Frequently asked questions
What is nomorecowboys.com?
The nomorecowboys Club is an independent, quality controlled, publicly endorsed database of trades. It’s easily searched for your local area, has nationwide coverage and is constantly updated.
How is it different from other, paper-based directories?
Other directories are static – they only tell you what’s on offer. They don’t tell you if what’s on offer is any good. Think about your best means of finding someone to do a job for you, what you rely on most – it’s word of mouth, a personal recommendation.
nomorecowboys.com is an active, electronic, word of mouth system. It enables you to choose a tradesman or woman with prior knowledge – from first-hand testimonials from other people who’ve used them – of what their service is really like. You can select someone to do a job for you with confidence despite never having used them before.
Remember, it’s COWBOY tradesmen who have the most to lose from wider public knowledge of their reputation.
How does nomorecowboys actually work?
Tradesmen and women become associate members of the nomorecowboys website. When they do a job, they give a nomorecowboys report form to the customer – the form is prepaid and easily completed, or a report can be filled out online. The customer completes the report unseen by the tradesman after the job has been done. The information is then transferred onto the nomorecowboys website. Members of the Club then go on to the site to find someone who can do whatever job they want doing and can make their choice with the benefit of somebody else’s hindsight and experience.
nomorecowboys.com builds into a completely independent track record of tradesmen and women’s performance. You get to read comments from real and recent customers that relate to the main decision-making criteria – price and value, quality of service, standard of work.
Are any discounts or special deals available to nomorecowboys members?
No. The Club isn’t there to negotiate discounts or promotions. Our ethos is to be able to get hold of quality trade services at the right price. Good service, representative price and a quality job should be available to everyone as of right. You should get what you pay for.
What do I have to pay to become a member of the nomorecowboys Club?
It’s free to members of the public wanting to find a tradesman to get a job done. You simply join the nomorecowboys Club by agreeing to the Charter and Terms and Conditions. Tradesmen pay to become associate members of the site. And, by becoming associate members, they commit to the Charter and Terms and Conditions and thereby show their willingness and determination to participate in nomorecowboys’ aims and so to provide value for money. They can only advertise fully on the site after a sustained and extended period of good performance which will be judged by their customers. The point about nomorecowboys is that it’s active and informed. If you join the Club – by filing a report on a tradesman you use – you won’t be choosing your service supplier blind (as with paper listing directories that don’t give any indication as to supplier’s quality – often you’ll go for the one with the biggest ad but that doesn’t mean they’re the best for you).
But surely they’ll only be glowing reports on nomorecowboys.com if tradesmen are paying to be listed on it?
All the reports must be honest and fair. Everyone filing a report has to think carefully about the service they receive in the context of the price they’ve paid in order for their report to be useful and valuable for others. So not every report will be glowing. Some will be critical. But the important point is that they’re honest and fair.
Yes, tradesmen can influence what the reports on them say. But only by providing a good service. Their payment ensures they get onto the site. The rest is up to them by doing a good job and therefore getting good feedback.
This is the way both consumers and tradesmen can drive out the cowboys. It’s in the interests of both – consumers don’t get ripped off and skilled, quality tradesmen get work.
Who is nomorecowboys aimed at?
Anybody who wants to hire a tradesman or woman to do a job. It’ll be particularly valuable to those who have recently moved to a new area and so don’t have an established network of local friends, to first-time buyers or renovators and to people who are newly single and don’t need the hassle of having to deal with cowboys.
On the other side of the coin, it helps tradesmen who become associate members of nomorecowboys.com by providing cheap, nationwide advertising backed up crucially by actual testimonials about their work. Strong, personal recommendations are the key to securing the next job. It’ll help any tradesman wanting to expand into a new area by being able to build on an established, verifiable reputation.
nomorecowboys will provide all associate members with a periodical report charting the public’s perception of their business performance. And if a tradesman establishes and maintains good reports, he’ll qualify for inclusion on the nomorecowboys recommended list of suppliers. An endorsement through nomorecowboys will become a stamp of being a reputable and trustworthy tradesman, tradeswoman or company.
Can I trust the reports?
Yes. Think how you regularly hear about good deals, good service – word of mouth. nomorecowboys is a word of mouth directory. It’s more likely you’ll get the service you want if somebody else has already tried it and told you what it’s like. And remember, everybody submitting reports has a vested interest in ensuring that all testimonials on nomorecowboys are honest and fair – you want to rely on other people and other people want to rely on you.
How does the grading system work?
We’ve established that people rank the three most important aspects of the work they get done for them in this order:
1 - quality of work or product
2 - relative cost
3 - service received
The nomorecowboys grading system is weighted to reflect this. Each of the boxes you tick in a report corresponds to a value which then builds up the overall star rating that a tradesman receives as follows:
I was completely
dissatisfied
I didn’t get what I paid for
They tried but could have done better
Acceptable, I got what I paid for (this is the minimum grading we should expect
for any service or product we’re paying for)
Excellent, beyond reproach – I can’t believe what a good deal I
got
So, if you marked the quality of the job you got done as poor, a 4-star overall rating of ‘Acceptable’ could only in theory be achieved if you thought the service was outstanding and the cost was cheap. In practice, however, because of the nomorecowboys weighting, an ‘acceptable’ rating will generally only be achieved by a tradesman doing a job for you of acceptable quality.
What about safeguards against abuse of the reporting system?
Reports are monitored by the nomorecowboys staff. And they’ll investigate anything suspicious to ensure the integrity of the information available to you.
How many reports on one tradesman?
We encourage you to submit one report per job done, service received or purchase made.
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