think that Rated People encourages traders to be pushy?

[CoolCadbury]

I've had to use Rated People to find a trader to do some work on my house, as I did not have any recommendations off friends and family. I have had 3 people come round for quotes. One was okay, but 2 were very pushy, saying they would get started right away as they had materials etc in the van. Er, no as I want three quotes. One of them, wouldn't take no for an answer and kept trying to find different ways of saying he would start today, right now in fact. Honestly, I used the word no as a complete sentence at least 5 times.

I know that traders can pay up to £70 to quote on a job so they are already out of pocket so they want to do the job. The business model encourages traders to be pushy.

Sounds weird. If a tradesman is good and well recommended they will normally be free to start immediately. I've never used rated people only checkatrade but our best people have always been through recommendation. At least on checkatrade you can find people with hundreds of recommendations.

Not be free to start immediately obviously!!

'Start immediately' is just a way of saying I will start now to stop anyone else getting the job but then buzz off for a few days or several weeks to finish elsewhere before coming back - if ever!

Had that a lot of with tradesmen over the last two years renovating a house.

YANBU - I used it recently to try and find a cleaner and was inundated with spam and calls from pushy agencies. Some of them pretend to be individuals in their ad so you are tricked into talking to them. I went with a personal recommendation in the end and found someone brilliant!

Rated people is terrible I just post on Facebook asking for recommendations now, with much better results.