Clean It Up
UK Floor Cleaning Forum => Carpet Cleaning Forum => Topic started by: Simon Gerrard on May 17, 2013, 12:39:52 pm
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Did anyone get any good deals with the checkatrade people at the TACCA day?
Simon
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Offer was £399 on the day £100 off plus price increase due
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Last year they quoted me £900 per year, they just make up their prices, I think most people pay a different price.
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We got a clearer idea of what they were offering, and the deal was £399 (not in the guide) if you redeem one of the vouchers they gave out. I think everyone who gets the same deal - in the guide or not in the guide - pays the same.
They don't see themselves as lead generators, but as quote converters. We're going to pay our £399 & see how it goes.
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Ive been with Checkatrade for 7 years, and have just paid them over £700-00. That's for just being a member.
Perhaps when they have "snagged" you, it will keep going up each year?
I might give them a call Monday...
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So how much work do you get from them benny
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I just paid £448.80 (inc vat) for the first 12 months - impressed with the organisation they are well staffed and responsive on the telephone and online - if it works and I get work thru them then I would be stupid not to renew at the end of that period
dave
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See, everyone pays different. I can't fathom it, they are providing exactly the same service to everyone. Would be interesting to hear out it works out?
When I was looking in to it the people who I spoke to who where already members seemed to be a 50/50 split on how well it worked for them. I found one guy who had free membership because they kept him on to keep up the numbers.
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Is this for the leaflet or just their website?
I`m in two areas int heir leaflets and including vat is around 2 grand a year.
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So is it worth the money?
Simon
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At the tacca day i asked how many people searched for carpet cleaners in belfast.
In fairness to the girls they did a search and said 1 in a few months from memory.
So not for me.
Mark
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Mark
I was up in Straban over the weekend visting a friend
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As checkatrade started on the south coast this is where it works best , but word is spreading futher and in surrey where i am its quite well know and i have had jobs from it in london. Further north than that im not so sure
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Why would people go through them when they
can just Google it for their town.
Let's face it all these organisations are the same
in that they vouch for someone who they have never
met and whose work has never been seen by them.
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John... you forgot to add..
and by people who pay them lots of money to say so..... :P :P
;D ;D
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Stuart
You should of called in on your way past.
Mark
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I am usually pretty dubious about this type of organisation (the G of MC springs to mind and the way they have given their seal of approval away for a piece of silver) but the level of awareness here in the central south region is very high as they have been spending serious amounts of money on advertising with the itv region for over a year or more and they are the regional sponsors of the Cowboy Builders programme with dom and the delicious melinda.
I wanted to find out if customers had heard of CAT and kept asking my customers if they had heard of them and if they would use them and more than 50% had and would - thats a pretty high factor of recognition - as a result their recruitment rate has gone through the roof recently
They started in 1998 when the first member joined - they now have 9,876 members nationwide.
They had 709,000 website visitors in the past 30 days and 1.2 million average pageviews each month on www.checkatrade.com plus there are 881,611 customer reviews published to date and they distribute 8.2 million Checkatrade directories every year - those figures come from their site admitedly but when you deal with a company you get a good idea of wethther they are for real or all smoke and mirrors - its easy to be cynical but I think (in this region) they actually will dominate this new sector - and I have tried rated.com (did not work for me) and am still a member of the Buy With Confidence scheme run by Tradinf Standards.
They send real people out to vet the new members and cheque your ID and take up customer refs etc - I think they could end up dominating the sector for trade referrals in the UK - I think it is a name we will all come to know over the coming years...
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As Simon said....
So is it worth the money?
Despite all the above, no one has posted that they have recieved any business from checkatrade even if paying from between £399 to £900.
Most of my business comes from recommendation and repeats so it doesn't concern me. sending out reminders will or could get a few grands worth of work for say £100 in postage costs for an example.
So whats the low down and figures for Checkatrade?
In all probabality (IMO), it's blimps of work with varying levels of quality or perhaps to quantify it....a few calls a year.
This is just my guestimate.
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Mike - I only started my membership on Monday - give em a chance!
dave
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Mark
I will be there again in a few weeks, I will look you up, if you are not too busey
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HI, last year i joined checkatrade and had 70 new customers from it. It took 2 months to get my money back from the listing, this year 3 weeks from renewel
i had paid this years subscription. For me its the best advertising i have ever done and it works for me.
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They contacted me the other day, offered me the TACCA discount etc...
I was curious to know why they thought their service would benefit me when the lady trying to sell me the service listed all the other carpet cleaners in my area using Check a trade?
So why would someone choose to book me on their website with little to no feedback and not an already established carpet cleaner on Check a trade?
So when people are looking for a carpet cleaner, the first thing they think of is Check a trade...? no... they go to Google and work their way down the page.
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And come to a checkatrade site which ranks on p1 :)
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Not in my area Simon...
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So why would someone choose to book me on their website with little to no feedback and not an already established carpet cleaner on Check a trade?
So when people are looking for a carpet cleaner, the first thing they think of is Check a trade...? no... they go to Google and work their way down the page.
That's not the way we expect it to work, or how Checkatrade tell you it works. People find your website, however - from referral, advertising, whatever, then find the Checkatrade link. Either the fact that you've registered, or your good reports, make it more likely that they call you to quote, and when you have quoted, make it more likely that they book. This is all hope, at the moment - I'll report back when we've got some results.
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Is that not how they all work. Woolsafe, NCCA, IICRC, Clean Trust, Checkatrade etc
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I am new to checkatrade and have been a member since feb. I did not join for the short term as I saw it as something that you have to market to your customers. So Far I have only had 1 job directly from their site that I know of. I have gambled on their increase in popularity and see it as a tool, up to now we still have a lot of stock of leaflets and business cards and as we replace these then we will introduce the checkatrade logo.
I feel the it will be a powerful validation of service as there is so much scepticism about what people say about themselves. We have some bad operators in our area but their sites have all the made up testimonials and bullpoop and it is very difficult to get over to new customers that you are any different.
Like any advertising it is a gamble and I have treated it as such, we will see in the future whether it has paid off. In terms of cost I do not see it as a large outlay compared to many of the campaigns we have run in the past. At one time I was spending £1000 per month to yell. A small weekly ad in the local rag was over £2000 per year. Advertising has changed and is very hard to make pay. I thing checkatrade as a tool will work. Untill it becomes well known in out area it is only going to be a valdation tool for people that we come into contact with, hopefully it will eventually bring business to us.
Peter
www.carpetcleanercardiff.comhttp://
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All i know is i look on the Checkatrade website at all the cleaners in my area and it is saturated with scores of 9.8 and 9.9! if i were a customer looking for a carpet cleaner all the scores look about the same and no one stands out above anyone else.
I am sure that Check a trade would work well in areas where you may not have huge competition, if you are only going to be competing with a handful of other rivals.
It just seems to me to be another advertising company who are eager to sign you up regardless of whether their advertising actually works or not.
Yell were the biggest waste of time for me and i ended up getting back every penny because of their poor service... so far Facebook has actually generated quite a lot of business and thats totally FREE.
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Nail on the head Russ.
Approved by someone who has never met
them or seen their standard of work.
Wonder what happens when someone phones
and says the person they approved was crap.
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If people are on the checkatrade website they are hardly going to go off the website to book you just because everyone on the site has high scores. And they do print bad feed back, this is what makes the whole membership issue credible..
Many people who are making comments are talking from a position of ignorance as they do not understand how checkatrde work. They do meet you they come to your premises. They do check your insurance and you do have to prove any credentials before thay allow you to advertise them on the site. They also do check your report cards with the customer before they publish the results on the site. Any edits that you do on your profile are checked by checkatrade before they become visable to the public.
To be honest if you are in an area where checkatrade have a high profile then you probably cant afford, not to be a member. I have just taken a gamble on them increasing the awareness is my area.
Checkatrade is totally diferent to rated people or any of the other organisations as they do put a lot of effort into vetting the trades. Once the public understand this they will have confidence in using the members, knowing the way that members are vetted would give me confidence in using its members above the bull that people write about themselves.
Peter
www.carpetcleanercardiff.comhttp://
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Top of google company in my area have a great website and are on checkatrade and charge £20 lounge £17 dinning room £15 bedroom £60 three piece suite
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Bennymon, I have noticed that company has sprang up all over the country, they seemed to be based in Portsmouth, can only guess they farm out the work, can't be much left for the tech at them prices.
Are we seeing a '50% off' epidemic?
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I've noticed a lot of the top of Adwords in my area are checkatrade and low prices . Im the next add below the addwords but to join them in the top three it costs over £2.50 per click but its wasting your money .The Internet for me is useless nowadays my work is all from leaflets and repeats . Del
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Yeah the cheapies ruin it.
In my area first there was one 'half price' then loads came along copying but at even lower prices, honestly they are in a zero sum game.
I bet that one we mentioned is no longer on adwords in a few months, he's going to have one seriously big bill from google. He been at position 1 most of the day in my area and thats about £3.50 or more per click.
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He has been there for about a year and a half probably sending people out on £7 per hour . Should we all do the same ??? Del