Having recently moved house I have spent an awful lot of time phoning around to get quotes from people for all sorts of things. Cleaners, removal firms, gas and electrical technicians, aerial engineers, gardeners, window cleaners, the list goes on and on. It was such a frustrating process as, even when you have found contact details on the internet or from the phone book, half of them are out of date or you can’t get a response and then, when you do finally get through to someone, they are booked up and can’t fit in the work. I knew there must be a better way to go about this sort of thing!
Low and behold, two months later I have been introduced to Bidvine, an online quote request system that means you only have to explain what you’re looking for once and then just sit back and wait for interested tradesmen to get back to you with a quote. Sounds perfect, hey? Bidvine asked me to give it a try and see how it works.
I tested out the system by requesting quotes for someone to take some family photographs for us. First you just fill in what type of service you are looking for and your postcode (so that your request gets to the right local tradespeople). After this you’re given a few multiple choice questions based on the service you selected to make sure the quotes will be as accurate as possible. For example, if you’re looking for a cleaner it will ask how many bedrooms you have and how often you want the cleaner to come to you etc. As we were looking for a photographer I answered a couple of questions about who would be photographed and what sort of style of pictures I wanted. All you have to do then is provide your preferred contact details, submit the request and put your feet up.
Over the next couple of days I got emails from photographers with quotes detailing what they could do and outlining cost. These quotes were also kept together on my account at the Bidvine site so I could quickly find them all rather than searching through my inbox.
Over all, my Bidvine experience was really good. The website worked smoothly and was easy to navigate, I got the quotes I needed with only a small amount of time and effort expended on my part and I haven’t had any problem with any spam emails which is always a possibility when you provide your contact details for anything nowadays. I would say the only possible downside is that because it is a fairly new system and tradespeople are still enrolling you might find that people in more remote areas won’t get quite so many responses as those in big cities but obviously that will resolve over time as the platform grows.
The next time you’re struggling to find a plumber or even a harp teacher pop over to Bidvine and see if they can help.
What do you think?