Hi has anyone out there used a website that rates tradespeople based in the UK, I joined it yesterday £10 for 3 months trial period then a repeat subscription of £40 per quarter which gives you 100 text messages and or 100 emails, passing on details of potential customers looking for rated tradespeople. 100 leads i thought , Fair enough. £40 a quarter doesn't seem to bad. I read through the website and was a bit mystified with what actually happens, but i risked my £10 for the 3 months offer anyway.

Great i received a lead on text the very next day, for a small job, but a job none the less, So hey i answered to say i was interested. I noticed when i replied to the text that it said i had used my one free credit? what's that about i thought? and dismissed it not really understanding what the credit was about.
I was informed that i was one of 3 tradesman that will be quoting. OK thats fair enough, A bit of competition is fair play. I drove a round trip of 60 miles met the client and gave my keenest price. Which for the current economic climate was really my absolute best price. I wrote them a quotation on the spot on headed paper with my T & Cs on the back. Fine job done.
The customer thanked me and said they would let me know once they had seen the 2 other tradesman they were waiting on.

I returned home and got another text, It was the same website to see if i was interested in another job located about 20 miles away, Great i thought, Its tough out there that would be worth seeing, The text told me to reply to buy and get customer lead? Huh Buy i though, Is that not what my subscription was for, and how much, the text message didn't say, just said to buy.

I phoned the contact number on the site and spoke to someone there, who told me that on top of the usual subscription there is a small charge from £5 to £25 for each lead,they told me i should read the T & C of the site, Which they was right i really should have.

I went back to the said site and looked deep into there terms and conditions, which i really should have done in the first place, I found this eventually

'As a Trade Professional you'll receive details of relevant Jobs in your area, including a brief description, skills required and timing. If you decide the Job is of interest we then charge a small fee after which both you and the Customer receive each other's contact details. The fees for leads vary from job to job.'

Daylight robbery
I am not without extreme knowledge of how data driven web sites work, I run data driven sites myself and could quite easily set something like this up if i had the time to promote it.

What i'm getting at here is do we really need to be lining a computer geeks pockets over and over, surely a subscription is enough, they will be getting between 5 and 25 pounds every time i look at a job, plus the two other tradesman will also be paying the same as myself, as well as there subscriptions, the reason i was joining this in the first place was because work is getting shorter and shorter and money is tight, but there answer is to pay pay pay, i may end up shelling out money for leads and not actually getting any of them, so what was the subscription for, Oh i see, its to fool you into paying £10 in the hope you can earn some money , they do not state the extra charges clearly on there homepage or even promote a link to tell you, you have to go through the T&Cs and then click a small link at the bottom of that page to take you to the part:

As a Trade Professional you'll receive details of relevant Jobs in your area, including a brief description, skills required and timing. If you decide the Job is of interest we then charge a small fee after which both you and the Customer receive each other's contact details. The fees for leads vary from job to job.'

I asked the person manning the phone of the web site (when i called them) how they work out the extra charge, they said its based on the specification of the job, I asked them if they knew how much all trades charged: for say a plumber fitting a boiler or a painter painting a wall, They could not tell me, but they do charge a fee between 5 and 25 pounds, They said they could take me off the site, but would not be able to refund my subscription.

If this website for rating tradespeople and customers alike, Admin is reading this post, then let me tell you. If you wasn't so greedy you would be doing great things.

As it is being charged in affect to go to job interviews on top of a monthly subscription is not the way forward, letting down the trader will let down all your front end customers, the ones that are making this site work, pretty soon they will have a problem getting one person to quote on their job let alone three and the site will no longer work.

Think about it Mr People rater wouldn't a simple commission paid on completion of the works be a lot fairer.

For example the site i am posting on is Free Free Free, take a lesson from it and stop being greedy.

I am blogging this all over the Internet on all free trade sites to Inform UK tradesman like myself, not to join these people, I rate them absolute scandelous!!!