TradeMost South Africans hire a tradie the same way: someone posts a name in the neighbourhood WhatsApp group, three people reply with a thumbs-up, and a stranger arrives at your gate with a bakkie and a smile.
Sometimes that works out beautifully. Sometimes you end up with an unearthed distribution board, a geyser installed without a drip tray, and no way to prove who did it.
This is the checklist to run before anyone starts. It takes about twenty minutes. It is the cheapest insurance you will ever buy.
The five checks
- Are they a real, registered business? (CIPC)
- Do they hold the statutory credential for the work? (CoC, PIRB, SAQCC Gas)
- Are they insured? (public liability)
- Is the scope and price in writing?
- Are you paying sensibly? (deposits, staged payments, the right bank account)
Run them in that order. Check one takes two minutes and eliminates a surprising number of people.
1. Are they a real business? (CIPC)
CIPC — the Companies and Intellectual Property Commission — is the national register of companies. Any legitimate contractor operating as a company or close corporation is on it.
How to check: search the company name or registration number on CIPC’s eServices search, or through BizPortal. You are looking for three things:
- The business name matches the name on the quote and the bank account.
- The registration number matches the name.
- The company status is active, not deregistered or in the process of deregistration.
If someone gives you a registration number and it pulls up a different business — or nothing at all — you have learnt everything you need to know for free.
Be honest about what this proves. A CIPC registration means the business legally exists. It does not mean they are competent, insured, or qualified. Registering a company in South Africa is cheap and easy, which is the point: not being registered is a serious red flag, but being registered is a floor, not a ceiling.
Also note that a sole trader — a one-man operation trading in his own name — is not required to be CIPC-registered. That is not automatically dishonest. But it does mean the other four checks carry more weight, and that you have less to sue if things go wrong.
2. Do they hold the statutory credential?
This is the check that almost nobody does, and it is the one that matters most — because for certain trades, the law does not care how good the work looks. It cares who signed for it.
Electricians — a Certificate of Compliance
Only a “registered person” may issue an electrical CoC. The regulation is one line: “No person other than a registered person may issue a certificate of compliance” (regulation 9(1), Electrical Installation Regulations, 2009). A registered person is registered with the Department of Employment and Labour as a single-phase electrical tester, installation electrician, or master installation electrician — what people call a wireman’s licence. The business must separately be a registered electrical contractor.
Ask to see: the registration card/certificate for the registered person, and the contractor registration. Cross-check the business against the ECA (SA) member search or the ECB database — useful confirmations, though the Department of Employment and Labour registration is the legal requirement, and the Department does not currently offer a slick public lookup.
Full detail: Electrical CoC explained.
Plumbers — PIRB
The Plumbing Industry Registration Board (PIRB) is the professional body that licenses plumbers. PIRB says a Certificate of Compliance must be issued on all plumbing work undertaken by a licensed plumber, including geysers, solar water installations and heat pumps.
Helpfully, PIRB gives homeowners two public tools that most people have never heard of:
- Verify Plumber — check that a plumbing company has PIRB-registered plumbers who can issue a CoC.
- Verify CoC — check whether a certificate you were handed was actually issued and logged with PIRB.
That second one is quietly brilliant. A plumbing certificate that cannot be verified against PIRB’s log is a piece of paper.
Full detail: What a plumber costs, and what PIRB actually means.
Gas installers — SAQCC Gas
Gas installations fall under the Pressure Equipment Regulations, and only a registered, authorised practitioner may install, maintain or repair them. SAQCC Gas is mandated by the Department of Employment and Labour to register gas practitioners, and a gas installation must have a Certificate of Compliance. Ask for the practitioner’s SAQCC Gas registration.
Everything else
Painters, tilers, carpenters, paving, general builders — there is no statutory certificate in most of these trades. Anyone can say they are a painter. That is not a scandal; it just means that for these jobs, checks 1, 3, 4 and 5 are doing all the work, and references and photographs of previous jobs matter more.
Beware anyone who invents authority. If a tradie waves a “certificate” from a body you have never heard of, ask which law requires it. For electrical, plumbing and gas there is a clear answer. For most other trades, there isn’t — and a certificate from the “National Institute of Approved Painters” means precisely nothing.
3. Are they insured?
Public-liability insurance covers you if they damage your property or injure someone while working. Without it, if a contractor floods your neighbour’s flat or drops a geyser through your ceiling, your recovery depends entirely on whether that one person happens to have money.
Ask for: the policy schedule or certificate of insurance — not a verbal assurance. Check:
- The insured name matches the business you are hiring.
- The policy is current (check the period of cover).
- The cover amount is sane relative to the job. Cover that stops at R100,000 is not much comfort on a full bathroom renovation in a sectional-title block.
An established contractor will produce this in about four minutes, because clients ask for it all the time. Hesitation here is informative.
4. Get it in writing
Almost every “tradie horror story” is really a scope dispute that nobody wrote down.
Your written quote should say:
- Exactly what is being done — and, just as importantly, what is not. (“Supply and install 150L geyser, drip tray, vacuum breakers; excludes repair to ceiling damage from previous leak.”)
- The price, and whether it is VAT-inclusive. If they charge VAT they must be VAT-registered — a business only has to register once its taxable supplies exceed R2.3 million in any 12-month period (this threshold rose from R1 million on 1 April 2026, per SARS), so many small tradies legitimately do not charge VAT at all. Someone adding 15% “VAT” without a VAT number is not charging you VAT; they are charging you 15%.
- What happens if it costs more. The single most valuable sentence in any quote: “No additional work above [an amount you choose] without my written approval.” Write it in yourself if it isn’t there.
- Materials — who buys them, what grade, and whether they are in the price.
- Timeline, and what happens if it slips.
- The certificate, if the work is certifiable. State that the CoC / PIRB certificate is included and will be handed over on completion.
Then keep everything. The quote, the invoice, the certificate, the WhatsApp messages. On TradeWhizz, that written agreement is part of how a job runs — see how it works.
5. Pay sensibly
There is no legal cap on deposits in South Africa, so this is about judgement.
- A materials deposit is normal on a substantial job. Nobody should have to float R40,000 of copper pipe for you.
- Paying the whole job up front is not normal. Ever.
- Stage payments against completed milestones are the professional norm on bigger work: deposit → first milestone → completion. The final payment should fall due after you have inspected the work and received the certificate.
- Pay the business account, and check the account name matches the registered business. A request to pay a personal account, or “my wife’s account”, or cash-only, removes your paper trail and often means the business you checked on CIPC is not really the business you are dealing with.
- Be wary of the escalating deposit. “Just R5,000 more for materials, then we start Monday” — repeated — is the most common way people are separated from money in this trade.
Your rights when it goes wrong
Two sections of the Consumer Protection Act 68 of 2008 are worth knowing by name, because saying them out loud changes conversations.
Section 54 — the right to quality service. You are entitled to “the performance of the services in a manner and quality that persons are generally entitled to expect”, delivered on time, with your property returned in at least as good a condition as you handed it over. If the supplier fails, s54(2) lets you require them to remedy the defect or refund a reasonable portion of the price, having regard to how badly it failed.
Section 57 — the warranty on repairs. “A service provider warrants every new or reconditioned part installed during any repair or maintenance work, and the labour required to install it, for a period of three months after the date of installation or such longer period as the supplier may specify in writing.” That warranty is void if you misused or abused the part, and it does not cover ordinary wear and tear — but otherwise it is automatic. You do not have to negotiate for it.
If the dispute is with an insurer rather than the tradie — a rejected geyser or fire claim, say — the National Financial Ombud Scheme (NFO) handles short-term insurance complaints free of charge.
Red flags — the honest list
- No written quote. Or a quote that is one line and one number.
- Cash only, no invoice. No paper, no warranty, no comeback.
- A large deposit before any work, especially to a personal account.
- “I’ll get you a CoC” from someone who is not a registered person — or the offer of a certificate without an inspection. Under regulation 9(3) an electrician who finds a defect is required to refuse to certify until it is fixed. So a no-inspection certificate is not a bargain; it is a forgery-in-spirit that will fail you at exactly the wrong moment.
- Pressure and urgency. “This price is only for today.” Real tradies have a diary.
- A quote dramatically below everyone else’s. Usually it excludes something you will pay for later, with less leverage.
- Vagueness about the business. No registration number, no fixed address, no company name on the bakkie, a mobile number that goes to voicemail.
- Reluctance to show insurance or registration. A professional is asked this weekly and is unbothered by it.
- They want to start immediately. Good tradies are booked. Someone free this afternoon is not automatically bad — but combined with anything else on this list, it should sharpen your attention.
The short version
Twenty minutes: CIPC search → ask for the credential → ask for the insurance schedule → get it in writing → pay in stages to the business account.
That’s it. It is not complicated — it is just nobody does it, which is precisely why the bad operators keep working.
TradeWhizz exists to do these checks so you don’t have to: identity, CIPC-registered business, the real statutory credential (a CoC under SANS 10142-1 for electricians, PIRB registration for plumbers), and public-liability cover. Here’s exactly what we check and what a badge means.
Browse trades or describe your job and we’ll work out who you actually need.
Honest note: TradeWhizz is in early access and is still onboarding professionals, so listings you see may be samples while real tradies are verified and added. We will tell you what we have checked and nothing more — a badge that means everything means nothing. This page is general information, not legal advice; where we state the law we give you the section number so you can check it yourself.
