Two Wigan friends launch an app to stop cowboy builders and help tradespeople know what they're owed
Two Wigan friends have created a helpful app aimed at saving folk from cowboy builders after experiencing their own horror stories and trade friends not getting what they were owed.
With 81 per cent of tradespeople currently owed money, chasing an average of £6,210 in late payments and rogue traders costing UK homeowners £14.3bn over the past five years, Luke Nixon and Jacob Bloodworth, both 31, from Standish decided to build a new platform called Renofy with the aim of its becoming a key tool to help both sides.
Renofy gives homeowners and tradespeople a shared job record - what was quoted, what's been agreed, what's changed - so there's proper accountability on both sides.
Launched last month, inspiration for the app was sparked after the pair had their own dealings with dodgy tradespeople.
Luke said: “We had some guy from Bolton come in and do a bathroom renovation for us and he subcontracted a lot of work.
"The subcontractors came in and just completely messed it up. I had tiles falling off around the window because they didn’t use a back board.
"It was an absolute pain to fix and we spent hours and hours trying to sort and there was with money lost as well.”
Equally, Luke also talked about his friends who are tradespeople and who are always chasing money.
Luke said: “They’re always complaining about not being paid on time, having to chase customers for money and customers getting confused about what’s actually included in the price.
"Our app helps create a shared record between the customer and tradesperson, including pictures, description, a quote and if anything changes the tradesperson can update it.”
Unlike other sites, Renofy won’t charge tradespeople to be on the site and therefore will have no issue with kicking off bad tradespeople from the platform.
The pals now hope that the app will really begin to catch on.
Luke said: “Our plan is to get as many people using it as possible, get as much feedback as possible and then we can go to investors.
"It’s probably going to be quite hard, it’s quite an ambitious project of ours but we can pull it off.”