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Another good piece on avoiding cowboy builders, this time from DIY Doctor.

And if you do get caught, a quick introduction to recovering costs through the law from Moneywise.

As we’ve seen in a previous blog entry, the man behind JARS Builders has left some unhappy customers behind. So, is there any further evidence that their complaints were grounded?

The next stage is to check for any past court judgements. You can do this via Trust Online. You can check by trading name and individual names. Unfortunately, the service costs money, so you’ll need to decide whether to spend a few pounds to possibly save a much larger amount of money. This is what you’ll be paying for:

So, in the 3 years prior to the search, our builder had judgements against him 3 times. He paid one, after nearly 3 years, but the others remain outstanding.

Another little tool that can be of use is to check the business VAT registration.

If you have a VAT number, you can currently check the number is legitimate using the EU VIES system.

Alternatively, VAT-Search.co.uk will let you find if a business is VAT registered, using the business name and locality.

Here we find more evidence that JARS Builders is Justin Savage-Rudd (and if we hadn’t already guessed that Savage-Rudd might be a possible search term for Companies House or other searches, well, we know now). We can conclude that the company founders listed on the website are most probably fictitious. Which might lead us to wonder just how much of the other website content is also misleading.

All limited companies in the UK must register their names and the names of their directors at Companies House. So, is JARS Builders a registered company? There’s an easy way to find out – the Companies House website.

I’ll save you a bit of typing. There is no JARS Builders registered, or J-S-R Builders. There is, though a Justin Savage Rudd of Aylesbury, who was registered as a director of

JAYMISON & BARRETT BUILDING COMPANY LIMITED (08821767)

in December 2013. Checking the filing history, we can see that this company never filed accounts, and so was struck off the register in September 2015.

So far this is not a business record that inspires confidence.

One more little idea. What does companies house know about our hero personally? Let’s be a bit creative with names, and see if as well as Justin Savage Rudd a similar name gets any hits. And lo, we find Justin Savage-Rudd was the only director of

Creative Conversions Ltd (07829008)

a company founded in 2011 and, you guessed it, struck off the list in 2013 never having filed accounts.

OK, the alarms bells are starting to tinkle a bit. Now, the two bits of solid contact info on the website are the email address and mobile number.  What can we find?

In this case we have to click past a page or two of results that refer only to the JARS Builders website that we already know. Be persistent.

On the second page, we find a directory with a reference to a business with the same phone number: J-S-R Building Services. Also allegedly based on Aylesbury. With some familar-sounding blurb.

JSR Building Services are domestic builders with the drive and determination to serve home owners in the way that they should be. A proper job, completed to high standards, by skilled tradesmen, on time and within budget. Their slogan “Proper builders you can trust” fits this team very well.

What can we find out about this organisation J-S-R Builders with the same phone number and similar name?  Google to the fore again…

This time we’re getting somewhere. The first result is a link to MyBuilder.com. Which shows us a kitchen fitter & carpenter called Justin in the first comment, and Justin Savage Rudd in a later comment. Now we’re got something to work with.

Justin joined MyBuilder.com in April 2016, and within 5 months had feedback including some very unhappy customers. This is not encouraging.

Oh, look. Back at the JARS website there’s logos of some partners.

Now, most of these aren’t of interest. I mean, claiming Wickes as a partner? I can buy stuff from there too, you know. However, one logo is from a trade association, the Guild of Master Craftsmen. Who, handily, have a form for finding their members. Which knows nothing about our heroes.

If you’re unsure, it’s easy to contact the Guild directly and ask them. They’ll respond promptly, and in our case tell you that they have no members of that name in Aylesbury.

So, our builders have a website. How long has it been there?

There’s an internet domain name service called whois. It’s provided by the name registrar, which for .uk names is Nominet. The domain used by JARS has now lapsed, but let’s see what Nominet have to say about this site.

The average builder doesn’t have great web expertise, so gets third parties to do most of the work. Which means that the interesting thing here is really only the date that the domain was registered. For JARS, this was:

18-Jan-2017

So, at the time this of investigation (early 2018), they hadn’t been around long. Hmm. So, first big question. Can they point you to satisfied clients who will tell you directly about the work they had done? Any reputable builder will be able to do this without a problem.

Let’s talk a bit about how you can use the Internet to help you find whether a builder should be approached with caution. I’m going to use this company:

JARS All Trades Builders

as my example. I won’t go into details now, but I know two examples of their work which have left people out of pocket to the tune of tens of thousands of pounds, and the fabric of their homes damaged by seriously sub-standard work.

Let’s start with some simple stuff.

Who are they?

There’s not many names on the website. The closest you get is this page, which proffers two names, and space for their photos, but no actual images. Even more intriguingly, a section below headed: