Why is it so hard to choose a builder, plumber, electrician or other tradesperson?

"It is hard to choose because the ratings can be made up"

The question is, do you prefer your restaurant reviews to be written by restaurant critics or by the general public? The same principle applies here making it difficult to interpret ratings when dealing with tradespeople. So frequently people who rate work as a 5 out of 5 or as 4 out of 5 don't understand that the ratings they are giving are not normalised against the correct dataset of experiences. One person might give a 4 out of 5, whereas another can give a 3 out of 5, for the exact same level of service.

So what does this mean and how to you solve for this problem?

When looking through lists of possible vendors, unlike in a corporate or government tending process, your list is often not curated or filtered. You are left looking at names you don't recognise and the star value next to their names and the number of reviews to choose your vendor. There are no prices. You will have to telephone each and then explain what you want and let them give you a price that it could cost but that the price you will end up paying may not be the price you've just elicited because the vendor doesn't know exactly the amount of work that needs to be done, and nor do you (in most cases).

Referrals

The solution is to enable ratings to be just one input factor in your decision making process. Most people rely on referrals from other people they know before hiring a builder, carpenter, plumber or whoever is needed to get the job done.

When you can't get a referral, what should you do?

That is when the hard work of sifting through possible vendors, asking them pointed questions that you have prepared and getting price quotes from each of them is involved. Depending on the complexity of your task or project, the amount of money involved and the downside risk of poor execution, you will then need to make a judgement on whom you should hire.

How can ClearTrade help?

ClearTrade uses vetted Tradespeople who are in your local area or have said they will service your location. Of course, depending on how much money is involved, enticing a world class builder to your rural area of West Sussex can be achieved. Nevertheless, for most common work, Cleartrade enables immediate price quotes to be generated from tradespeople that meet your specific requirements. For example, if you want your tradesperson to have experience dealing with Miele products and be an authorised technician, then only tradespeople with those qualifications will be on your search list.

Our goal is to help customers like you get the best match for what you are looking.