatrader.com/
- TrustedTraders.Which.co.uk - Find traders near you with Which? Trusted Traders | Which? - https://trustedtraders.which.co.uk/
- MyJobQuote.co.uk - MyJobQuote.co.uk - Get quotes from Local Builders and Tradesmen. - https://www.myjobquote.co.uk/
- Yell.com - Yell.com - the UK's leading online business directory - https://www.yell.com/
- Google Adwords (Google Paid Listings) - Google Ads - Get More Customers With Easy Online Advertising - https://ads.google.com/
- Own Website with Natural Google Listings (No Ads Bought)
- Social Media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc)
- Reply with any other options and I'll add them to the list.
Now though, there's an annual charge, or a percentage of the job, going to a company that's spending millions on advertising and has directors driving around in expensive cars, salesmen on commission selling to existing customers and new ones, trying to get more listing features or whatever.
You can get yourself a website using Wordpress, and update it yourself. Optimise it quite easy. Rank in Google naturally (no paying for ads), and get business coming in from it.
Or you can work on getting your listing with one of these companies up. Some of them encourage you to email your existing customers. Which obviously means there's no assurances the feedback actually comes from genuine customers then, you just get 20 free gmail accounts and send yourself the link to leave 10 star feedback so that when people search the website, your listing looks awesome and your feedback is spot on. Not seen a single listing ever with bad feedback on any of them.
That all said, I've not got a listing with a single one of them.
So I thought I'd run a poll, and have this handy thread for others to read and contribute to ongoing.
Feel free to discuss anything at all, pricing, experience, feedback, customers, type of work coming from them, whatever.
Please be constructive should you have criticism.
If a company you're with isn't in the poll, let me know, and I'll add it.
Please feel free to vote on as many of the options as you use yourself for your marketing.
CheckaTrade | MyBuilder | RatedPeople | TrustaTrader etc - Who's with what and why?
Reply to CheckaTrade | MyBuilder | RatedPeople | TrustaTrader etc - Who's with what and why? in the UK Electrical Forum area at ElectriciansForums.net
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