Fix up your home for less!

by Donna Werbner on 16 July 2009  |  3 comments
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Today, I'm going to review a website that has saved me over £310 so far on DIY jobs around the house. And the best thing is, it's absolutely free!

I don't know about you, but I hate wasting money. Not spending it - wasting it. Throwing it down the drain. Pointlessly.

So if I'm forced, for whatever reason, to part with my hard-earned pennies, then I want value for money and bang for my buck. In other words: a bargain. And I tend to get quite stroppy, if I don't get exactly that.

Which is why, when I recently realised I needed a plumber and an electrician to come round and fix a few bits and bobs at my flat, I wanted to make sure I paid the best possible price for a good quality job.

Word of mouth

Lots of people go by word of mouth - and I'm sure that is a good way of ensuring you get a good quality service.

But what about the price? How can you be sure they've offered a competitive quote for that specific job?

Then again, if you shop around properly and then go for the cheapest quote, you are much more likely to end up with a tradesman who you don't know and who hasn't been recommended to you.

And in that situation, I worry about the service. Anyone who's ever heard the classic Flanders & Swan song 'The Gas Man Cometh' knows the drill. The last thing I wanted was to hire people who, in the end, caused more problems (at my expense) than they fixed. And how could I be sure they wouldn't, if I didn't know anything about them?

An ebay for builders

That was where I was at when I came across mybuilder.com - a kind of ebay for builders. Basically, you post some details about the work that you want done and then the builders (i.e. plumbers, electricians, plasterers, joiners, carpenters - pretty much any kind of tradesmen you want) bid for the work.

It's really as simple as that and it's entirely free to use.

I received between eight and ten quotes for each of the jobs I posted. And the difference was astounding. For example:

• to fit a new outdoor light, several people quoted £90 and several quoted £150.
• to fix a leaking shower tap and restore the pressure to normal, some quoted £40 to £50 and others quoted £130 to £150.
• to paint our front door, inside and out, some quoted £150 to £250 and others quoted £70 to £90.

There were quite a few quotes at each price. So it shows you, you really can get ripped off if you don't compare lots of quotes. If I'd only compared three quotes, rather than 20, I could easily have forked out hundreds of pounds more for the jobs I needed doing.

But what I liked most about using this site is the fact that I could see the feedback that each of the tradesman has received from other members. I filtered it so only tradesmen with 100% positive comments could quote. And I could read up on each tradesman, to see how much experience they had and what their qualifications are.

In all cases, the workman showed up on time and fixed the problem quickly.

So if, like me, you're fed up of waiting for your other half to get on with all those niggly DIY jobs around the house (and you can't be bothered to do them yourself!) then mybuilder.com might be just the thing for you, too.

Let me know how you get on using the comments box below!