I believe the company 118Local is using a very underhand method to get custom or maybe the whole business is just a scam I am not sure but here is what happened to me



Heres how it works...

You are offered a free trial for a week with a listing on their site and all looks and sounds good.

You then receive a couple of work enquiries who go out their way to mention that they got your name from 118local but there will be an excuse involved to stop you actually viewing the work mine was .. we are going on holiday for two weeks and the other was they were very interested in having the work done but would phone you back.


The free trial ends and 118local call to sign you up.

It all seems great

Dont laugh but I went through with it!

Then they tried to take £480 off my card instead of £100

My details did appear in full on their site and looked good.

But my suspicious mind wouldnt let up.

I done what I should have done in the first place and called a few of the trades listed on the site the first thing I noticed was no matter what post code entered it was always the same 10 people listed I live in Braintree Essex and put the post code in for Glasgow and still got the same painters.

I then called 3 different tradesmen advertised on the 118Local site, one didn't know he was on the site the other two had had a free trial months ago and didnt realise they were on the site but the complete confirmation of the scam in my mind was this.

One person had the exact same call from the same Indian man as myself almost word for word claiming to want alot of work doing but ultimately had the same excuse so you couldnt visit the property to quote!

I have confronted 118local about this and hopefully got my money back the call its self was farcical and wouldve made a good episode on the tv show scam busters

Anyway my bank has advised me to cancel my credit cards and I am now just waiting to see if i get any identity fraud from this episode, hopefully its just a company using very underhand techniques to get custom.

ps: I have since called all free listings in my area, the free listings show at the bottom of the page and warned them of this scam some of the tradies I spoke to had already received the same bogus calls as myself even using the same street address but no house number and if you try to call the mobile you received the call from it always goes to a full message bank!