A woman claims she was conned by a convicted criminal, and another householder says he was threatened by a self-styled hitman after hiring traders through the recommendation website Checkatrade.
One of the UK’s largest trader marketplaces, Checkatrade promises customers “guaranteed” traders, “rigorous checks” and “recommendations you can rely on”.
However, householders are losing thousands of pounds to accredited members because of inadequate vetting procedures, according to some customers and employees.
One customer discovered that the workman who pocketed £5,000 for a botched roof repair had previously been jailed for violent assault and had an outstanding county court judgment against him.
“I was able to discover these things with a simple search using the business owner’s name and address,” said the woman, who preferred not to be named. “He had advertised his company as a family firm with 25 years’ experience, but it turned out it had only been incorporated five months before and was one of a string of companies he’s set up and dissolved. It was devastating to discover I’d let a violent criminal into my home.”
Checkatrade initially paid her £1,000 under its guarantee scheme. Its surveyor costed the repairs for the damage caused by poor workmanship at £5,900 and it later agreed to fund the full sum. She claims her negative feedback of her Checkatrade experience on the review website Trustpilot was removed after the platform reported it as fake.
Checkatrade told the Guardian a “rare human error” had omitted two of the 12 vetting checks on the trader, and confirmed that his company’s membership had been terminated. It said it only removes customer reviews that contain inaccuracies.
Another Checkatrade user claims he was doorstepped by a stranger who threatened unspecified repercussions unless he removed a negative review of a roofing firm he had recruited through the website and that failed to complete the job.
“I felt I had no choice but to remove the review and later found that the roof work that had been done was dangerously substandard,” said the customer, who asked to remain anonymous. “I complained to Checkatrade but months later the firm was still being listed with a Checkatrade score of nine out of 10 based on customer reviews.”
Checkatrade said it had put the trader on immediate probation after the complaint and had since removed it from the platform. It has also paid the customer £1,000 under its guarantee after the Guardian questioned its response. However, he said he was facing a bill of several thousand pounds to complete and repair the botched roofing work.
Recommendation platforms were recently ordered to do more to protect customers from cowboy builders by the regulator, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA). The CMA took action after a “high number” of complaints against traders recruited through sites such as Checkatrade that advertise “trustworthy” firms.
It is estimated that about 775,500 UK households are left out of pocket by an average of £1,800 each after signing up cowboy traders to improve their homes. Research into unspecified recommendation sites by the CMA found a failure to remove fake reviews, inadequate vetting procedures and a failure to sanction rogue traders.
In guidance published this month, it says it expects platforms to comply with consumer law, including investigating and removing recommended traders who prove substandard.
Disreputable roofers feature frequently in complaints sent to the Guardian. One woman faced a £13,000 bill to repair damage done to her roof by two sets of cowboy builders, one of them recommended by Checkatrade. She was eventually compensated by Checkatrade for her full loss after our intervention.
Checkatrade was launched by a homeowner in 1998 as a register of personally vetted traders after a spate of rogue builders targeted his neighbourhood. It was bought in 2017 by Homeserve, which was taken over by the Canadian asset management group Brookfield in a £4bn deal in 2022. It has 50,000 member traders who pay a membership fee and have to pass 12 checks, including verification of address and qualifications, to be listed.
Employees of Checkatrade have claimed on the employer review website Glassdoor that since the takeover a focus on growth above service quality has led to unreliable automated checks on firms and a failure to remove poorly performing operators.
Checkatrade denied the allegations and said it had removed 1,000 substandard traders in the past 12 months.
It admitted that roofing was a particular challenge requiring industry-wide action and said new and stricter vetting procedures meant it had rejected more than a quarter of membership applications by roofers so far this year.
A Checkatrade spokesperson said: “No platform is immune from our industry’s problem with rogue operators. Checkatrade is still the best way to find a trusted tradesperson.
“Our vetting and protections are industry-leading: we monitor and verify more than 600,000 reviews a year and, in the very rare event that something doesn’t go to plan, we offer a guarantee of up to £1,000. Out of over 3m jobs annually on Checkatrade, just 0.03% result in a claim being made.”
