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Of course! We recognise that you receive work for a number of sources and so we encourage you to ask your customers to leave you feedback on your TradesAdvisor profile.
Unfortunately, we can never guarantee any volume of referrals nor can be guarantee a steady stream of enquiries. There are various ways in which online users can find a tradesman :-
When an online user posts a project, you have the same opportunity as the other members within your trade category to access the referral. If an online user chooses to browse trade profiles, this is where you have complete control over your visibility to that potential customer ... and here's how ...
We are continually marketing the website online and offline and our hits and page views steadily increase month on month. Our job is to get potential customers onto TradesAdvisor.com ... your job is to make your profile as visible as you can to attract those customers to your profile!
We operate from serviced offices in central Aberdeen - Torridon House, 73-75 Regent Quay, Aberdeen, AB11 5AR.
We offices provide adequate internal space for 12 employees and we have private parking on site for visitors and staff.
Although we have been around for a relatively short period of time, people across Scotland are already beginning to rely on the service that TradesAdvisor provides. Why? Because we are independent and impartial. We do not offer an opinion on tradesmen but the facts. Below is our TradesAdvisor Charter, which each of our members agree to undertake when they become a member of TradesAdvisor :-
Be realistic regarding when you will come round to provide a quotation.
No we don't. Our revenue comes from our trade members, who pay an annual subscription to gain access to referrals and for their online web presence.
When you complete the job posting form, the TradesAdvisor admin is sent an e-mail informing them that a new job has been posted and requires approval. Once the job has been approved, a message is sent to the tradesmen in that category by SMS and e-mail. This is sent automatically notifying our members that they have a new referral. It is then up to them to contact you directly.
Fortunately this is quite rare, but it can happen. Our complaints procedure helps to protect you from unreasonable claims or malicious comments. Rest assured we will listen to your side of the story and use our experience and judgement to help you resolve issues with customers if and when they arise.
We would never publish a negative comment or scores lower than 5, without contacting you first. The severity of the complaint determines how the complaint is dealt with. If a negative feedback is submitted (ie less than 5), we would contact you to discuss the feedback and validate that the feedback is genuine. If there is doubt around the facts of the feedback, we would then contact the customer and understand the circumstances that led the customer to leaving a negative review.
You will then have the following options:
This depends on how much experience you have in your line of work. You need to be qualified and be able to execute quality work. TradesAdvisor will help give you the kick-start you are looking for. We can advise you on how best to utilise your membership, give you marketing options, and help you build your brand by publishing your customers' feedback.
That's great to hear and you have obviously built up a great business, perhaps partly based on customer feedback, doing great work and marketing yourself well. The majority of our members join primarily for the credibility, and we can maximise this for your continued success. We can help you stay ahead of your competitors by providing another reason for customers to choose you first. Through TradesAdvisor you can take more of the jobs that are most profitable or enjoyable, and we can help you get them more efficiently and effectively - it is likely that your advertising spend will be cut as you focus on word of mouth recommendation.
If most of your work comes from recommendations then you are exactly the type of business we are looking for. We want people who are proud of their reputation and who know it works for them as the best form of advertising. If you are not getting work by recommendation, we would be asking why. Being a member of TradesAdvisor provides you a platform to shout even louder about your reputation! Recommendations are not just passed among friends. They are shared with the general public, time after time after time. You will build up a record of customer opinions that will cover all areas of your work, in all of your locations, and stretch back for as long as you have been a member. So you will be as good as all of your jobs, not just your last one.
We hear this a lot. We have all heard sales people make claims that simply cannot be true. Sales people can be very seductive and spin all manner of tales. We don't want you just to take our word for it - why not call up any of our members and ask them yourself how TradesAdvisor has affected their business. No one else would dare suggest this - that's what makes us special!
TradesAdvisor is not simply a directory. It is not a fire and forget marketing campaign or a set of glossy free-ads. It is a means of establishing your reputation through word of mouth - amplified through TradesAdvisor's continual marketing on this web site and in printed guides. It allows you to access job referrals posted on TradesAdvisor directly from other users, and gives you an online presence where you can upload images of recently completed work and show off to potential customers! TradesAdvisor is a three-way partnership between us, the trades and their customers. We bring together the public, who are looking for tradesmen they can trust, with trades who uphold and operate to good standards. Customers supply feedback about the tradesmen to TradesAdvisor, proving their credibility to other potential customers.
We have not had to remove any members yet but in the unlikely event where a member consistently falls short of a reasonable standard, its membership will be suspended.
This does happen from time to time. TradesAdvisor will review any negative feedback closely to ensure that this is genuine. Sometimes, rival companies can post bogus feedback, so it is important to us to also protect our member's reputations as well as continuing to provide a truly independent service to residents looking for local rated tradesmen. If the customer is happy for us to contact the trade or service, we take up any dissatisfaction directly with them, giving the trade or service the negative feedback and hearing their side of the story. Often issues that have arisen are due to unclear expectations or poor communication. Having contacted the business we usually find that the problems get resolved.
Our members remain independent businesses responsible for the work they each carry out. It is not possible for us to guarantee the quality of our members’ work or approve them as a trading association would. What we can guarantee is that TradesAdvisor members are continually monitored by their customers. We also guarantee to publish all feedback - good and bad. This means that our members work well because their reputations are at stake: one sloppy job and they lose custom. Our system gives you peace of mind. You know the facts about each business, and that they will work to the best of their ability every time. However, to protect our members' reputations, any feedback that is refuted, will be unpublished until such time that the feedback is verified as genuine and not the subject of any vendettas, which can happen from time to time.
We believe the person best placed to monitor our members is you, the customer. We encourage all our visitors that use our members to come back to TradesAdvisor and post feedback on the trade member's profile. Once the feedback has been checked by TradesAdvisor, it then posted on the trade member's profile. Feedback is extremely important to ensure that TradesAdvisor remains an useful reference tool for local residents looking for a rated tradesman.Your contact details are never published on the website. However, for your feedback to count we do require you to fill in your e-mail address, so that we can spot check any feedback.
TradesAdvisor started in 2010 as a local business in Aberdeen and so our members are mainly located in the North-East of Scotland. Growing the directory takes time but we are growing quickly and so we are confident we will be able to serve your requirements soon.
You can help us extend our coverage by recommending tradesmen that you have used by calling us on Aberdeen (01224) 285850 or drop us an email using the contact form!
We will then contact the trade or service provider and ask them if they are willing to be vetted and continuously monitored by TradesAdvisor.