to think that a lot of small businesses are essentially con artists?

[SecretWineBox]

Even if they don't admit it even to themselves?

I'm getting rather sick of crap service from builders (there are NO honest ones!), driving instructors (ANY instructor you are paying in fact), small online shops, local food suppliers, bad restaurants...

I really want to support small businesses but i can't afford to be ripped off all the time.

At least large organisations generally have a proper complaints process.

Then people blame big corporations for the demise of small business.... If there was a national chain of builders and tradesmen I'd be over the moon!

Last summer dds bike was missing a pedal, so I looked online at halfords, they had one for £17.
I ended up at the local bike shop, which I thought would have been much more. They fitted two new pedals, inflated the tyres and tightened up the handle bars. All for £5.

I prefer independent restaurants and coffee shops but for the main food shopping, tbh, I cannot see anyone better than a good supermarket with a car-park.

I thought you were going to talk about all those fried chicken shops being a money laundering service for drug dealers.

I think we have to be thankful for large retailers. In the old days of buying everything from a corner grocery only favoured customers would get the best goods, and food was often adulterated with cheaper ingredients. We're all equal in Tesco.

BT are another big company with terrible customer service, at least in my experience. Never again.
Small businesses are all different really. Some good, some bad.
As far as driving instructors go , I think it can just be a case of finding the right one for you. My son has just passed - he had 2 instructors. With his 1st he made very slow progress, didn't seem to be getting anywhere. So he changed instructors and made much quicker progress. Even so, he still needed 3 tests to pass.
Re. the small businesses/tax credit scam, I have heard of people registering as traders on ebay, not making any profit and claiming tax credits. I think it may have been tightened up though. In any case, I don't know any more than that.

I have to say that I prefer good service to poor service, a good price to a bad price, and I don't even ask myself whether traders are paying their taxes.

Worst customer service I've ever dealt with was BT who repeatedly lied to me and no less than 5 different people gave me 5 different versions of what was happening with my account. British Gas have also lied to me in the past.

I prefer small businesses where I'm treated as a person rather than an order number/account number.

It translates perfectly - and I've never had building work done without any problems.

I don't want businesses to 'care' or be 'passionate', I want them to be efficent.

Yep BT cost me thousands in revenue when they accidentally cut off both my broadband and landline and repeatedly lied about what they'd do to fix it.

While there may be possible for a small business owner to go to all the trouble of setting up a business in order to get tax credits, I can't get het up about that when I know larger corporations use tax credits to subsidise wages, while similtaneously avoiding paying tax.

And don't even get me started on workfare.

However, there are good and bad businesses, both small and large.

BT are awful, British Gas and Powergen were both horrendous and after a run I with Sky I will never sign up with them again.
The manager of our local Furniture Village was unspeakably rude to me after our sofa cracked in half after 6wks ( he told me I was obviously too fat - which thankfully was laughable as I am 4'11 and weighed 6st at the time) and when we escalated our complaint to head office they denied he could have said it and refused to help with the broken sofa.
Audi had terrible customer service when we bought our car and we ended up complaining to head office where we got a rather weak apology.
DH had a terrible time trying to change from Vodaphone.
Marriot who I always used to think were good lost our custom recently after a terrible stay when we were put in a room with plug socket in the middle of the shower (which is rather dangerous and very illegal), a strong smell of damp and all looked rather shabby which at £250 a night was awful. When we complained we were initially offered a free botte of house wine. Only When I pointed out I would be phoning the local building inspector as their hotel was dangerous did they move us out of that room and put us in a safe one.
Big companies can be shite, small companies can be shite but both can also be very good. Generalised sweeping statements about either type of business are rather daft.

The thing about small businesses is that there are lots of them and if one gives bad service, you go elsewhere. Whereas as the big companies get bigger and bigger and small businesses get wiped out, we will have no choice and if we don't like the service we can lump it.

Yabvvvu OP.
Tradesmen need to be hired by close friend's recommendations I think.
My ex is a builder gets all of his work via recommendation & has never had to advertise in the 30 years he's been working.
It's the same with most of his mates who are an electrician/plumber/plasterer/builder. They can't be the only ones in the UK to get work like this?!
Have you ever tried to complain to British Gas/BT/other faceless corporation? Most of the time they really don't give a shit because their Nationwide profile gets them enough customers through the door without having to try.

At the least with big companies (particularly utlities) there is a head office or even a regulator to complain to.

Last builder I hired, claimed to have two separate emergency cancer treatments on the two days he didn't turn up. Only problem being, the hospital he was claiming to attend doesn't have an oncology dept. The type of cancer changed too... I was pretty disgusted at that.

I have had issues with British Gas - but following the complaints process got me compensation. Yet to be compensated by the builder.....

If I go into B&Q to buy a tool, that's pretty much all that happens. Went into a small DIY shop and asked for the same tool - bloke behind counter looks me up and down and says "Doesn't exist love - what you want something like that for anyway?"

Wow what B&Q do you go to? Ours is so rubbish is almost laughable. Once they sold me a garden table, went back because it had no screws in the box... Bloke went through all the other boxes and umm no screws they all seem to be missing.. Then said " I wonder where we could get some screws" it took my small son to point out that they sold screws and perhaps they could give us some of them...
They are often very friendly in B&Q but a bit clueless.
Where we used to live was a fab hardware store, you could go in and say I need a thingymajig and describe it and they'd find it for you or if they can't they will find out where you can get one. When we moved I was finding it hard to find a very specialised bit for something so I drove the hour and half back there to ask them and we got it sorted.

There is lots and lots of bad service out there: big business, small business and everything in between. You basically need to work hard to find trusted suppliers and then keep with them.

I work for a small business, we are friendly, brilliant at the service we offer and always try to resolve any problems our customers have, our one big draw back is the many many people that think it's ok to pay us late or not at all.

In fact if our cash flow was better (people paid on time) then we could give better service as I wouldn't have to spend all my time chasing money owed to us

Facebook groups are great for recommendations for tradesman. My local one is called [Town I live in] Traders. It's a selling site but people are always asking /recommending trades people.
I've had no problems with third party sellers on eBay/Amazon. (I'm assuming some of them are small businesses)

translates perfectly - and I've never had building work done without any problems.

No it doesn't. You have bad experiences does not translate into them being con artists.

Well I'm a small business. It's only me and my website, but I have over 500 sales, mostly internationally, and over 100 reviews with a 5-star average (have had one two-star and one three-star review). But clearly I am a con artist scamming people out of their money

OP, you said upthread that you'd given up learning to drive because of your bad experiences with independent driving instructors.

While there are good independent driving instructors out there, if you don't want to try another independent driving instructor, why not learn through one of the big driving schools?

YABU

I have had issues with British Gas - but following the complaints process got me compensation. Yet to be compensated by the builder.....

Do you know British Gas has been fined a few million over the years because of their poor response to complaints? You may have got good service, many did not.