How we rank trades

Who is shown

• Only trades who signed up for a paid plan with us (a trades plan or our receptionist) and chose to be listed. We never copy businesses from other websites or directories.
• Only trades who do the work you searched for and cover your postcode district.
• A trade drops out of the list when its plan ends.

The order

1. Distance: how far the trade’s base is from your postcode, in whole miles, nearest first.
2. Rating: at the same distance, the higher average star rating comes first. Ratings come only from reviews of jobs we matched. Trades with no reviews come after those with reviews.
3. Number of reviews: then more reviews first.
4. Who joined first, if everything else is equal.

On a town’s page, distance is measured from that town’s centre. A trade’s page covers the whole UK, so there it is rating first, then the number of reviews, then who joined first.

What never changes the order

• Which plan a trade pays for, or how much it spends with us.
• Buying extra credits.
• Using our AI receptionist, or the “Answers calls 24/7 with Linesteward” badge.

There are no sponsored or paid places. If we ever sell them, they will be labelled “Sponsored” and this page will say how they work.

Badges

“Answers calls 24/7 with Linesteward” means the trade’s receptionist line with us is live, so a call is answered when they can’t pick up. It says nothing about the quality of their work. We don’t show other badges yet, such as trade bodies or registers, because we don’t check them yet.

Which trades see a job

A job goes to every listed trade on a trades plan who does that work and covers its postcode district. The first 3 who choose to take it get the homeowner’s details; then the job closes. A job also stops taking trades after 30 days, or when the homeowner closes it.

Quote requests

On a trade’s own page you can ask that trade, and only that trade, for a quote, if it has switched quote requests on. It goes to no other trade, and it doesn’t change the order anywhere.

Job line calls

When someone rings our Job line, we call only trades who switched the Job line on, do that work, cover the postcode district, are outside their quiet hours and under their calls for the day. We ring the trade’s own phone, confirmed by a texted code, never its AI receptionist. Among them:

1. Distance: nearest first, in whole miles.
2. Taking turns: at the same distance, the trade we offered a job to least recently comes first, so calls go round fairly.
3. Who joined first, if everything else is equal.

We ring at most 3 trades at a time. Each one who takes the call talks to the customer in turn. Which plan a trade pays for never moves it up this order. A trade with no credits left isn’t rung (a call it accepts costs 1 credit). Prices are the trades’ own; the customer chooses.

Questions

Email support@linesteward.com.