Sep 28
DIY Doctor have just made their new building contract available for FREE on their website. Called the ‘Desired Outcome Building Contract’, it has been written by tradesmen, and aims to protect the home owner and contractor in equal measures.
The contract offers a simple solution in a document to every potential problem you might encounter during a home improvement project.
To read more on the Desired Outcome Building Contract and to receive a free contract, go to our Building Contracts project page.
Jul 13
Q. What’s a PAT test and do I need one?
A. It stands for Portable Appliance Test. This is a test to see if your wired appliances such as kettles, toasters, TVs (portable – yes I know hardly portable but still a wired appliance), fridges (same again) etc are safe to use. If you are a Landlord and you supply these to your tenants then you need an annual test on these. If you are a homeowner you don’t – but again if you are suspicious of anything then don’t hesitate to get your local sparky around.
May 17
For a long while DIY Doctor has been trying to combat the effects of Cowboy Builders in our industry. We have published articles on Cowboy Builders and how the country loses millions of pounds because the majority of tradespeople in this country do not have any form of insurance to protect their customers.
We have now joined forces with Quotatis who will not allow tradespeople to join their data-base without the relevant insurances. They are also thoroughly vetted and references are followed up to ensure you only receive free quotes from the best of the bunch.
Click into any of our project pages or look at our Find a Tradesman page to be sure to beat the cowboys.
Mar 05
As hundreds and hundreds of our users experienced problems with crown paint when the sun came out, we decided to monitor our forum to learn a little more about their complaints.
It seems Crown have come up with a few different resons for the smelly paint problem but none that have resolved the problem.
DIY Doctor wrote to Crown Paints to try and get them to communicate directly with the forum users and assure them that everything was being done to resolve the problem.
Here is the email we received through their PR department. Lets us know if this answer helps.
Dear Mr. Edwards
Many thanks for your email and highlighting the discussions that are occurring on your site.
We would like to assure you and the visitors to DIY Doctor that Crown Paints takes all customer comments and complaints seriously.
Crown Paints has a robust customer complaints procedure in place which is British Standard accredited. We constantly monitor, record and track the performance of our products in line with customer needs and we are always disappointed to hear of any customer complaints. In response to the issues discussed on your site our technical department are undertaking a review and will provide feedback when this review is completed.
We always encourage our customers to contact us via our Paint Talk helpline 0870 2401127 and will always endeavour to assist, advise and resolve any issues related to our paint as quickly as possible.
We would be happy for you to publish our response on your forum.
Crown Customer Services Dept.
Oct 09
DIY Doctor presented 15 demonstrations on skim plastering, repairing burst pipes, basic plumbing, How to use a DIY toolkit and DIY Comedy at the National Home Improvement Show at Earls Court last weekend.
Over 30,000 people wandered past the stand to watch and listen to advice from tradesmen on how to complete their DIY projects at home. The feedback was fantastic and as soon as the show was finished we were booked to appear again next year.
Big thanks to Chelmer Heating Services for standing in at the last minute and presenting 3 great seminars on Renewable Energy. Take a look at their site here http://www.chelmerheating.co.uk/
As far as we can tell DIY Doctor is the only advice site which actually reaches out to it’s users to show them how to create DIY projects safely and to a professional finish. All the other “ME TOO” websites sit back, copy the DIY Doctor content and reword it. If there was a single tradesman amongst them, he would make himself known.
Plagiarism is a huge problem on the web. Content is taken from a hardworking site, run by professional people with integrity. The words are switched round and it is published on another site. Watch the content on DIY Doctor. WE publish a page and 10 minutes later 3 copycat sites have the same information on theirs.
We prove we can do the work we talk about by appearing on Radio, TV and at exhibitions in person…Others sit back drawing pretty pictures of jobs they wish they could do. We wonder how many schools they were thrown out of for copying their classmate’s homework!
That’s my gripe for today. We showed again at the Home Improvement Show that DIY Doctor is real. Real Tradesmen giving real advice in real situations. Not wannabe pretenders with all the integrity of a Cowboy.
Take a look at the videos of the show here http://www.improveyourhomeshow.co.uk/ and see if you can spot “The Doctor”
