Most home services platforms are vague about who turns up, when, and to what standard. Tickover is not. Three numbers, a workmanship guarantee, and a polite consequence if a tradesperson lets a homeowner down.
No small print, no asterisks. If a Tickover trade misses one of these, you will see it in the app and we will route you to someone who will not.
8hrs / week
Every Tickover tradesperson keeps at least eight hours per week open for Tickover jobs. Those hours are visible to homeowners as bookable slots, so a job can be confirmed without three days of back-and-forth.
Eight hours is the floor. Most active trades keep 15 to 20.
4working hrs
When a homeowner sends a job, the assigned tradesperson has four working hours to acknowledge or quote. Miss it and the lead releases automatically to the next trade in the patch. Working hours are 8am to 6pm, Mon to Sat.
Out of hours requests count from 8am the next working day.
7days max
For repairs, the work is finished within seven days of the homeowner accepting the quote. Routine maintenance (boiler service, gutters, lawn) lands on the date you both agreed when booking. No drift, no rescheduling roulette.
Genuinely complex repairs can extend the window with the homeowner's written consent in-app.
Most homeowner complaints are not about price or skill. They are about turning up late, disappearing mid-job, or leaving a kitchen worse than they found it. So those are standards too.
On the day of the visit, the tradesperson arrives within a 30-minute window of the agreed slot. Running late triggers an automatic SMS and a fresh ETA. No cold no-shows.
Jobs are quoted up front with a single fixed figure. If something genuinely changes once the job starts, the homeowner approves the new price in-app before the trade carries on.
Before, during, and after photos are filed against the job record. The homeowner sees them, the tradesperson keeps them, and they travel with the property forever.
Dust sheets where they belong, packaging out, surfaces wiped, the boiler cupboard left as it was found. The job is not done until the kitchen is.
Once a job is booked, in-app messages are replied to inside three working hours. The homeowner is never left wondering whether the visit is still on.
Every job comes with a 12-month workmanship guarantee, backed by Tickover. Anything that fails as a result of the work is put right at no cost to the homeowner.
Things go wrong. A van breaks down, a child gets sick, a part is on back order. Our job is to make sure the homeowner is not the one carrying that cost. The tradesperson keeps their reputation. The homeowner keeps their day.
01
Missed once
An automated nudge to the tradesperson. The lead releases to the next trade. The homeowner sees a clear in-app explanation. No fuss.
02
Missed twice in a quarter
A real human from the Tickover team gets in touch. Usually it is a logistics fix, a holiday clash, or a notification setting. We sort it.
03
Pattern of misses
The patch slot is paused. The trade keeps their record but does not receive new leads until standards are back on track. Homeowners with open jobs are reassigned.
We ask trades to hold a high bar. In return, Tickover protects the things that make a tradesperson’s week actually work: a steady diary, real leads, fair fees, and cover for the days when life gets in the way.
Recurring annual services book themselves a year ahead. You can see February's gas safety checks in May, plan around them, and stop wondering where next month's work is coming from.
We limit how many tradespeople in each category can subscribe to a postcode area. Hitting our standards keeps your slot. You are not racing five other plumbers to be first to the phone.
Every lead arrives with a postcode, a boiler model, photos, and the homeowner's preferred dates. No tyre-kickers, no 'just getting some quotes' wastes of an evening.
Hit standards consistently and your Tickover record speaks for itself: completed jobs, photos, mutual reviews, on-time rate. It travels with you, on and off the platform.
No commission on the work itself. No surprise success fees. Stripe handles payment in three days. The lead fee is deducted automatically and shown on every payout.
Get the flu, break a tooth, run over your foreman? Mark yourself unavailable in the app and we route your standing jobs to another verified trade in the patch, no penalty, no awkward homeowner call.
They form part of the Tickover Trade Agreement that every approved tradesperson signs. The workmanship guarantee is backed by Tickover for the full 12 months on every completed job.
Monday to Saturday, 8am to 6pm UK time. Bank holidays do not count toward response or completion windows. Out-of-hours emergencies (no heating in winter, water ingress, unsafe gas) follow our separate emergency response standard.
If the homeowner cancels the visit, asks to reschedule, or is not at home for the agreed slot, the seven-day clock pauses. The trade is never penalised for delays caused on the homeowner side.
Yes. Mark yourself unavailable in the app for up to four weeks a year without affecting your patch slot. Standing jobs already booked are routed to another verified trade in the patch.
Things like sourcing a discontinued part, structural follow-on work, or a third-party (gas board, water utility) being on the critical path. The trade explains the reason in-app and the homeowner approves a new date before the clock extends.
The homeowner reports the issue in-app. We contact the original tradesperson first. If they cannot or will not put it right within seven days, Tickover sends a different verified trade and covers the bill. No homeowner pays twice.
For homeowners, that means a tradesperson who turns up. For trades, it means a diary that fills itself and a fee structure you can read in twenty seconds.