For homeowners
How this will work, and what it will never do
TradeProof’s contractor directory is not open yet — nobody is listed. Here is exactly how a contractor gets on it and how every figure beside his name will be worked out, so you can judge the standard before there is anything to judge.
A contractor will appear on TradeProof because he finished work a real customer paid for, and every figure beside his name will be worked out from those jobs. He writes his business name and what he calls the work. He cannot type a single one of the figures. There is no profile to write, nothing to review, and no position on the page that can be bought.
Finding someone
- 01
Say what needs doing, in your own words
You will not have to know that the thing you want is called a gutter clear-out, or guess whether it is a $60 job or a $600 one. Type what is wrong — water comes over the front when it rains — and the search will match it to work contractors have actually finished.
The prices will be the real low and high of what people paid, taken from completed jobs. Not a starting-from figure, and not an estimate anybody wrote for marketing.
- 02
Look at work that really happened
Every job on a contractor’s page has a before and an after photograph, each carrying the date and time it was added and the town he was in.
He chooses which finished jobs to show. He does not choose what the figures underneath them are calculated over — those run across his whole history, including the jobs he left out.
- 03
Call him yourself
There will be no bidding, no lead form and no queue. You will call the number on his page, or send him one message from it.
Nobody is sold your number. No contractor is notified because he paid to be, and no contractor is handed your details he did not receive from you directly — so nobody calls you eleven times before dinner.
- 04
Keep the record
The invoice a contractor texts you has a link at the bottom to keep the job: the photographs, the date, what it cost.
Along with every other job ever invoiced to your number, by anyone, in one place instead of fifteen text messages you will not find in two years when you sell the house.
Where each number comes from
This is the part worth reading. A figure a contractor could type is worth nothing, so here is exactly what each one is counted over.
Jobs finished and paid for
Counted when the job was paid for — by card through Stripe, or recorded by the contractor as settled in cash or by check. Not jobs he invoiced and never got paid for.
Turned up on the day he said
The date he booked, against the timestamp on the before photograph — which is a by-product of photographing the job, not a check-in button he taps. He cannot back-date it. Only counted for work that was actually scheduled; a job booked on the spot carried no promise to keep.
Customers who hired him again
A decision somebody made with their own money after seeing the work, which is worth more than a review — a review measures who asks for reviews. It is not comparable between trades: a lawn is meant to repeat and a panel upgrade is not.
What the work actually cost
The real low and high he charged for that kind of job, across every one of them. A range rather than an average, because an average reads like a quote and will be held against him on a job that was never going to cost that.
Disputes
Anything a customer’s bank ever flagged, whatever came of it. Shown even when it is zero, because a zero nobody is able to hide is the only kind worth anything.
Where are the star ratings and reviews?
There are none, and there never will be. You already know why: a review is text somebody typed, checked by nobody. It can be written by a cousin, bought for a few dollars, traded between businesses, or left by somebody who never hired anyone. The five-star average on every other site mostly measures who remembered to ask.
A contractor who is quietly excellent and never asks looks worse than one who chases every customer for a rating. That is the wrong way round, and it is the reason this site exists.
What we do instead
Results are ordered by how well each one fits what you described: how much of this kind of work he has finished and been paid for, whether he arrived on the promised day, how many customers came back, how often he answers, and what he charged. The two that can’t be influenced at all — turning up, and customers coming back — carry the most weight after the work itself.
Then we print the reasons next to each name, so you can disagree with the order rather than take it on faith. That is the part a star rating cannot give you: five stars tells you nothing about why.
The Track record mark
Some contractors will carry a Track record mark. It cannot be bought, applied for, or asked for, and it does not move anybody up the page — it is worked out from their own finished work, checked continuously, and lost the moment it stops being true. Here is the whole rule.
20 jobs finished and paid for
Paid jobs. Card through Stripe, or cash and checks he recorded.
10 different customers
So a handful of invoices to one person is not a record.
10 jobs booked in advance
Work booked on the spot carries no promise, so somebody who never schedules is never measured — and never qualifies.
Turned up on the day, 90% of the time
The date they booked against the timestamp on the before photograph, which the app writes when the photo is added rather than a button they pressed.
No disputes in the last year
Anything a customer’s bank flagged, whatever came of it.
Still working, within 90 days
A record that stopped two years ago is history, not a standard.
It still is not a recommendation. It says a contractor’s record clears the bar above — not that we have inspected their work, which we have not.
What we do not check
We have not inspected anybody’s work, checked a license or an insurance certificate, run a background check, or met a single contractor on here. This is a record of work that happened, not a recommendation, and it is not a substitute for asking for references and proof of insurance before you let somebody start.
What we can promise is narrower and it is the part nobody else does: both photographs exist, the job was paid for, and the figures were computed rather than written. If a contractor has done badly by somebody, that will not necessarily show up here — but he cannot make the numbers say he has not.
The account
It is free, and it always is
You are never charged for anything here. Contractors pay for the tool they invoice you with; you are not the product and there is nothing to cancel.
Your number is never passed on
Not to a contractor, not to anybody. Nobody buys the right to contact you, which is the entire difference between this and a lead-generation site.
Only your own house
An account shows the jobs invoiced to your number and nothing else, ever. Proving the number means opening an invoice sent to it — otherwise anybody could type a neighbor’s number and read their house.
Have a look for yourself
The directory is empty today, and you can go and see that it is. When contractors are on it, each one shows work he actually finished — photographed as he added it, and paid for by a real customer. If you would rather talk to somebody, call 913-725-8811.