localtraders.com .. any experience ?

[the locksmith]

Had a couple of calls recently from this crowd. Have done a search on here and not much to be found as far as I can see.

Therefore wondering if no posts about them is good news ?

They claim a PR5 for their website which seems to check out ok.
They are a bit different to normal lot that are always calling with adwords etc etc. They depend on the customer putting in to a search form what they are after and this is then passed to the trader by sms. They are looking for £125+vat for 6 months. The guy openly admits they depend on a long tail search as simply putting in "locksmiths Edinburgh" doesn't bring them up.

I've been stung too often in the past (sometimes down to not listening to my own advice ! :redface .....so any thoughts, experience etc welcome.

 

[RadiusBPO]

I cannot see it being worthwhile. I doubt you'd even get 1 call!

And how much longer can the tail get?

 

[KernowQueen]

something a bit 'odd' or perhaps i'm just too suspicious with these types of company!

company no. on their website 6971607 was ratedandrecommend.com until last March when they changed it to local traders online ltd. But on their website they state they are part of the ratedandrecommend.com ltd group, but ratedandrecommend.com is just a holding site under 123.reg & i can't find them listed at companies house.

perhaps RandR had a bad name, so they're now under a new one? from past feedback, i can't remember anything too positive said about any of them.

 

[popunder]

Without any evidence that the site will generate business, I'd give it a miss. Anyone could set up a site like that, there are no testimonials on there from other trades saying how gooad it is. £125 guarantees you nothing. I would put the £125 into your own AdWords campaign, or towards a pay-per-lead site like mybuilder.com if there's one which covers locksmiths.

Incidentally if there was a "locksmiths website" which charged per enquiry, and you were 100% sure the leads were coming from the website, how much would you be prepared to pay per enquiry? Assuming there is no other monthly fee and no long-term contract.

 

[the locksmith]

Guy phoned back again today. Asked him about " ratedandrecommend.com" . Denied all knowledge of any connection ????????

This morning following Kernowqueen's post I had a look and Google came up with :-

Local Traders - About Us

Localtraders.com is part of the rateandrecommend.com Ltd group, our aims and goals are straightforward and honest "To deliver a serv



Just tried it again and it appears to have changed. It now reads :-
"Local Traders is part of Local Traders Online Ltd. Our aims and goals etc etc etc......"

Seems a bit odd me thinks.

If they said to me try us for a week or 10 days and see what happens then I might be tempted to give it a go. But I know they ain't going to say that !

Popunder .... the honest answer is I don't know.:redface: I think I would need to know a lot more about it before talking £'s. (or are you just winding me up?)

 

[popunder]

Popunder .... the honest answer is I don't know.:redface: I think I would need to know a lot more about it before talking £'s. (or are you just winding me up?)

Well I'm not deliberately winding you up! There's not much more to know; we create a web page for your business with a unique phone number (local, not premium rate) which diverts to your normal landline or mobile number and logs all calls made to it. Every month we send you a detailed list of calls made to your number, including times, dates, calling number etc. so you know they're legit, and bill you on a per call basis, say £4.99 per call. We exclude duplicates where the same person calls multiple times, and unconnected calls.

So let's say you get 10 non-duplicate calls to your number, you convert 5 into business, so 5 pieces of new business for £25. There's no fee to set up, no contract, nothing else to pay, "no obligation, no salesman will visit your home" as Tom Waits says.

You only pay if you get calls so there's no risk - no calls = no charge. Compare that to yell.com

Deal or no deal?!

 

[MASSEY]

They are part of rate and recommend - he lied to you .

Doesnt seem to bad when you compare them to some of the con artist directories. I dont think you will see a return on investment though.

 

[LocalTraders]

Having read the comments and discussion about localtraders.com, I wanted to provide some clarification about the company.

Localtraders.com is now part of Local Traders Online Ltd, formerly rateandrecommend.com Ltd. The name change took place to fall in line with the name of the website, because the company was registered before the website name was chosen and the website itself set up. Therefore to avoid confusion for customers, the name change took place in March 2010.


The website was updated yesterday as it was noticed the reference to the company name had not changed, and this now reads that we were formerly registered as rateandrecommend.com Ltd, to provide clarification for visitors to the site.


I have also advised our sales department manager about the question posed to one of our advisers about rateandrecommend.com Ltd. The adviser asked has only recently started working for the company so was not aware of the company name change last year. We are keen to ensure questions asked can be answered accurately and this has now therefore been addressed. There was no intention to mislead you when answering your question.


Although we cannot offer a free trial for the service, we are extremely confident that your subscription will deliver customer leads directly to your mobile. Therefore if you join the service and don't receive any enquiries during your first 6 months, we will give you the next 6 months free as a goodwill gesture.


We don't charge per lead as we feel the tradespeople are the experts at valuing jobs, and we prefer to deliver as cost effective service to tradespeople as possible so keep costs to a minimum by simply charging a 6 month subscription fee. For the same reason, we never take commission on jobs, so anything you earn stays in your pocket.


I hope this has cleared up any areas that may have previously seemed 'muddy', but if you have any questions about the service, you can email us at sales(at)localtraders.com and we will call you back.

 

[SEO Lady]

Therefore if you join the service and don't receive any enquiries during your first 6 months, we will give you the next 6 months free as a goodwill gesture.

Obviously 'enquiries' may not equal sales.

What I would do is ... create a job request yourself for 'locksmith endinburgh' and when you get responses, ask those companies if it has been a good investment.

 

[the locksmith]

Welcome to the forum LT.
Thanks for clarifying the situation regards name change etc.

It's a real pity you can't offer even a weeks free trial.

If I was buying a new car I wouldn't just walk into the showroom and hand over my money without a test drive. If you are so confident about your service I am at a loss to understand why you wouldn't give a "test drive". Even if you could get some of your existing users to give a testimonial it would be a bit of a plus.

Sorry, as I mentioned earlier I have been stung once too often in the past so final answer has to be no.

 

[popunder]

> if you join the service and don't receive any enquiries during your first 6 months, we will give you the next 6 months free as a goodwill gesture.

...so you can get none for another 6 months! Not brilliant that is it.

> we cannot offer a free trial for the service

... well, you could, it's your business so why not?

Pay-per-lead is the future of this kind of thing, too may businesses stung by expensive ads (online and offline) which don't deliver.

Locksmith what do you think to my pay-per-lead proposal above? How would the numbers stack up in terms of spend per lead (£4.99) versus income per lead (???) in your business?

 

[the locksmith]

Popunder... it sounds good in theory but one flaw in the plan is that as soon as you list a phone number (which obviously you have to do) on a website you get every bug*er and their dog phoning you up to sell you this that and the other.

I wouldn't be happy shelling out £5 everytime somebody from Yell , 118, Touchlocal, Thompsons, Neu Era, BT Directories, Bt Customerstreet, Ufindus, Locksmithsregister, "we are phoning on behalf of Google", "are you thinking about selling your business", "do you have any outstanding invoices" and all the other agencies called me up.

I get about 5 - 10 calls every week = £25 / £50 ! I had to remove my divert to mobile from my landline number a few years back 'cos it was getting to be silly money paying for the divert.

 

[the locksmith]

Chr*st, just had another crowd on the phone.... I tried to explain to the guy that I was fed up of companies like Neu Era etc and he went on to actually defend "these" companies !

That's when I put the phone down !

 

[popunder]

I know what you're saying Locksmith but we'd factor that out, we see every calling number and could avoid charging for withheld numbers, which the telesales companies tend to use, or even for non-local numbers if appropriate. If you're in Edinburgh and the call comes from London, it's probably not a worthwhile lead for a local locksmith!

To be honest the businesses I represent already on this basis don't find it a problem, they do get the odd sales call but not from yell or the others you mention, they tend to be small publishers - someone running a local magazine for example. The big telesales companies plough through yell, YP, thomsonlocal and the startup data list they get from BT (new business line connections), they wouldn't bother much with our relatively insignificant website.

And as I say don't forget the calls are priced to take account of some wastage, if every call was 100% nailed-on new business for you they'd be £20 each not £5 . Same as Google's pay-per-click really - you can only expect a fraction of clickthroughs to turn into business, but Google can only charge by the click as it's the only thing they can realistically monitor.

Do you have an idea of how many calls you receive per week/month (ignoring the 'spam calls'), how many turn into business, how much on average a job is worth to you (not forgetting the repeat business), and how much you spend on advertising to get that amount of work? Without a rough idea of these numbers I guess you won't be able to tell whether £5 per call is good or bad value to you.

ps: sounds like you could do with one of these: http://www.truecall.co.uk/ < just seen on another thread!

 

[the locksmith]

I'll pm you popunder as I don't think conducting business publicly on a forum is a good idea.

 

[popunder]

OK - sorry I'm not trying to "sign you up" I'm just interested to know if for you as a locksmith the idea would be attractive at the price I'm suggesting. I know from talking to other tradespeople about their opinions on this idea's suitability and cost-effectiveness for their business, I just don't know any locksmiths!

 

[robertszilver]

I made a contract with localtraders, paid 176 pounds, they promised between 15-40 text-jobs per month. They offered me a promotion, 2 activities for the same price, and after they sent me terms and conditions on the 7-th day (to make sure I can't cancel it),and I complained, they offered me another area with both activities, so basically now I have 2 activities x 2 areas, so it's 4 all together. But for these 4 instead of getting between 60-160 text-jobs per month, I only got 1 job so far in 3 months (and only because this way they don't have to give me another 6 months).

1.)They are BIG TIME [removed by mod] !!!
And I say this, because, they didn't kept their verbal contract, which for I paid, 176 pounds, because I trusted them. If they would have said, that I will get maximum 1 contract for 1 month, or 3 months, I would have never paid.
They should take care, what they promise over the phone, as it's a verbal contract.

Now I'm going to a lawyer, and they will have to pay my money back, plus all the lawyer expenses. I will also write to all the watchdogs related to this kind of cases, I will contact other members, who have been fulled, we gonna testify together, and we will put this company down once and forever, so they not gonna steal other people's money, especially now, when we all care where we spend our money.

 

[the locksmith]

Robertszilver - sorry to hear of your experience, however I now know I made the right decision not to proceed.

 

[MASSEY]

There is money to be made online for tradesmen. The websites i set up on free wordpress themes and optimised myself so they rank well have bought in a lot of work. But in terms of paying for listings on directories it's not really profitable. The free directories bring in more traffic in most cases because they get more traffic.

 

[LocalTraders]

[FONT=&quot]Hi robertszilver[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot] [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]I am extremely disappointed to hear you've had a bad experience with our service. The majority of our tradespeople renew their packages with localtraders because they are happy with the enquiries we provide and the additional revenue this generates for their business, therefore if you could direct message me with your name and address, I can locate your account and we can contact you and try our best to resolve this for you.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot][/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]We accept that not every tradesperson who joins localtraders is going to be 100% happy with our service, as with thousands of customers, there are always going to be potential issues.
[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot] However we take customer complaints very seriously and we do our best to satisfy any customer complaints we receive. Our aim is to deliver affordable, measurable, sensibly priced advertising that offers a good return on investment for our customers.[/FONT]

 

[RadiusBPO]

[FONT=&quot]Hi robertszilver[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot] [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]I am extremely disappointed to hear you’ve had a bad experience with our service. The majority of our tradespeople renew their packages with localtraders because they are happy with the enquiries we provide and the additional revenue this generates for their business, therefore if you could direct message me with your name and address, I can locate your account and we can contact you and try our best to resolve this for you.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot][/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]We accept that not every tradesperson who joins localtraders is going to be 100% happy with our service, as with thousands of customers, there are always going to be potential issues.
[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot] However we take customer complaints very seriously and we do our best to satisfy any customer complaints we receive. Our aim is to deliver affordable, measurable, sensibly priced advertising that offers a good return on investment for our customers.[/FONT]

You guys need to set up Google Alerts... Some reputation management wouldn't go amiss!

 

[parkeey]

would this not be better for a more common trade like gardening or building works, the site is apparantly listed in newspapers sunday times and the express, but i can see how people could use the site to get the lowest price possible ?? do traders not get a free trail then>?

 

[draelectricals]

Had a couple of calls recently from this crowd. Have done a search on here and not much to be found as far as I can see.

Therefore wondering if no posts about them is good news ?

They claim a PR5 for their website which seems to check out ok.
They are a bit different to normal lot that are always calling with adwords etc etc. They depend on the customer putting in to a search form what they are after and this is then passed to the trader by sms. They are looking for £125+vat for 6 months. The guy openly admits they depend on a long tail search as simply putting in "locksmiths Edinburgh" doesn't bring them up.

I've been stung too often in the past (sometimes down to not listening to my own advice ! :redface .....so any thoughts, experience etc welcome.

Don't even go there. There a plenty of good quality directories which you can use for free and with a bit of work can be VERY beneficial for you. Think of 2 main directories to start with, make the most of them - google maps and Free Index. Personally I find free index brilliant - you should too.

 

[RBS]

[FONT=&quot]Hi robertszilver[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]I am extremely disappointed to hear you’ve had a bad experience with our service. The majority of our tradespeople renew their packages with localtraders because they are happy with the enquiries we provide and the additional revenue this generates for their business, therefore if you could direct message me with your name and address, I can locate your account and we can contact you and try our best to resolve this for you.[/FONT]


[FONT=&quot]We accept that not every tradesperson who joins localtraders is going to be 100% happy with our service, as with thousands of customers, there are always going to be potential issues.
[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot] However we take customer complaints very seriously and we do our best to satisfy any customer complaints we receive. Our aim is to deliver affordable, measurable, sensibly priced advertising that offers a good return on investment for our customers.[/FONT]

You forgot to add: "...and you will get full refund."

 

[draelectricals]

[FONT=&quot]Hi robertszilver[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot] [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]I am extremely disappointed to hear you’ve had a bad experience with our service. The majority of our tradespeople renew their packages with localtraders because they are happy with the enquiries we provide and the additional revenue this generates for their business, therefore if you could direct message me with your name and address, I can locate your account and we can contact you and try our best to resolve this for you.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot][/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]We accept that not every tradesperson who joins localtraders is going to be 100% happy with our service, as with thousands of customers, there are always going to be potential issues.
[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot] However we take customer complaints very seriously and we do our best to satisfy any customer complaints we receive. Our aim is to deliver affordable, measurable, sensibly priced advertising that offers a good return on investment for our customers.[/FONT]

err... yeah right! ha! I complained many times - phone and letter and NEVER had a courteous reply, and was treated badly on the phone too.

 

[the locksmith]

I think something that stands out regards all these online directories etc. is that you never ever get anyone saying "They were great ! I got loads of business from them and I have renewed my advert for the last "x" years." I'm sure a lot of them fold leaving a trail of disappointed customers and just start up under another name and do it all again.

I have asked many of them for the phone numbers of some of their happy customers just to confirm how good they are. "Sorry .... data protection and all that !"

 

[LocalTraders]

Hi ViperCCTV

Localtraders.com operate openly and honestly disclosing all information about the package and membership details which are sent in hard copy to you for your records as part of the welcome pack.

We cannot offer a guarantee, so don't pretend that we can. Just like any conventional advertising cannot guarantee you will receive additional business, Localtraders.com cannot predict the amount of enquiries that each trade in each area will receive. However we receive visits from thousands of customers every month who enquire and have many happy customers receiving leads on a daily basis boosting their companies' revenue and who are happy to renew their package.

We don't offer free trials because we only have a limited number of places in our system for tradesmen across the UK. In order to operate as a company, we need to generate revenue; free trials are not practical because the only fee tradesmen pay to be part of Localtraders.com is the membership fee. Other services charge commission on jobs won or charge for texts received - we don't. We offer measurable low cost lead generation.

Although for data protection reasons we cannot give out customer/client contact information, there are testimonials displayed on the website from tradespeople which can be viewed on the testimonials page.

In answer to your final point, Localtraders.com is only 18 months old but we have grown considerably in that time due to the investment made in the company during that period. We have received coverage in UK media with radio interviews, print media and online features, including recently being named as the Sunday Mirror's website of the week. Investments in the company, our customer base and reputation demonstrate our commitment to our brand. In addition we have expanded internationally into the Swedish and Finnish markets.

I can understand if being part of localtraders.com is not presently suited to your needs, however I felt it was important to respond to the points you raised, and thank you for your time speaking with our sales representatives today.

Local Traders

 

[MASSEY]

No with the right advertising you CAN guarantee a level of return, that's nonsense to suggest otherwise. Which is why anyone that uses a service where it's virtually a given that the enquiries will be low or non at all, you should run a mile a not use it.

 

[bell-stuart1]

Im a locksmith and at the moment use service magic who charges you per lead with no contract and a maximum of 5 quotes.
My only downside to this is other locksmiths asking you for quotes checking out your prices so they can undercut you which does cost me quite a bit with wasted leads.

 

[JohnnyCash]

However we receive visits from thousands of customers every month who enquire and have many happy customers receiving leads on a daily basis boosting their companies' revenue and who are happy to renew their package.

So you receive "thousands" of visitors who enquire (I hope you mean thousands of enquiries, and not thousands of visitors!).

But you have 643,000 pages indexed in your site. Whats your average number of leads per business listed... a total number of leads per month is completely irrelevant.

 

[the locksmith]

Im a locksmith and at the moment use service magic who charges you per lead with no contract and a maximum of 5 quotes.
My only downside to this is other locksmiths asking you for quotes checking out your prices so they can undercut you which does cost me quite a bit with wasted leads.

Just being nosy .... but what do you pay servicemagic.... and indeed how do you pay servicemagic ? Roughly how many jobs do you get to quote for over say a month?

(I suppose a lot will depend on where you are located.)

Oh .. and welcome to the forum.

 

[bell-stuart1]

I thinks its around £6 a lead which they invoice you monthly, you choose your own radius ect, ive been with them 3 weeks ive had 6 leads and 1 job from it, but youve got to beat other quotes which bring my normal quotations by other directories down somewhat though, otherwise i will miss the jobs and the other lockies will get the jobs.

 

[MASSEY]

Why don't you get your own site stuart?

 

[bell-stuart1]

I have my own website but just not getting enough customers one reason being the parasite national companys subbing there work out and advitising all over my local directories

 

[DesignerNick]

There have been so many posts about companies like this lately, the same as that local link up one a couple of weeks ago and the worst thing is they do make a lot of money and rip a lot of people off.

Have you thought about getting your own site and doing a bit of SEO? It wouldn't be too hard to have a simple page and get it ranked for locksmith in your area? You say you have your own website but how is it built, is it optimised for your keywords?

People look at Web Designers and SEO's and think that they are a waste of money, by the time they have finished paying for online sitebuilders and 2 bit directory site the ROI of using a pro in the first place would have been much better.

 

[bell-stuart1]

What i would like is a 1 page basic website which for example somebody types locksmiths in chester would be there on 1st page of google. i would want it for various citys and towns in the northwest, i dont know how its done i just know that the subcontractors do it and on each town the web page displays ie locksmiths in chester, locksmiths in manchester when they type in there town, does anybody know how they do this?

 

[MASSEY]

You would need more than one page on the site for it to rank decent.

You basically need to get lots of citations and backlinks.

It's not so straightforward anymore, there used to be google places then the organinc listing below, due to the volume of split testing google do you can never be sure of the screens being shown, there are many different options for many different searches.

Basically you need to work on citations and backlinks to beat the competiton.

As some one that owns a lot of sites for various local searches i would advise you find someone good at google pay per click and do your best to make your site better than the competiton. This is where the real internet money is after the changes in the last few months.

There is still cash to be made from the organic ranks but i do my own so its free for me, if you have to pay someone grands then you might not see any worthwhile profit for a while.

 

[TraderMR]

This company is disgusting and cons honest tradesmen.

We were promised over 10 texts a month for work and with the 6 months we have been with them we have had 0, we even have the phone records to prove this.

We sent off a letter (as requested in their terms and conditions) to not renew and surprise surprise they are claiming they 'have not received the letter' so debited us another £120. From complaining and them promising call backs (which never happen) this company is a massive scam and looking at the previous threads this seems the case for other people too!

They probably have 'thousands of customers' as the local traders post states because these are thousands of customers they are scamming for money. We will be talking to a solicitor to reclaim loss of earnings which Google Adwords would have brought in if we had spent the money on this.

Scamming company - AVOID!

Private message me if you need further information

 

[HertsCCTV]

I am sorry to say this but I am on the same level as most "AVOID!"

We was apart of Service Magic which is another company that I would avoid! They charge what they like for leads! We were charged £12 + VAT per lead billed on a monthly basis.

Problems we faced:

- We found that we always got duplicate leads!
- The leads were never verified
- If you did not complain about mis-leads (wrong email, phone) they would just bill you
- Always spoken to rudely on the phone
- Never responded to emails

LocalTraders

Have been with them since 1st July have had 4 text messages on the 15/07, 2nd 25/07, 3rd 27/07, 4th 19/08 that's it.

I think for the money it is a waste as I have only done 1 job out of the lot and that was a total of £69+vat.

Like all of these sites you are promised based on so many searches but I can come up with a figure in my head and say that.

I WILL NOT BE SIGNING UP AGAIN

There are loads of this sites and my advice is AVOID THEM

 

[Lockoutlondon]

We recieve a text every so often from them to contact a client who need a locksmith job carried out. When we contact them they all say the same thing, that the had a problem the day before and it has already been sorted out. Too long a time from getting lead to texting us. As you know , when someone has an emergency they don't like to wait around for too long, i.m.h.o.

Had a couple of calls recently from this crowd. Have done a search on here and not much to be found as far as I can see.

Therefore wondering if no posts about them is good news ?

They claim a PR5 for their website which seems to check out ok.
They are a bit different to normal lot that are always calling with adwords etc etc. They depend on the customer putting in to a search form what they are after and this is then passed to the trader by sms. They are looking for £125+vat for 6 months. The guy openly admits they depend on a long tail search as simply putting in "locksmiths Edinburgh" doesn't bring them up.

I've been stung too often in the past (sometimes down to not listening to my own advice ! :redface .....so any thoughts, experience etc welcome.