Rated People

Author's product rating:   

Advantages:	You can see the ratings others have given
Disadvantages:	You dont necessarily know that the trademan will give you that level of service

Recommend to potential buyers:

no

Full review

In late 2007 my husband and I bought a house that was and still is in need of much renovation. We have both undertaken various simple DIY projects in the past, but the variety of work that was required called for skilled professionals such as plumbers, electricians, plasterers and several other key professionals.

We live in London and it is not always easy to obtain the people you need through word of mouth recommendations, although that would be the way I would prefer to play it. Some of the work we required had to be done right away on the advice of the surveyor, such as re-wiring the entire property. There was no safety features in place and the surveyor was very insistent on this being done as a huge priority. Another priority was fixing a long term leak in the plumbing one of the reception rooms. This had been left for so long that it had ruined the plaster of the ceiling above, caused rising damp in the wall and wrecked the fire place and floor below it.

With these pressing needs in mind we began our search for the right people for the job. My husband found a website called Rated People where the premise was, you sign up to the site, become a member, put in whatever quotes that you require and wait for local tradesmen to contact you.

Functionality of the site
***************
1. For the consumer

The home page has several pieces of information on it. The main box explains how to use the site bearing the title 'Better people faster' here it has a drop down box of trades that you can choose from, and a box for your post code. If you choose a trade such as plumber and then put your post code in you are then taken to a full briefing document that allows you to say what your budget is, what the key needs of your project are, and your expected time frames.

There is also a box called 'How we work' which explains the principles of the site, that it is a site for consumers to find good trades people and to reflect that in their rating of the work undertaken.

Finally, there is also a box that shows 'Recent ratings' by site users for various different workmen.

There are 4 other tabs, each accessible from the home page.

One called 'find a tradesman' just takes you direct to the job briefing form which can be accessed from the search function on the home page.
Then there is a tab called 'Info' which contains information for users on things like how to get the best from your trademan, and planning permission.
The third tab is called Join and has a box for consumers and one for trademen explaining how to join the site.
The final tab is the log in page for once you are a member.

2. For the Tradesman
There is a box on the main home page which tells tradesman how to join the site, and explains that they will be rated on three criteria by users. These are quality, value and reliability. The site further explains that to show you are the best you have to build up your user ratings.

Our experience - The Bad and the Ugly
********************************
My husband put in work briefs for the electrics and several other pieces of work. He was pleasantly surprised to be contacted within 48 hours by 3 different people all saying that they could come and quote. As it was right before Christmas it was quite difficult once we'd made initial contact to get people to commit to coming out, but one person made the effort.
The tradesman in case was called Michael Sanderson and was trading under the name A2K Plumbing and Electrical. He came to visit the site the first time at 8pm two days before Christmas, put in a quote for the electrical work, the plumbing work and fitting the house with a new boiler, and we agreed a price with him quickly. Work was to begin straight after Christmas.
The first few weeks went well. The house was rewired, the new boiler fitted and the leak in the ceiling stopped and the area replastered. Work went at a fairly good pace and we paid in a combination of cash instalments and bank transfers.

Towards the end of the first lot of work we asked Mike to quote for removing a wall between the kitchen and reception room, and to install a new kitchen, as the existing one was 20 years old and in very bad condition. He accepted the work and the wall was removed fairly quickly. It was at this point that all work pretty much stopped. We had trouble getting in contact with him, a week would go by with no contact and then we'd be told stories about personal problems affecting him life, but apologies would be made and things would carry on. After about 3 weeks of very little progress I had to confront him and was promised that the job would be finished. He told me that his girlfriend had left him, taken his car, his money and was stopping him seeing his children. I am a kind hearted soul and felt that under those circumstances I would give him another chance.
Fool that I am I handed over further cash so he could replace what his girlfriend had taken and the job could be finished. We went away for easter weekend and when we returned he had taken all his tools, and left a note pinned to the wall saying that he couldn't finish the job. He also took £100 in cash that we had left him to pay a plasterer. The plastering had also not been done.
To begin with we started calling his mobile but when that did no good we wrote to the address that he had given us, but the letter which I sent recorded delivery came back as uncollected from the post office.

At that point we started small claims court proceedings as we felt at the time that the amount he owed us was less than the £5,000 mark, the criteria for a small claim. This claim is still ongoing, Mike has not bothered to contact us in any way or offer any form of compensation for a) the emotional stress that this situation has caused and the fact we are very out of pocket or b) the fact that subsequent professionals have winced at the standard of his work, called him a cowboy and also advised us to contact trading standards.

The good experience
*****************
Following our awful experience with Mike, we had a much, much better one with Starlet Builders. We had put in another work brief for renovation of our entire ground floor, floor boards, including stabilising several joists that had been eaten away by word worm. Starlet quoted for that job and although they were £300 more expensive than the nearest quote I felt so reassured by the professionalism shown by Martin that I made my mind up straight away to use him. I have never regretted this decision.

Starlet did a fantastic job on our flooring, the workmen; all Polish people were extremely polite, friendly and hard working. They turned up at 8am like clockwork and worked until the job was done each day. They even worked on Saturdays, and one of the electricians stayed until 9pm on evening.
As they did such a great job on the floor we basically begged Martin who is the project manager to take on our kitchen situation as well. Mike had left us with no working kitchen and we were forced to eat takeaway food for over a month, which being 3 months pregnant at the time was frankly awful.
Martin and his team in 2 and a half weeks took the shell of two rooms, and created a professional working kitchen diner. I cannot speak highly enough about them.
They aren't cheap in fact I winced at some of the prices, but I also felt that the standard of work they carried out totally negated any down side on cost.

My views on Rated People
*********************
I am of mixed opinion on this site. Clearly there are people out there who are amazing at what they do and you can be put in touch through the site. Although we have only used 2 of the trademen we met through the site, the others all seemed professional enough.

I was disappointed in the administration of the site and the usability on two occasions.

When the whole Mike situation arose I contacted them and asked as a priority that they removed him from their system, I get that the site is about ratings, but surely when someone is behaving in a criminal manner it isn't going to benefit anyone from having the possibility of being put in touch with him? I suppose the only benefit is if he tries to set up again under a different name hopefully the site will have the sense to notice and ban him. We are a relatively young couple both in full time employment but for a retired couple trying to use limited funds to carry out essential works he is a real danger and a menace.
Rated People refuse to remove him, took quite a long time to answer my emails, promised that a supervisor would call me to discuss my case, but then never did. I held off providing a rating for a long time as the ongoing legal situation could potentially have been inflamed by me posting remarks like I now have on Mike. I thought, well if he sees that he'll never cough up, so the fact the site also wouldn't act was frustrating.
When I did finally decide to use the site to add my rating the site wasn't working. I emailed them to ask why and never heard anything back.
Eventually I managed to post my rating, but there must be a word count limit as the 100 words or so that I wanted to write detailing what had been done to me by the tradesman in question wouldn't post and kept giving me an error message.
When I chopped down my rating the site miraculously let me post. So there must be a limit but no user guide noting this on the site.

I emailed on multiple occasions asking if they had a word count and asking if they didn't that they amended my entry to show the full version. It's been over a week now and I haven't had one word back from them, which is poor given my experience.

My verdict
********
It comes down to this, I personally would want a recommendation from a friend that had done a similar sized job to the one I was wanting to do rather than relying on a site like this. Certainly I got very lucky with my second company and gave them the highest rating possible, but I'm still thousands of pounds out of pocket with little chance of ever seeing it again as a result of a bad tradesman. I have since found out that the council do a scheme where they will put you in touch with tradesmen that have passed certain standards, but they wont verify these people, so again you are left to pay your money and take your chances.

If I could just finish with some words of caution that I have learnt the very hard way.

1. Do not pay for anything in cash. We did so and have been stung by this. Starlet builders did not ask for any cash, all was done electronically. If they are a reliable modern company BACS transfer is available
2. Don't use people who aren't ltd, at least with Ltd companies they are listed at Companies House and can be found more easily
3. If your intuition tells you that someone is pulling a fast one, they probably are.

Thanks for reading!

Shoka