Rated People

[adbase]

I'm a very successful handyman and I would resist the Rated People business model for several good reasons:
1) by signing up you put 'them' in control and the more people that do likewise the more 'they' get to dictate the whole marketplace for work coming to trades people.
2) it perpetuates the customer becoming lazy and not using their own instincts and family/friend network to find somebody good.
3) I want to be working at my hourly rate and not spending an inordinate amount of time:

1. fishing for these leads
2. chasing up quotes I've given
3. trying to contact the lead
4. spending 2hrs discussing requirements then getting no reply
5. trying to quote over the phone with job unseen
6. trying to battle getting money back from Rated People if I feel I was diddled by an aspect of the process
7. shaving my quote to an absolute minimum (or less) so I end up making next to nothing for my hard work

In essence I want to promote myself, do good work for a fair price and get more work on the strength of it. Above all, I do not want to make fat middle men rich with the work I do.
So strive to be the best—which is most definitely not the same as striving to be the cheapest.

 

[lawrence147]

Totally agree adbase

 

[Bobadob]

I suppose the idea of ratedpeople/mybuilder is sound. I am trying to do the same sort of thing but for products with my website www.bobadob.com but it is slow going.
I can see why these sites charge for leads as the buyer and seller just get together and "cut out the middleman" who has spent a fortune advertsing and getting his site out there.
I am going with the model of leads for free and the sellers pays if they get a job. What i hope is that enough people will go through the system to make it worth while. I know that some people will cut Bobadob out and i dont think you can stop that.
If you are all used to using rated people/mybuilder then try my site and see if it can help you out. It is free to use as a buyer, so you have nothing to lose.
All feedback gratefully received.
Thanks

 

[SynergyRoofing]

Rated people are just so expensive, the model just cant work in the long run, I wont use it.

 

[cordellsplastering]

I use rated people and find it ok it helps me stay a float on quite days

 

[leemason]

I haven't used ratedpeople but I have used checkatrade as a customer and have found some excellent people through that. I've also, in the past, used recommendations from friends and neighbours: that didn't go so well. I find that people are very reluctant to tell you about things that went wrong. We had problems with every single person that we had a recommendation for and when you go back to the recommender and tell them they say "oh yes, there did that to us too", then why the f*** did they tell us?

Even when people recommend products to you because they've got one they won't tell you the downside. We bought a Smeg oven because a friend recommended it. We had problems with it and it turned out the friend had the very same problems that where never fixed!

 

[alex-a]

There a waste of time, I used them for a while but the leads were rubish which rated people charge a small fortune for, and its full of time wasters with access to a computer. I would not touch them with a barge pole, also when I joined I was never asked to show my city & guilds certificates to them to prove I was a real tradesman, they just took my £40 quid to join. Just goes to show that anyone can join and start geting leads to quote on, very scary indead for joe public that they think there hiring a proper tradesman to do there gas work when infact its just a jack of all trades odd job man with no formal collage training.

Hi
Have to agree.

Thanks

Alex

 

[Simon.P]

Having read the entire thread on these trades lead generation websites i didn't think there was going to be anything to add, although something else has popped in to my mind.
They have vast, powerful websites and therefore rank very highly with search engines. It's possible to find a tradesmans profile on them before their own website (assuming they have one).
Imagine the negative impact on something like this:

Thoughts?
H

 

[Anonymouse72]

from a customer pov, if it said along the lines of 'no longer a member', not an issue, but seeing that, i'd be getting my bargepole out & swiftly moving on to the next one...

not paid their bill or received poor reviews, we'll never know, but well & truly stuffed by MyBuilder!

 

[Davetheplumber]

As a tradesman who uses rated, I have had a lot of work from them. Yes the leads are quite expensive but I usually go for boiler and central heating jobs, I've had a lot of customers and they've all left 5* ratings which gives the next customer confidence that a good jobs been done. I've had several jobs where I've been told I wasn't the cheapest but my ratings won the work.

Just my opinion

 

[Anonymouse72]

i've always been very wary of these types of sites, plenty of negative feedback from tradesmen to be found. they don't suit our Company set up but i've been surprised by someone i know who has been self employed for a few months now & he's getting nearly all his work via RP. only had 1 customer 'issue' & that was down to poor communication, which i believe he got sorted.

 

[priorshome]

Never had a problem with rated. Leads are a bit expensive but good if you go for one of their annual deals.

Just blown mybuilder.com away. They couldn't meet my guaranteed number of leads last quarter, when they finally caught up, they doubled my membership costs. When I questioned it, the suggested I reduced my work area. I suggested their heads back up their own a-holes!!