There is something I have never understood about the way some people choose tradies. They hand their job to a website, provide a few details about what they want done, and then wait for someone to be put in front of them.

Why? If you are spending $2,000, $10,000 or $50,000 on your home, surely you want some say in who gets the job. It’s your house. It’s your money. And if something goes wrong, you are the one who has to live with the consequences. So why hand over one of the most important decisions to someone else?

Some online services collect your job details, invite businesses to compete for the work and help determine how the process unfolds. In some cases, the platform can also make money when the job is awarded. That is when homeowners should ask: whose interests are being served here?

A recent NZ Herald story provides a sobering reason to ask that very question. A Gisborne homeowner paid more than $30,000 for a new roof after using Roofbuddy. The roof subsequently leaked in several places, and an independent inspection recommended that it be stripped back and redone. More than $30,000 for a new roof. And then she was dealing with leaks.

The Herald reported that Roofbuddy marketed its roofers as “vetted” and “trusted”, yet the roofer involved was not a Licensed Building Practitioner and had since closed his business. Roofbuddy has apologised, agreed to fund remediation and says it has strengthened its checking procedures.

To be fair, no platform can guarantee that nothing will ever go wrong. Tradies are human. Mistakes happen. Businesses fail. But that is not really the point. The questions homeowners should ask are: how much information do I have before making the decision? And: who gets to make the decision?

At NoCowboys, we believe the homeowner should choose the business. Not us. Not an algorithm. Not a platform with its own process for deciding which businesses get the opportunity. You. You can look at businesses, compare them and decide which ones you want to contact.

That might sound basic. It is. But when you are handing someone the keys to your home and potentially tens of thousands of dollars, basic is good. The right tradie for one homeowner will not necessarily be right for another. Maybe you want the lowest price. Maybe you want 30 years’ experience. Maybe you want hundreds of reviews, or someone who specialises in exactly the work you need.

Perhaps you simply want a business whose previous customers say it turned up when promised, communicated properly and left the place clean. Those things matter. And you should decide which matter most to you. That is where reviews become important.

Customers reveal a great deal about a business when given the opportunity. They tell you whether the tradie turned up, communicated, did what they promised and delivered good workmanship. They also tell you whether problems occurred and, importantly, what happened next.

That is information you do not get from a badge saying “approved”, “trusted” or “vetted”. Those words may sound reassuring. But I would rather read what customers actually experienced.

A business saying it is good is advertising. A platform saying it has checked a business may provide some reassurance but a long history of independent customers describing similar positive experiences? That is evidence. And evidence lets you make your own decision.

There is another question homeowners should ask: how does the service make its money? If a platform earns money when a particular job is awarded, completing that transaction is commercially important to the platform.

NoCowboys does not work that way.

Businesses pay a registration fee to have their reputation displayed on NoCowboys. Whether your job is worth $500, $5,000 or $50,000 does not change what we earn from it. We do not need to get your job across the line.

Our job is to give you information about businesses. Your job is to decide who you want to contact.