Advice for homeowners
5 Tips Before Hiring a Tradesman in Cork
Published
Most jobs go fine. The ones that go wrong nearly always go wrong for the same handful of reasons, and all of them are avoidable in the half hour before you say yes.
Here are five things worth doing before any tradesman starts work on your house in Cork.
1. Check registration and insurance
Ask for two things: their public liability insurance, and their registration for the specific type of work.
For electrical work, check the contractor on Safe Electric. Restricted domestic electrical work must be carried out by a Registered Electrical Contractor. For regulated gas work, including work on gas boilers, use a Registered Gas Installer under the RGI scheme. Both schemes have online registers where you can check a name. For an SEAI grant-funded job like insulation, a heat pump or solar, check the relevant scheme’s contractor-registration and approval requirements before work starts.
Public liability is the one people forget. If an uninsured lad puts a foot through your ceiling, or damages your neighbour's car with a skip, you could be left chasing the cost of putting it right. Ask to see the certificate, not just be told it exists.
If they trade as a limited company, you can search the CRO company register for the company’s status and filing information.
2. Get three written quotes
Not three phone numbers and a rough price over the phone. Three written quotes that clearly set out what is included.
A proper quote tells you what work is being done, what materials are covered, whether scaffolding, skip hire and waste removal are in the price, and what the VAT comes to. That last part matters, because many domestic construction services carry VAT at 13.5%, but exceptions apply. Ask the contractor to state the applicable VAT and the final total, rather than assuming one rate covers every job.
Be careful of the lowest quote. If one price is dramatically below the other two, something has usually been left out, and you will find out what halfway through the job when the work stops. On a typical domestic job in Cork, three honest quotes land reasonably close together. An outlier is information.
Be careful of cash only, no paperwork. An apparent saving can leave you with no clear proof of payment or agreed scope when a dispute comes up. Paying cash does not itself remove your consumer rights, but no paperwork makes things harder to prove. Get a receipt however you pay.
3. Look beyond the review score
A five-star rating means nothing on its own. What matters is whether the reviews behind it are real.
Signs they are genuine:
- They arrived steadily over months and years, not all in the same week
- Some mention specific jobs, specific areas of Cork, or the name of the person who did the work
- The reviewers have other reviews on their profiles, not just this one
- The owner replies to them, including the less glowing ones
- There are photos of actual jobs
Signs to be careful of:
- A burst of five-star reviews all posted within a few days
- Short, generic wording that could apply to any business anywhere
- Reviewer accounts with no photo, no history and a single review
- Nothing but perfect scores, with no middling ones at all
Read the three and four-star reviews first if there are any. A business that handles a mediocre review well is usually a business that will handle a problem on your job well.
Then just ask: "have you done a job like this nearby recently?" A good tradesman in Cork will name half a dozen in Douglas, Ballincollig, Carrigaline or wherever you are. Someone who cannot name one is telling you something.
4. Check their website and contact details
Quick to do, and it says a lot.
A business that has invested in a proper website can show signs that it intends to still be here next year, although a website alone is no guarantee. You should be able to find, in a couple of clicks: what they do, where they work, photos of jobs they have actually completed, a real phone number and address, and company details at the bottom of the page.
What you are looking for is traceability. If something goes wrong six months down the line, you want to know who you are dealing with and where to find them. A mobile number and a Facebook page is a lot harder to hold to anything.
It is not about the site being fancy. A simple, tidy, up to date site from a real Cork business beats a flashy one with no contact details and no recent work on it.
5. Agree payments and the job in writing
A deposit to cover materials can be normal. Be cautious about handing over half the job in advance without a clear explanation and written terms, especially if there are no bespoke materials to order.
On a domestic job, a sensible structure is a modest deposit up front, a stage payment partway through, and the balance when the work is finished and you are happy with it. Keep enough outstanding at the end that there is a real reason to come back and finish the snag list, because the snag list is where most jobs quietly die.
Never pay in full before the work is complete, no matter how good the discount sounds.
Put the agreement on paper
One page is enough. What is being done, what is not, the total price including VAT, the payment stages, a start and rough finish date, and who is responsible for waste removal and making good.
Put in writing what happens if something unexpected turns up, because on Irish houses something usually does: rotten joists under a bathroom floor, a chimney in worse shape than it looked, old wiring behind the plaster. Agreeing in advance that extra work has to be priced and approved by you before it starts is the single line that saves the most arguments.
Ask about a guarantee too, and get the length written down rather than mentioned.
A final word on doorstep offers
Every winter after a bad night of weather, vans appear around Cork offering to fix roofs, clear gutters, seal driveways or repoint chimneys, cash today, working on a house down the road.
Some are grand. Plenty are not. The pattern is always the same: urgency, a discount for deciding on the spot, cash only, no paperwork. Nobody reputable needs you to decide in the next ten minutes.
Take a number, close the door, and check them the same way you would check anyone else. If they will not leave a company name and a number, that is your answer.
Your hiring checklist
- Registered with Safe Electric, RGI or SEAI where it applies
- Public liability insurance seen, not just mentioned
- Three written quotes that set out what is included
- Reviews that look real, spread over time, with owner replies
- A professional website with real photos and real contact details
- A reasonable deposit only, balance on completion
- Scope, price, timeline and guarantee in writing
- Nothing agreed on the doorstep
Browse the Cork businesses on Trades Directory to start from a shortlist instead of a search box. Check each business’s credentials, insurance and suitability for your job before hiring.