Having took the jump and becoming self employed in January 2021, I signed up for Checkatrade which had a 3 month trial period. Within this period, no calls came through and on investigation, it was discovered that when a customer clicked on my number on the website, it wasn’t being linked to my phone and hence no calls received. Checkatrade apologised and despite potentially losing £1000’s worth of work in that 3 months, they could only offer me another 3 months free trial and a chance to go in their physical directory (which turned out to be a complete waste of time). Once the glitch has been fixed, I began receiving calls which was great. Unknowingly however, this time it was the direct debit that weren’t working. Having gone unnoticed for 4 months, I received a call from checkatrade demanding I pay the £650 worth of unpaid invoices, and despite my challenge that this is the second time in only 6 months the platform has fooled me around, they were adamant that every single Penny had to be paid. This left a bitter taste in my mouth and so, I decided to leave the platform and the £650 I had to pay has lead me to once again return to full time employment (as I almost had to do within the first 3 months of being self employed - all because of their glitches and lack of attention). If I do decide to give self employed another crack, I will certainly not be signing up for checkatrade and will look at other directories who are a bit more personable to small, new business.