Con Men and Rogue Traders
I was alerted to a “competitor” web site by a customer yesterday. This web site, leaving aside the very poor grammar, claimed to be BBA accredited and even shows a picture of a van proudly displaying the BBA logo on their home page. They even claim “BBA 25 year approved system”. All lies I am afraid, the company in question is not BBA accredited in any shape or form and certainly has no rights to claim any reference to the BBA.
This led me to think about con men and rogue traders. If a company cannot be honest in their advertising then clearly no consumer should have any faith in using that company, what other lies are they trying to get you to swallow? But how does a consumer evaluate and establish who are the con men and rogue traders? It seems help is at hand; contact Local Trading Standards if you are at all suspicious of a trader. Also, check web sites like http:// www.blagger.com and http://www.vetted.com/ to see if anyone else has raised concern about the company in question.
And always speak to existing customers of the company, ask for 10 or more references of the last 10 jobs completed, not the usual 2 or 3 because even rogue traders are astute enough to ensure that their brother and uncle will give a good reference. It becomes harder to manufacturer references the more there are and the more recent, ask for the last 10 rolling jobs completed as the references you take up. If you do not get this (all Rooftherm customers get this, we automatically ask each customer if they are happy to act as a reference, we have not had one customer refuse) or the company refuses claiming rubbish about data protection and so on then you already have your answer.