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Tuesday, July 07, 2009

How to find reputable tradespeople

Have you ever tried to find a reputable builder or plumber and just not known where to start?

Most landlords go on word of mouth recommendations. A mate, somebody in the pub, colleagues at work are all good sources of potential star plumber or builder who are reliable honest and not too expensive.

We have recently come across the site ratedpeople which allows landlords to find all kinds of tradespeople from plumbers to paving specialists.

How does it work?

To find a suitable tradesperson a landlord simply needs to:
1. Give a detailed description when you post your job
2. Choose the best tradesperson for your job based on their skills and their rating
3. After they've done the job, rate them
It seems pretty straightforward and it also costs a landlord nothing.

We would be interested to hear of any experiences of landlords that may have used this website or similar. Are they any good, have you been successful in using them and are there any catches to sourcing tradespeople online or is it safer to stick to getting advice from your mates down the pub?

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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Rated People sells your inquiry to up to three tradesmen for between £10-30 each - these charges get passed onto you and so the quotes tend to be quite high and there are only 2-3 of them.

A much better site to use is My Builder who charge the winning tradesman 5% of the cost of the work. The main advantage of this site is that you can ask as many tradesmen to quote as you like as well as see their ratings and check their qualifications.

I have posted 3 jobs so far on the site and the range of quotes is incredible; to replace 9 radiators at a house in Bristol the highest quote was £3,000 + VAT and the lowest was £850 (no VAT) from a Corgi-registered sole trader - incredible savings.

For a garden clearing job taking 5 hours the highest quotes were £80 + £90 - the lowest was £40 from someone with good personal recommendations.

A great experience and a significant source of savings.

Alick Campbell