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Another company swamping the Internet for repairs nationwide under lots of sites ?
123 fridge repairs lots of manufacturers names and appliance sites. Washing machines, electrical you name it they have it listed.
All sites have the same phone number but no contact address so looks like another company not to be trusted.
Phone number 0844 6950003
Bob :eeek:
Re: Any one know who this is
This one Bob…
http://www.123fridgespecialist.co.uk
?
If it is it’s masked using this: http://www.salesfeed.co.uk
Looks like someone trying (again) to go down the franchise road to some degree.
I’ve looked at them before, probably banned them from advertising on UKW, but I can’t recall what I found.
K.
Re: Any one know who this is
Yes just one of there website listings all have no contact address not much good to customers if they get a problem.
Lets hope customers have enough sense not to use sites with no contact address.
You are right Brian I missed a 0 out its 0844 6950003 :boops:
Bob
Re: Any one know who this is
r600a wrote:Can’t find any with that number there’s a digit missing
0844 6950003
Re: Any one know who this is
they are here as well
http://www.householdprofessionals.co.ukRe: Any one know who this is
Yes lots of sites my local hero my appliance hero etc all have no Address.
Bob
Re: Any one know who this is
If I recall correctly this is one of those companies that essentially are what used to be known as link farms. Only these days what they do is try to farm enquiries for all manners of things across numerous different trades. It isn’t anything new, just a reincarnation of an old internet ploy.
They then make money by selling on the enquiries to the highest bidder. Or, whoever will provide, preferably for free.
Usually the pitch will be that they can grow your business by X{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} or that they have generated XX sales leads in your area that you could have had.
Most are a different spin on the same old tired formula in one form or another and, I could name a few but GoLocal was an example of one branch of the species.
The fact is though that they all have no infrastructure whatsoever other than the ability to whack up a bunch of websites and to look, at least to an unsuspecting customer, like a legit site worth giving money to. They then take their cut and pass the call onto the people that actually do the work, in this case among others, you guys.
The sad fact is that there will always be those that think there’s some kind of mystical properties that these companies hold and, they don’t. They just understand the web better than you do and, that’s about it really. So, there’s always those that will fall for the line and do the work, even though they probably had a fair chance of getting it anyway if the company couldn’t find some other mug to take the work.
Is it legal? Who knows, probably not illegal as such but then the law is in part playing catch up with the digital information age.
Trading Standards doing anything, they don’t have enough money to buy hankies to wipe their nose so don’t expect them to be seeing a judge anytime soon by way of TS ’cause, it ain’t gonna happen.
Punters taking them to task, not a chance. The monies involved aren’t substantial enough to justify it.
So, as long as there’s people that will do the work, often not getting paid to do so, then these kinds of rip off merchants will exist.
You can’t even write to them, no contact details.
Yet some people will still take the work, you have to wonder why.
Nice model though if you’ve the stomach for being that way inclined, i.e. slightly dishonest, as you get say £100 or so up front from a few score people a day, run it for six months then sink it without paying the people that did the work.
Good money. For them.
Not so good for you.
Now you may well think that these going up on here is a waste of time but, if people in the trade take time to use that search thing up there on the right, you can often find out about these shenanigans before you get stung. If you don’t do the research and just blindly accept work from whoever has a “pretty” website and perhaps a decent sounding sales pitch then, there’s really nobody to blame but yourself is there?
If I got paid £10 for every time I heard that, “I didn’t think to look in the forums” or, “I only look there when I have a problem”, I’d have been able to buy myself a very nice holiday thanks. So, please understand that I hold little sympathy for people who have access to the information and yet fail to use that resource.
And, in equal measure, there’s the “UKW should do more to warn people” and I often think, yes and perhaps you’d like us to hold your hand then wipe for you when you’re done too eh? Obviously a prominent forum, search facility, newsletter, news and so on just aren’t enough to cut it. Perhaps we should invest in smoke signals and drums with the subscription fees… oh wait, we don’t charge.. scratch that plan…
I am in a particularly irritable and foul mood this evening so my apologies for the direct and blunt tone. It does not however make the content any less truthful.
The bottom line is that, if these idiots are starved of people to screw over, they’ll go away and it’s up to the trade at large to do that, all of them. And, that would include almost everyone that reads this post.
If you put greed in front of that well, on your own head be it. Should you do that then you’re more likely part of the problem than the solution.
K.
Re: Any one know who this is
Just thought I would see if anyone knew who they are, at least now every one knows if they are contacted by them.
I never take work from anyone without carrying out research first or payment on the visit.
There are too many of these company’s out there now waiting to take advantage of the independent engineers.
Another good reason to be a WTA member.
I only use free advertising and search for repairs on line a couple of times a week to keep a check on my position on the web search.
If I drop down the list I then make a few changes to get me back up the list.
I found this company lower down on the search but with so many sites I am sure they will soon move up the list.
I think most people online now look for a contact address now or pay with a credit card so they can get there money back if things go wrong.
They will probably make a lot of money in the short term and disappear when the credit card company’s start chasing them.
Bob
Re: Any one know who this is
SAMURI wrote:There are too many of these company’s out there now waiting to take advantage of the independent engineers.
Exactly Bob.
But they will only get away with that if the engineers let them.
A large part of what UKW and the WTA does is to try to prevent that but, as the old adage goes, you can lead a horse to water…
K.
Re: Any one know who this is
Also noticed in my local area indesit and repaircare popping up in google maps and they are defiantly not located there, when you click on the location it’s an old derelict building or just a general area! But they are pretending to be based local! Sneaky! Also heard that domestic and general are asking their agents and manufacturers if they can use the companies engineers addresses so they can also do the same trick! They can’t leave nothing alone thought google maps was there for small local business to put them on the same footing as these bigger companies and I am pretty sure if Google thought they was losing an advertising revenue stream by them blatantly lying they would not be happy.
Re: Any one know who this is
Can I just ask, what is there to fear from these companies that pay for premium listings on Google? You mentioned Indesit and Repaircare as an example. Indesit charge 100 quid up front and Repaircare demand 150 quid. What plonker in there right mind is going to stump up that?
I can understand if you too were also asking these outrageous rates per call but the vast majority of us don’t. And that as long as our profile stands high on all search engines then Indesit and Repaircare are in fact doing us all a favour…! Sod those link farms too as they cannot deliver before their contact gives up anyway, they are too impatient to wait.
Statistically your average customer wants something for nothing, and a discount on top of that if you can’t call on the same day. So stand high on Google and low in your charges and a steady flow of custom has to be assured.
Re: Any one know who this is
Think your missing my point Martin, I am not worried over what they or others charge, or the service which they offer I know they simply can not compete!
These companies are now NOT paying for premium listings, They are disguising themselves and listing themselves as a good many of us do as a local based company on google places / maps to get themselves on the first page without paying for that premium listing. They are pretending to be a local not a nationwide service provider and using any means necessary ie listing their business address as an old derelict building or using an engineers home address just so they get themselves on google maps / listings.
I know where your coming from, I just believe that these types of tactics are under handed and deceitful. It’s nothing to do with price or service it is about lying and trying yet another way to deceive customers and put the knife in the “real” local engineers that’s all.Phil
Re: Any one know who this is
philfish wrote:I know where your coming from, I just believe that these types of tactics are under handed and deceitful. It’s nothing to do with price or service it is about lying and trying yet another way to deceive customers and put the knife in the “real” local engineers that’s all.
I don’t think you could accuse any of these companies of deception. They don’t claim to be local at all but simply provide ‘local’ engineers. The Internet equivalent of the ASA would find no impropriety with their business model I’m sure.
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