Thanks to swapmeetdave.com for the photograph. If you are a plumber would you fancy driving around with this on your van??!!
Aug 08
There have been some interesting findings in a recent survey conducted by Which?
The results suggested that over 2.5 million people have had a dispute with a builder or tradesman in the last 3 years, and a quarter of those actually took formal action. When you look at the reasons for disagreements between client and tradesmen, the cowboys are definately rearing their ugly heads. The most common disagreement was regarding the quality of work, but other problems included not turning up when agreed, delays over completion and general untidyness.
Other feedback from the Which? survey showed that a quarter of people didn’t get a written quote before start of work, and 4% were asked to pay the upfront for the whole job.
Obviously here at DIY Doctor HQ, we aren’t exactly surprised by the results of the survey, and their executive director, Richard Lloyd has some wise words
“To avoid problems, you should always have a written agreement between you and the trader. And it’s important to do your homework – make sure you get several quotes before deciding who to use, choose a recommended trader and check they’re a member of a professional body.”
So with the DIY Doctor free ‘Desired Outcome Building Contract’, you shouldn’t find yourself in dispute. The contract protects homeowners against rogue traders while protecting good tradesmen from rogue homeowners (yes, there are such people!).
There is no better test of anything than to put it in the hands of the people who will use it the most and we are happy to say (as you can see from the video below), the Desired Outcome Building Contract passed all tests with flying colours.
The homeowners felt that they had full control of their job and had no fear of ‘surprises’ while the builder knew he was going to get paid, the right amount and on time.
The Desired Outcome Building Contract proves what we have said all along. With the right tradesman both parties have exactly the same agenda. The right job, for the right price.
If you are looking for reliable, insured tradesmen, click here
Jan 25
This was sent in to us at DIY Doctor and it made us laugh, so we thought we would share it with you …..
Don’t forget, you can avoid the cowboys by using our Find a Tradesman page to receive up to three free, no obligation quotes from reliable and insured tradesmen in your local area.
Jul 09
DIY Doctor has just launched their new lead generation Affiliate Scheme aiming to unite consumers and businesses against cowboy builders and tradespeople.
The Affiliate Scheme is available to any company who has a website used by homeowners or tradespeople in the DIY, home improvement or construction industry. It costs nothing to join the scheme.
You simply host an enquiry form on your site which any customer who has a home or garden project they would like quotes for, can fill in. They will then receive up to 5 free quotes from insured and vetted tradespeople in their local area, who have paid for that lead. Once the lead has been verified, your company earns a percentage of the sale of that lead.
You also have the opportunity to host a form on your website for tradespeople to signup to join the database. Your company can then earn money from every lead that tradesmen purchase.
The DIY Doctor Affiliate Scheme:
- reduces the tradesperson’s advertising costs as they receive as many relevant, appropriate leads as they want per week just by registering for free.
- offers homeowners a no obligation way of receiving quotes for work from competent, reliable, vetted and insured tradespeople in their local area.
- Earns your company money.
So everyone’s a winner. Apart from the cowboys!
Jun 17
DIY Doctor are now offering tradesmen work via lead generation, which can save you a lot on wasted advertising.
When a home owner wants some work done on their house or garden, and they feel it is beyond their DIY capabilities, they can come to our Find a Tradesman page and register, for free, to receive free quotes from competent, reliable, trustworthy and insured tradesmen to do the job.
This way, as a tradesman, you can pay for as many business leads as you would like, but you know the customers:
- genuinely want the job done
- already have a budget in mind
- are local to you, in the area you have chosen
- want work done in your chosen specialism
All you need to do is click here and fill in the sign-up form to apply to join the list of recommended tradespeople. All you need is to provide valid public liability insurance and references (so Cowboys need not apply).
Jun 07
As we have previously blogged – DIY Doctor have recently joined forces with Quotatis to try to stamp out the Cowboys in the industry.
If you are a tradesperson who wants customers that:
- Won’t waste your time
- Genuinely have a job to be done
- Have a budget in mind
- Are in your local area
All you need to do is go to this page http://www.diydoctor.org.uk/tradesmen_signup.htm and fill in the form to apply to join our list of recommended tradespeople.
You will need to provide valid Public Liability Insurance and Trade Memberships etc or references, as well as specifying which categories of work you are interested in and which area of the country you want to work. Once that is done you can start receiving genuine, top quality leads in your local area for as little as £5!
Aug 04
The recession bites harder and we are all beginning to feel it. As customers get scared of spending more and more contracts get cancelled. Builders and tradesmen are suffering big-time out there.
From selling the house to buy a bigger one many people decided, because of the economic downturn, to add an extension, loft or garage conversion instead. Now even that is a luxury and plans for spending on the home have been shelved.
With the drop in sales most small companies are finding it hard to meet fixed costs. To save money it is usually the variable costs which have to go and advertising is one of them. Although we can see why companies do it we also know that in a huge number of cases this spells out death for these companies. No advertising means no-one can find you and word of mouth soon runs out when you get forgotten.
Before DIY Doctor we were a small building company and we felt the pinch at times like these. Although we never stopped advertising we have seen many companies that have. They are no longer trading.
In an attempt to help companies to keep advertising and trading, DIY Doctor has introduced FREE advertising in our Locate a Specialist directory. The only condition is that you must be a local trader and not have any involvement, even mail order, in trading nationally.
For more information go to http://www.diydoctor.org.uk/trade.htm and, if you are a tradesman, get in quick !!!
Jun 10
Attention all web site owners:
For a long time webmasters have been promising people high search engine ratings and then buying or begging links from other well know sites. This is now against Googles Quality Guidelines. Google lists hundreds of pages to help site owners we urge that you read them all. Every bit of information is listed to make your site a Google friendly site. The emphasis, quite rightly, is on making your site useful to visitors and stop web sites clogging the internet with obtrusive, non context adverts, duplicated pages and other methods of optimising a poor site.
Google even offers a pdf on search engine optimisation and tools for creating site maps. There are video tutorials for webmasters and a webmaster help forum, webmaster checklists, a page about googles search results
Unless a link on a website is part of the natural page and links to a site with further information to that listing the link then any other links need to have a rel=”nofollow” tag attached to tell google it is either advertising or a link to another site which is for the purpose of viewing further content which is not necessarily directly related to the content you have.
You can check the indexing of your website on Google by visiting the webmaster tools page where Google will tell you if it has listed your site and any potential problems you may have with getting your pages listed. https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/sitestatus?hl=en
The emphasis on a Google search should be content. Not links which are inserted to get an average site to the top of the engines. A website should be listed for its merits, not the number of unnatural links it has.
These are part of the quality guidelines from Google.
DIY Doctor supports this initiative and agrees that websites should write for their users.
The specific guidelines for users offered by Google are:
- Avoid hidden text or hidden links
- Dont use cloaking or sneaky redirects
- Don’t send automated queries to Google
- Don’t load pages with irrelevant keywords
- Do not duplicate content
- Avoid doorway pages just for search engines
- If you use an affiliate program, make sure your users have a reason to visit your site first.
If you find you have trouble being listed by Google look at the above conditions, read all of Google’s guidelines, change your site and re-submit your site for consideration.
Much more marketing help can be seen at http://www.diydoctor.org.uk/diydoctormarketing.htm