Anyone on here use Checkatrade?

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Fair play mate, I have a lot of repeat customers, a free website and advertising with an annual cost of less than £100 - and I'm a tight bugger :RpS_thumbup:
 
I use the trader register. most county's have them and they are run by trading standards and the local county councils. Its only £50 a year. You give customers feedback forms and they rate you and send them back to trading standards.

They do local advertising every couple of months and customers like the fact its backed by trading standards.

I have had a canny few jobs off it. maybe worth a look lads
https://www.traderregister.org.uk/website_selection.php
 
Then you've got the niche if you start it.......................:RpS_thumbup:
get onto ya local trading standards it could be already in the pipe line
 
:RpS_blushing: Just had a look at joining Walsall trade register. As its the nearest one to me (Wolves) and they want £80 plus vat to join per annum. Might try it it next year. They all cost money though! I should imagine you'd get one job a year at least to subsidise the join up fee.
 
The reason Checkatrade started was after the Hurricane hit Selsey Bill and caused massive damage.Allthe rogue pikeys and **** rip off people came in and cleaned out all the old folf, so some one set up a buissnes where customer could get a good recomended trades man to do a job.Most of the guys who i know on there ramp up there prices on a Chekatrade job cos you have your foot in the door when you get a call.

Mind you there still not charging as high as i do cos i can sell myself better.So fuk em.
 
Im using checkatrade and have had work form it. things like yellow pages also online yellow pages. clients dont realy use unless they have to. most clients do depend on word and mouth. which is abonus as you 95% of the time get the job. but checkatrade does have disadvantages to where if more people in your area join the lower you go on the table. the less work you get abit like google online. but the more reference you have the better it looks for a customer. anything like service magic where you pay for a bloody number that is perfectic but trades do. i.e. my mate but he has had some jobs. but paying for leads i think is day light robbery. i took ages' deciding who to advertise with. had god knows how many people offering deals felt like a car showroom. still do have them ringing. but im glad i went with checkatrade as i have earnt my money back plus more plus still have 7 months till renewal. hope this helps lads.
 
RMK said:
BNI is a waste of time, effort and money.
It only works if you are in the fortunate position to be managing your trade and not actually picking a trowel up.
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Hi rmk bni works if u treat it like part of ya bussines yes you have to commit but you professional people not time wasters. the clients i have met realy have gave me alot of work. ive been the 2 months and have done 4,560 worth of work. thats not bad considering the timeive been there. they have all said its so hard to get a good spread there. you just need to take the spot and be reliable. you do well out of it. dont knock untill you give it atleast a year.
 
A customer's perspective: I started looking in yellow pages, but found that useless. Then I started googling, but found it brought up too many traders who weren't local. Then I looked at find a trader type sites but most of them I didn't like because they wanted me to pay something although I had no idea if the site was any good, or they got a number of traders to pay just to quote, which seems a bit unfair on the traders. And then want 10% of the price for the job from the trader!

Then I found trustatader, which seems pretty good. Lots of customer reviews available that look real (a spread of dates and names). Spoke to an electrician who used it and he thought it was great. The trader pays a fixed fee, not per job. So currently I am using that. However, I will check out checkatrade since a few of you rate it highly.
 
Freerider, im not saying that the builders on those programmes are saints, but they are very one sided to the customer, you dont get to hear much of the tradesmans side of things.

rogue traders on the bbc was by far the best, they use to set them up 2 or 3 times.
 
Rogue traders haha I worked for a fella who was on there last year, Brendan Kiely, he was on there for taking holding fees multiple times for the same property, plus he will be on very soon also on cowboy traders/builders, had constant money issues from day one, I was just glad with the work so close to Christmas, bread and butter money, I was with him for 3 months and the things I seen were shocking, just type his name in to google and you will get pages upon pages, steer well clear of any company associated with him and there are many, 20 odd!! **** done me over for £1000 when I left, he's based in Middleton and lives in lytham st Ann's heed my warning :)
 
I worked in Dominic Littlewoods house in clapham old town, he lives in a modern mews next to vivien westwood. Funny enough, cctv everywhere ha ha
 
i'm no gonna work my sweaty arse off to pay towards some arsehole sitting behind a computer screen to find me work !!!! f..k that!!!!!!
word of mouth and reputation are 100 times better than these pish sites!!
 
We used to do some plastering work for a builder we know (he was crap at plastering) until he boarded out an extension - there was more dry-wall blathered on the front of the boards than was used to stick em on - plus he didn't even put the floor in, just left joists. Reveals were way out by an inch or more and twisted to feck.
We walked off before starting it - he hasn't contacted us since...
 
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