The three models, and how the money moves
Almost every intermediary between you and a leak engineer is one of three shapes. Knowing which one you are dealing with tells you more about the quote than anything on the website.
| Model | Who pays, and for what | What arrives at your door |
|---|
| Subscription directory | Member firms pay a recurring fee to be listed and to display their record | The listed firm, with a fixed annual cost to recover across all its work |
| Pay-per-lead marketplace | Member firms pay a fee for each enquiry passed to them, whether or not it becomes a job | Often several firms contacting you about the same leak, each having paid for your details |
| Dispatch or booking brand | You pay the brand; the brand pays an engineer, often self-employed, a share | An engineer working to the brand's rate card, who may not be employed by it |
None of these is a scam, and all three are ordinary ways to run a business. Directories in particular do something genuinely useful: they aggregate a verifiable track record in one place, which a brand-new website cannot. The point is only that each model puts a cost between you and the engineer, and that cost is paid out of completed jobs.
What a lead fee actually is
A lead fee is a charge for an introduction. You fill in a form describing a leak in SW11. That description, with your contact details, is sold to firms who work in that postcode. The fee is charged when the details are passed on. It is not refunded if you do not answer the phone, if you have already fixed it, if you decide to wait, or if you book someone else.
On a marketplace that passes one enquiry to several firms, the same enquiry generates several fees. Only one of those firms can win the work, so that firm's price has to carry the cost of the introduction it won and, over time, the introductions it lost. This is the same arithmetic as paid search, in a different wrapper: you pay for attempts, and you recover it from successes.
For what that arithmetic looks like when the attempts are clicks rather than leads, we have published the measured London click prices and the sums.
The five practical differences
1. Who you are actually talking to
On a direct call you are talking to the firm that will attend, usually to someone who can tell you what the engineer will do when they get there. Through an intermediary, the first voice is frequently a call handler or a matching system. Ask early and plainly: are you the company that will send the engineer?
2. How many people ring you back
Marketplaces distribute. If you submit a form and then receive four calls in twenty minutes, that is the model working exactly as designed, not a leak in your data. It is also a genuine advantage if you want competing quotes, and a genuine nuisance if you have water coming through a ceiling and want one person to turn up.
3. What the rate covers
An intermediary's rate card is set centrally and often nationally. A local firm quoting you directly can tell you what its own rate includes and excludes. This is where most disputes start, so it is worth being blunt about it: ask what is charged per hour, whether the first hour is charged differently, and what happens to the price if the leak is not found.
4. Who carries the liability if it goes wrong
If the engineer who attends is a subcontractor of a dispatch brand, it matters whose insurance responds, who you complain to, and who you would have a contract with. Under the Consumer Rights Act 2015, a service must be performed with reasonable care and skill, and where no price was fixed you must pay a reasonable price and no more. Those rights attach to whoever contracted with you, which is why knowing who that is matters before anyone starts work.
5. What happens to the leak after it is found
The commonest gap in an intermediary booking is scope. A detection engineer finds the leak and leaves. You then need a plumber to repair it and a plasterer or floor layer to make good. That can be three separate bookings, and only the first of them was quoted. Our own answer to that is repair and reinstatement in-house, which is the whole reason this firm exists in the shape it does.
When a directory or marketplace is the better route
We would rather say this plainly than pretend otherwise:
- When you want several quotes on a non-urgent job. A marketplace is quicker at generating three prices than ringing three firms yourself.
- When you have no idea who is reputable in your area. A directory with a verified record and a dispute process is a reasonable filter, particularly outside central London.
- When a directory's guarantee or vetting is worth something to you. Some run genuine complaint resolution. If that is what you are buying, buy it deliberately.
- Out of hours, when nobody direct is answering. A dispatch brand with a 24-hour desk may simply be the only thing that picks up at three in the morning.
What calling direct gets you, and what it does not
It gets you a shorter chain: one conversation, one contract, one set of liability, and no introduction fee sitting inside the price. It does not get you vetting. Nobody has checked the firm on your behalf, so you have to do the checking. That means asking for the trading name and company number, confirming public liability insurance, asking whether the engineer attending is employed or subcontracted, and asking for the rate in writing before anyone travels.
For a water supply or plumbing job you can check a firm's approved status independently through WaterSafe, which lists plumbers approved under the water regulations. Any gas work has to be done by a Gas Safe registered engineer, and that register is searchable.
Our own position, so you can weigh it: we are a direct firm. You reach us through our contact page, we quote £150 per hour agreed before we attend, the rate does not rise afterwards although the total depends on the hours the job takes, and if we do not find the leak you do not pay for the time we spent looking. That is set out in full on our pricing page. We are not on a marketplace and we are not buying your details, which is a cost we do not have and therefore a cost you are not paying. It also means nobody has vetted us for you, which is exactly why we published the questions to ask, including the awkward ones.
