TrustMark Blog

With the weather finally brightening up it’s also time to brighten up your home. But if you find yourself always reaching for those neutral tones, afraid to venture into the depths of the bolder colour section, ask yourself what you have to lose from introducing a bit of colour. Whether it’s a couple of cushions on the sofa, or a complete room makeover, using this summer as prime opportunity to inject some life inside your home as well as outside will do you more good than you think

Back in September last year, I wrote a blog about the new Consumer Rights Act legislation that came into force on 1 October 2015. I said back then that the new law should be clearer and easier to understand, meaning that consumers can buy goods and services with confidence and businesses, including TrustMark, can sell them with confidence too. So what exactly has happened over the last six months and has the new legislation made any difference?

April showers are almost over and the bank holiday weekend has arrived! Bank holidays are always prime time for homeowners to try out some dab hand DIY, and with the longer weekend, it’s a perfect opportunity to crack on with those jobs you never seem to get round to.

What is it that defines the first impression we give to other people? The way we speak, the car we drive, the job we have or the clothes we wear? Actually, how about our front door? According to Karen Haller who is an applied colour psychologist (which must be an interesting job), the colour of our front door is traditionally the first impression that the outside world gets about us.

You may have noticed that when hiring someone to fix a broken boiler or install some new lighting, more often than not it’s a male tradesperson coming to do work in your home. You might be a bit surprised to find a woman at the door with a tool box or a hard hat! Typically, construction is one of the most male-dominated careers, but it is slowly becoming less gender-specific.

A report released a couple of weeks ago by the Energy and Climate Change Committee has outlined how the Government must do more to reduce consumer gas and electricity bills by improving the energy efficiency of new and existing homes. Looking back, there were lots of resources put into the flagship Green Deal initiative but this has now fallen by the way side for a variety of reasons.

Japanese knotweed (Fallopia japonica) was first introduced into Britain in the 1800’s. It was sold primarily as an ornamental plant, and was even included in the Botanical Gardens at Kew. Today the plant is viewed very differently. Following its spread into the wild, it is classed as a pest species under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981.

Finding a tradesperson that you can trust to carry out repair and maintenance work on your property can be a daunting prospect and is sometimes hard to know where to start. For me, the best starting point is to have someone recommended to you by a relative, friend or neighbour who has had a similar job carried out on his or her property. You know that the tradesperson is reliable and has carried out a good job. This is exactly how I found someone last year to paint the outside of my house and I was very satisfied with the work.

Tradespeople are now gaining hundreds or thousands of pounds extra (on average) from jobs they undertake simply by using an escrow payment service

In my job as a Trading Standards Officer, I have to be a jack-of-all-trades to deal with the enormous variety of work that comes my way. One minute I am dealing with the sale of unsafe products that can potentially cause harm to consumers. The next minute, information comes in from colleagues in another part of the UK that one of my local traders is operating a website that is advertising goods that don’t exist.