“I been using Bidvine to advertise my service since the first lockdown, it has been a great platform to make clients and been hired a couple of times, customer service is great any queries just open a chat and they reply within 5 minites.”
“Overall, I think Bidvine offers a good service and I would recommend it as one way to find new customers. In particular, the customer service is excellent, with friendly, timely and detailed responses to any queries raised via the chat function. They are also open to suggestions on how to improve the functionality, and have recently made several positive changes to the service based on customer feedback.
I do agree with other business owner's comments that it is frustrating when you spend money bidding then people cancel the job and you are not routinely refunded, or customers read their bids then don't hire anyone. However, Bidvine are upfront about their terms and how their service operates, and they do offer incentives around the fees as well as a lot of support to try to maximise the chances of being hired, so I would say that it is worth the investment - as long as you take the time to read the t&c's and check it's the right platform for your business.”
“The short version....
I do not receive bidvine notifications on my phone. This means that I miss out on contacting leads early.
I have contacted two leads so far who were apparently wanting online guitar lessons. After I paid the fee to contact them I found out that they were after lessons in the local area to them and did not want lessons online. If this is the case then there is no guarantee that I won’t have a similar incident with anyone I pay to contact in the future.
When I spoke to someone on customer support about this they agreed to refund my money. In actual fact I received a credit on my account. This is not a refund as it ties me into using the money with them rather than reversing the charge that was made to me for the services that I was promised. A service, I might add I won’t be using in the future at all because there is no guarantee that I won’t be charged more money to view contacts that again, don’t need my services.
The long version...
I downloaded the Bidvine app to my phone and created my accountI had been watching what was happening with the Bidvine at the start of February. I had been impressed with the number of potential leads that it was generating and so I bit the bullet and decided to sign up to a paid account at the start of March. I was aware that I would have to get a couple of leads from Bidvine before I started seeing a return from the money I was putting in but was happy to give it chance and see how thing spanned out.
I worked for a good few hours to get a good profile including a bio, description, reviews from current clients and a range of videos and pictures of my work. I even paid the £10 fee to have Bidvine’s team write a bid and description for me. When I received this what they had produced was excellent and was very happy with the result. Basically I was ‘all in’ with Bidvine. I had subscribed to their £29 Bidvine Plus package and was looking forward to working hard with them to get me more leads.
Almost instantly after I subscribed my iPhone app stopped giving notifications of new leads and any other activity that was happening on my account. In addition I no longer received email notifications so was puzzled by this. As I was using their Bidmatch function (that automatically sends out a message from me) I was relying on notifications so I knew who had been contacted so I could follow up promptly with the lead. Instead I found out purely by chance that several leads had passed me by and that other pros had contacted the lead first which meant that I was potentially missing out on business.
Fortunately I had a support call booked with an adviser from Bidvine to talk over my account. They advised me to leave Bidmatch on over the weekend and if I missed any further leads to turn Bidmatch off and reply manually to enquiries. If no notifications were forthcoming then I was to contact them again. I had already tried this and also deleted and reinstalled the app on my phone but gave it a go anyway.
Over the weekend more leads were generated which I only saw on the Monday morning. I promptly called two of the leads.
So, I am a guitar teacher and because of the current lockdown in the UK due to Covid-19 I am only able to give lessons online using Skype or Zoom. When someone on Bidvine searches for services they can mark that they are wanting online or face to face services. Of the two leads that I contacted, one did not answer and the other was not wanting online lessons, despite saying on their profile that they did. This also happened with some I contacted for lessons in the previous week. Bear in mind that I had to pay to view the contact details for these leads IN ADDITION to the £29 monthly fee that I was paying. The second lead of the two was unaware that Bidvine was a national service and both thought that they were paying for the service in their local area.
So, what happened is that I had to pay a monthly subscription to access a service which then charged me more money to contact someone that did not want my service after apparently asking for it. The only person loosing in this situation is me from whatI can see.
I called Bidvine about this and spoke to a lady on the help team. I’m guessing that she was home working because I could hear children shouting in the background and whilst this is understandable given the current circumstances I felt that she was already annoyed before I even spoke to her. After explaining the situation she stated that Bidvine makes it clear to users that to be linked with pros who offer online only services that they must state that they want online services. After speaking to two individuals, both of whom did not seem aware that this was the case I was over £20 down and that perhaps Bidvine need to make this clearer. The lady did say that she would refund me the money spent on these but this turned out to be a credit on my account and not a refund of the money too me which was a bit cheeky as the money that I have already paid for a service that was not given is not back in my account. The call ended up with the lady abruptly hanging up on me after she had said that she would ‘refund’ me. I’d like to think that it was because she was working from home and was having a bad day looking after the children who were shouting in the background rather than simply being a rude person but I suppose I’ll never know.
The issues here is that I initially felt a bit fobbed off with the response to the notifications issue but when I then paid to view the contact details of two leads (who I had found out about late because the app wasn’t working properly) I was then to find out that the sort of services that I provided were not needed, despite the app telling me that it was what the customer wanted. I have never used Bidvine to search for services and so don’t know how obvious it is that a) Bidvine is a national organisation and b) when searching for classes given online there is the potential for pros to be contacted about online lessons when the person searching doesn’t want online lessons. I certainly felt that, when I spoke to the lady who ‘refunded’ me that it was very obvious what someone searching had to do. I’d very much like to hear what Bidvine users thought about this but they impression that I got was that Bidvine was not open to finding out and that the fault was very much with the customer.
As for where I stand I very much feel that the issues that I have with the service have fallen on deaf ears because of the lack of acknowledgement of the problem with users submitting requests for services that they don’t need and then again for claiming to refund the money that I had spent with them on contacting leads that I had no chance of turning into customers only for the money to be returned to me as a credit.
As of only one week with Bidvine I am canceling my account with them. I’d advise anyone thinking about joining them to carefully consider what’s happened to me. As it stands at the moment there is literally no point in me paying to view the lead’s contact details when there is no guarantee that the person who I’ll be contacting wants my services, and especially when I’m paying £29 a month for the rest of the services that are not needed if the aforementioned leads don’t actually looking for my services.”
“It seems to work well for the customers but not the trade, being charged £4-£5 to bid on a job that will only take an hour or two just is not economic sense! Eats heavily into any profits on small jobs. With the latest changes you give up your bid money before you've even written a message to the potential client. Seems like a money cash-cow for Bidvine owners! If a client 'cancels' their request, I dont get my bid back because apparently the 'client' has my details and might contact me - Maybe Bidvine should review this process, it's grossly unfair on the trades!”
“Very clear and easy to use. You will find loads of jobs and there are several options available on how to bid on them. Like any platform the more jobs you complete the better your profile will look. Found it better and easier to sign up to than competitors.”
“Because they make their money from the traders not the public, they don't care about - and do not check - the traders. It is pot luck if the traders are good, bad or total rip-off cowboys. And, in my experience, if anything goes wrong and you are ripped-off, it is your problem not theirs. They will keep the cowboy traders on their books because that is how their financial stream works.”
“I personally haven't had much luck in getting the jobs but that is due to my profile not being looked after as much as it should, so that's all on me. The customer service is another level. I had never experienced a company being that helpful. They also called me from time to time to make sure I am doing ok and if there is anything that they can help me with in regards to the profile and perhaps getting more clients. Worth using the app, I just need to pay more attention to my business profile.”
“I have been working with Bidvine for over a year now as a professional. I find their customer service outstanding, you get fast response and you can feel that whoever is at the other end genuinely wants to help. The cost is very reasonable for therapy, counselling and couples counselling but way too excessive for life coaching. Compare to Bark.com who I would rate 2*, Bidvine is 5* due to the human quality we see disappearing in the companies more and more.”
“Once you get a match things are good, however the cost of bids relative to no. times hired isn’t great, can often end up losing money. App interface isn’t great but does a job. Customer service is very informative and quick!”
