subject: Great Builders - How to Choose One [print this page] Great Builders - How to Choose One Great Builders - How to Choose One
When trying to find a great builder, as opposed to a cowboy builder who will at best, do a shoddy job, at worst run off with your money and leave a half finished job, there are quite a few things to look for.
What about Trade Associations?
Now, you could try looking for builders who are registered and approved by trade associations but that will not ensure that their work will be great. When a builder joins a certificated or trade association they are given guidelines on how to conduct their business. It does not mean that they are inspected or have to sit exams (like Plumbers do with the GAS SAFE register) and the builder can quite easily go on producing sub standard work and never be found out (unless they have too many complaints to the trade association).
MyHammer, RatedPeople etc.
There are a lot of new websites around that have builders on their pages and you can post your building work on them, where builders can contact you. These sites do have reviews and such for a builder's past projects but the builders have to pay either a flat fee or a percentage of their profits to the website and as such there is a commerce aspect to the whole thing. Money always seems to skew things a little.
OK, so what is the best way to choose?
Good old fashioned research and previous customer reviews. The internet has provided consumers with a tool that is great for research if you know where to look. Not only that, builders do not have control over what gets published about them.
You can always look at a builder's website to read reviews and testimonials but they have obviously been selected by the builder and they would never choose a bad review to put on their own website.
A far better way is to check out their Google Places Page.
Google Places Page
What Google does is trawl the internet looking for reviews and puts them all in one place so you can scan comments about your prospective builder on one page. This is called a Google Places Page.
Reviews and testimonials can be left on many websites like Qype, Yelp even Google itself so to have them congregated in one place makes it much easier to make an informed decision. Builders do not have control over who leaves a review and cannot delete bad reviews, they can only reply to them (the way a bad review is replied to also provides you with an indication of how professional the company is)
If you want to see an example of a great Google Places Page for a builder just click on the text Builders in London. Here you can see many reviews from all over the web.
To research builder in your area and to find their Google Place Pages all you need to do is go in to Google.co.uk and type in "Builders in ...." and then add your area. This switches Google to "local" mode and they will return all of the builders in your area in a nice and easy to read map or list.
For more tips on finding the right builder you can check out this article "Cowboy Builders"
