The money is already paid in before you arrive
TrustedTrades is for electricians and plumbers in Potchefstroom. The client pays for the job up front into escrow, where nobody can touch it, and it is released to you once the client confirms the work is done. Joining is free.
No subscription. No listing fee. Nothing charged for quoting.
Why we built it this way round
Talk to any tradesman in this town and the complaints are the same three.
You finish, then you chase
The work is done and the invoice sits unpaid for weeks. Nothing you can do about it except phone again.
You quote for free, all day
Drive out, look at the job, write the quote, hear nothing. The lead sites still charge you for that.
The same lead goes to five of you
You pay for a contact that four competitors bought at the same time, and the cheapest one wins it.
How you get paid
Client pays in first
Before you drive out, through PayFast
It sits in escrow
The client cannot pull it back on a whim
You do the job
The client confirms it is done
We release to you
Commission comes off at that point
To be exact about the last step: a person on our side releases the payment after the client confirms. That is deliberate, because it means a client cannot vanish with your work unpaid, and a disputed job gets looked at by a human instead of a script.
What it costs you
We take 10% of the job, minimum R75, and it comes off when the escrow is released. On a R2,000 geyser element that is R200. On a R400 callout it is the R75 floor. If the job never happens, you pay nothing, because there is nothing to take it from.
Founding tradesmen: the first three jobs are free
The first five Potchefstroom tradesmen we verify pay no commission at all on their first three jobs. Five spots, three free jobs each, then the normal 10% starts. It is set up that way in the platform itself, not a promise in an email.
What we check before you go live
Your trade registration: a current PIRB number for plumbers, the registration behind the Certificate of Compliance for electricians. A person reads the document before your profile goes live.
The check is the point
If anyone with a bakkie could list here, your registration would be worth nothing on this site. The whole reason a landlord pays before the work is that somebody checked who is coming.
It all runs on your phone
Sign up, upload your registration document, take the job, chat to the client and confirm completion in the browser. There is no app to download and nothing to install.
The full list, including what we deliberately do not check, is on how we verify.
You do not start at zero reviews
A new site with no reviews on your profile is worth nothing to you, so we bring your existing reputation across. Give us up to five past clients’ numbers when you set up. We text each one a private link and they write a short review of the work you already did for them. It sits on your profile from day one.
Your clients, contacted once
One text with one link. No account for them to make, nothing to sign up for, and we never contact them again or use their number for anything else. Their number is never shown on the site.
Marked for what it is
These show on your profile as work done before you joined, not as jobs booked through us. We are not going to dress up your history, and a landlord who spots that would not trust the rest of the page either.
Tell those clients to expect the text before we send it. An unexpected link from a name they do not know gets ignored, and that is your reputation sitting unused.
What we will not do to you
- Sell the same job to five of you and let the cheapest one win.
- Charge you a monthly fee whether work comes in or not.
- Charge you for a lead that never turns into a job.
- Stand between you and the client. You two talk directly in the chat.
Where this actually is right now
TrustedTrades is new and it is launching in Potchefstroom only. The site is built and the escrow flow works. We are signing up and checking the first Potch electricians and plumbers, and no completed jobs have run through it yet. You would be early, which is exactly why the first three are free.
The clients we are bringing in are letting agents and landlords who own student houses in Potch and do not live here, so the work is maintenance callouts on rented property.