For electricians
Will your customer actually pay you? Check them before you pull a single cable
You've been asked to do a full rewire, a board change, or a commercial fit-out. Materials on your card, days of your time, all on the promise of getting paid at the end. But you don't really know the customer, and you've heard the stories: job done, invoice sent, then nothing but silence and a chased phone that goes to voicemail.
Free verdict / no card / they are never told you looked
Why it happens
Electricians get burned because the money almost always comes at the end. You lay out for cable, consumer units, accessories and labour, then wait on a final invoice that the customer sits on, disputes, or never pays. On bigger jobs it's the main contractor that folds, taking your retention and your last few weeks of work down with them, and you're just another name on a long list of unsecured creditors. Then there's the deposit merchant: happy to hand over money up front to look legit, right before the whole thing quietly disappears. None of this shows up when you shake hands on the drive. It shows up on the record, if you know where to look.
How to check a customer before you start the job
- Put their company name in and read the traffic-light verdict. TRADE means the record looks sound, CAUTION means something's off, AVOID means walk away or get paid up front.
- Check whether they're heading for trouble: any winding-up or insolvency notices in The Gazette, and whether their accounts are overdue at Companies House. Late accounts and legal notices are how a firm about to fold looks from the outside.
- Look at the directors, not just the company. If the person behind it has folded companies before and started fresh ones, that's the phoenix pattern, and it means you could be the next creditor left holding an unpaid invoice.
- Decide your terms before you quote. If it's CAUTION or AVOID, ask for a deposit, stage payments, or payment on completion before you're too deep in materials and hours to walk away.
Check a company free right now and get the verdict before you commit a day's work.
Check a company →Questions electricians ask
Can I check a customer before I even quote?
Yes, and you should. Run the check before you price the job, not after you've ordered the cable. The free verdict takes seconds and tells you straight away whether this is a firm you'd want to carry on credit. If it comes back CAUTION or AVOID, you can quote for a deposit or payment on completion instead of finding out the hard way.
What if they're a sole trader, not a limited company?
A lot of domestic customers are just individuals, and there's no Companies House record for a private person, so there's less to check. The tool comes into its own when you're working for a limited company or a main contractor, which is exactly where the bigger money and the bigger risk sits. For sole traders, protect yourself the old-fashioned way: a deposit, staged payments, and getting the final bit before you hand over the certificate.
Will the customer know I've checked them?
No. The information comes from public records at Companies House, The Gazette and insolvency data. You're just reading what's already out there. The customer gets no notification and no way of knowing you looked, so you can check quietly before you ever pick up the phone to them.
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