Buy With Confidence Directory

Did you know Hampshire Trading Standards can provide you with details of reliable local tradesmen and women to carry out work around your home and garden?

The Buy With Confidence scheme brings together a list of gardeners, plumbers, builders and many other types of business from all over Hampshire, which have been individually checked for trustworthiness and compliance with consumer protection laws. Trading Standards Officers visit and vet every applicant and only if they pass stringent checks are they accepted onto the scheme and can they display the Buy With Confidence logo.

And it doesn’t stop there, once a business becomes a member of the scheme they are constantly monitored by the Trading Standards Service to make sure that their standards aren’t slipping. Feedback is invited from their customers and re-visits are carried out.

You can Buy With Confidence knowing that each company has signed up to the standards of customer service set out in the scheme rules.

While it is never possible to ensure that nothing will ever go wrong, if you have a problem with a member of the scheme they are required to deal with any complaints in a fair and equitable manner. If the complaint cannot be resolved, the Trading Standards Service will attempt to assist in reaching a solution.

The scheme was launched in 1999 by Hampshire County Council’s Trading Standards Service and the website now details hundreds of businesses in over 150 trade categories. It has proved so successful that all 19 Trading Standards Authorities in the South East have agreed it’s an ideal way to combat the problem of rogue traders. East and West Sussex, Surrey, Southampton and the Isle of Wight have already adopted the scheme with many others set to follow in the next few months.

You can give us your views on how member businesses are performing, or if you have had good service from a business not on our scheme why not recommend them to us for membership.

To get details of firms you can trust visit the Council’s interactive consumer website at www.buywithconfidence.gov.uk or call 08454 04 05 06. Since 1st May 2007 you are now able to access the contact details for many of our members by ordering your free copy of our first Buy With Confidence Directory. To request your copy of this full colour, A5 booklet, call us now on 08454 04 05 06 or email buy.with.confidence@hants.gov.uk