New Canadian website helps homeowners find good tradespeople
15.05.2008 06:00
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- Source: Home Envy
It's getting a whole lot easier for Canadians to connect with competent contractors and tradespeople, thanks to a new, free website service called eRenovate.com. It all started with a bad building experience endured by Toronto homeowner Tom Cordeiro in 2002. That's when he decided to have new windows installed in his older, Woodbridge home. But as so often happens, the installation was faulty enough to let drafts blast through on windy days. The firm responsible refused to make things right, so Tom paid a different tradesperson to come and repair the botched installation. Only then did he learn that he'd been charged way too much for the windows in the first place. This bad and not-so-rare experience led Tom to create eRenovate.com as a way to help Canadian homeowners avoid the same knockout combination of incompetence and corruption he'd been subjected to. But to fully appreciate how misfortune has been turned into something good, you need to understand what I call the Amazon Effect. The fastest way to make informed buying decisions about the world's best electronics, tools, clothes, movies, books, software, pet supplies gardening gear and other stuff is by logging onto www.amazon.com. Even though it's not always convenient and hassle-free for us Canadians to actually buy goods from the US division of Amazon (no, free trade isn't a reality for us little guys yet), you won't find a better place to get lots of useful opinions on what's good and what's not. That's the Internet at its best. eRenovate.com brings this same level of unedited accountability to the home renovation and building scene, along with an added level of safety, honesty, education and interaction that I've never seen before in any other home renovation website. The heart of eRenovate.com is the verification and publication of critical information about contractors and tradespeople covering 50 different specialties. All firms listed on the site have to provide annual proof of business licenses, CRA and GST registration, plus liability and worker insurance coverage. If contractors meet eRenovate.com standards, they pay a modest, annual flat-rate membership fee for their affiliation. That's it. This fee gets them onto the randomized list of businesses that you see when you search. No one firm can pay more money for better placement at the top of the list, because that would destroy the promise of fair and honest options for homeowners. In a digital world where businesses regularly 'engineer' their way to the top of search result listings (regardless of quality or competence), I find it refreshing that eRenovate.com insists on equal prominence for everyone. Tapping into the eRenovate.com database as a homeowner begins by creating a free account, and submitting anonymous details of your proposed project. Companies respond with an estimate on the job and additional comments delivered to you by email. This message also includes an Amazon-style star rating of the contractor, plus previous customer reviews. Although you won't find any crooks groping for your project here (bad guys never make it to the database in the first place), you can see at a glance just how happy previous clients have been. Homeowners who've used the system say it functions like an information power tool for folks too busy to properly research and screen prospective builders on their own. One of the weaknesses that many homeowners have to deal with as they plunge into a renovation campaign is a lack of technical knowledge. How can anyone assess the various legitimate design and construction approaches without the right information? As eRenovate.com grows they've committed to building a free online library of technical articles so homeowners can learn what details should go into, say, a good ceramic tile job or a proper basement renovation or a great new hardwood floor. If this addition unfolds as planned, it'll be that much easier to sidestep the fate that befalls many who venture into home renovation projects unprepared. According to a 2006 survey of homeowner experiences conducted by Opinion Research Corporation, a whopping 40% of homeowners who used a contractor in the past several years report shoddy workmanship as their #1 complaint. And while none of this is surprising, the Internet is one bright spot on the horizon. As the current state of trades training remains inadequate, and social prejudices continue to steer our most promising young people away from the trades, it's good to know that online tools are available to help homeowners separate the good from the bad. It's even better when a homegrown Canadian venture is at the heart of it.
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