It’s no secret that we have to compete with, and deal with the fallout from, rogue traders on an almost daily basis.
What is a rogue trader?
Any tradesperson who doesn’t do what they said they would, disappears and leaves a job half-finished, uses shoddy workmanship or materials (doesn’t know what they’re doing), overcharges, forces consumers to pay more money to fix problems they’ve caused, and just generally anyone in the industry who works unethically could be described as a rogue trader.
We’ve all seen, or at least heard of, the BBC show “Rogue Traders”, but they never touch on what the impact on the industry itself is, or the effect it has on our business.
The reality is that the blowback from rogue traders is immense. The consumers are less trusting, less likely to pay deposits, less likely to pay ‘fair’ prices and much more suspicious, making it harder for us to get business in the first place.
As it stands, rogue traders have the same exposure in the market as anyone else. They can easily look like a legitimate business who knows what they’re doing, but what if we could call them out?
My new platform Recommend & Share is designed to help eliminate the culture of mistrust and misinformation, with each job a tradesperson completes rated by their client, and any problems outlined. This new platform holds rogues accountable, making it harder and harder for them to take our business or continue to give us a bad name.