Checkaprofessional now live

If you have had any work done on your house in the past few years, you will probably be familiar with www.checkatrade.com, a website set up to help protect people against ‘cowboy builders’. The website currently has 7,198 trades and services registered on their site who are constantly monitored, so it is clearly a scheme with wide appeal. Now the scheme is being extended with the launch of www.checkaprofessional.com, aimed at professional service companies, but also more widely a range of business services, including software companies, consultants, technicians, database analysts, systems engineers, strategic planning and management consultants to name but a few.

I am intrigued to know what you feel about this and whether you would use such a resource? I know a huge proportion of our business comes from word-of-mouth recommendations from happy customers, and while I’m not sure I would turn to CheckaProfessional as a sole source in finding a supplier, I can see it growing into an additional way of ‘checking people out’ before committing to giving them your business, in the same way that I use websites, social media and conversations with their current customers to source our suppliers. I’m happy to stand corrected though.

Zoë spotted the news of the CheckaProfessional launch recently and we just thought it might be of interest. The cost of membership on the site is reduced at the moment, so if this is something that interests you now is the time to act to bag a bargain.

Our understanding is that registered businesses are able to download reports on feedback left about them and also contact those people who left feedback. Listing can include text, images, video and URL links including social media. Searches are made by business name/industry or area/postcode and to register companies need to provide a variety of evidence and references.

So, there we have it, for your information, just in case it is of interest.