Welcome to Service Central's Winter Edition eNewsletter
Let's rug up for winter and get some great home renovation ideas! Turn your outdoor area into a wintery delight or take advantage of the $1600 insulation grant and improve your home's energy efficiency. This edition we talk about renovating in Winter and some changes that have been happening around Service Central's website. In addition to this, Service Central has been included in BRW's top 100 for the second time in a row!
Keep warm,
The Service Central team.
Renovation Prices Lowest in Winter
Winter is a great time to take advantage of cheaper home renovation prices.
Tradespeople are often overloaded with job requests in spring and summer as homeowners rush to complete their renovations before Christmas and the summer holidays. As a result, overworked tradespeople can be difficult to find or more expensive leading up to the summer period. Winter is a different story.
Away from the summer peak season, it can be a lot easier to find tradespeople. In winter, traditionally their workload declines and their downtime increases. This means that in winter you can find tradespeople more receptive to negotiations and more competitive with their prices.
So look around, have a good think about what jobs need doing around your home. Is it a new bathroom, finally upgrading that old kitchen of yours, or is it time to knock down that wall and open up your home? Whatever your project of choice, now is the time to list a job at www.servicecentral.com.au.
Service Central wins BRW Award two years in a row
For the second year straight BRW has named Service Central in its Fast Starters List.
The BRW Fast Starters Award lists new companies that have had rocketing success. It's a list of businesses that have taken a concept to market and seen immediate success and phenomenal growth. Service Central fits that mould to a T, because in a few short years truly we've revolutionised the way people find services in Australia.
Keep a keen eye out for BRW's Fast Starters issue at your news stand. Read the Article
Free Home Insulation and Hot Water System Discounts thanks to Government Rebates
As part of Kevin Rudd's economic stimulus package an amazing $3.9 billion dollars has been made available to help you make your home more environmentally friendly. As a result you can now insulate your home for free, or install a solar hot water system with a big discount.
Free home insulation is made possible thanks to a $1,600 government home insulation rebate. The government has registered insulation installers around the country who can now help you claim this home insulation rebate for your home. As these insulation installers have kept their costs below $1,600, in many cases they are able to supply you with free home insulation. Receiving this free insulation is extremely easy, simply list a job request with Service Central and insulation installers will call you to make all of the arrangements.
A $1,600 rebate is also available for the replacement of your existing electric hot water system with an eligible solar hot water system. Once again finding a provider that can help you claim this rebate is easy. Simply list a job request with Service Central for a new solar hot water system with Service Central
This is the largest home energy efficiency measure to be undertaken in Australia. It is stimulating the economy and will support thousands of jobs in manufacturing, distribution and installation in the midst of an economic downturn.
To insulate your home or switch to solar, post a job at www.servicecentral.com.au and we'll find you a provider!
The Australian government with give you either the insulation grant or the solar hot water grant. For more information on the initiative, see www.environment.gov.au/energyefficiency/
Remember that you can also apply for credit through Finance4Trades to cover the cost of doing this while you wait for the rebate to come through!
Winter-wise your outdoor living area
What do to with your "outdoor room" in the middle of winter?
Thanks to inspirational shows such as Jamie Duries Backyard Blitz there has been an explosion of new outdoor living spaces throughout Australia. The outdoor living spaces look great and are a pleasure to lounge around in the summers sun. However, as the rain clouds of winter descend upon us the question arises as to what to do with your outdoor living area. The solution: Enclose it over winter.
In fact, we are seeing a spate of homeowners doing exactly that. Over recent months as the temperatures have dropped jobs have started to come through for things such as:
Enclosing the patio or pergola completely.
Building a sun room.
Installing gas heaters in the outdoor living area (a great idea for those chilly summer evenings as well).
Service Central has just launched a brand new Jobs Board. The Jobs Board has been designed to dramatically increase our capacity as Service Central continues to grow rapidly around Australia. For businesses, the new jobs board is a fantastic way to find new work. For consumers, it increases the number of businesses that see your job requests and compete for the jobs you list. Plus the jobs board has tonnes of new features.
The new Jobs Board provides a full list of of the jobs on Service Central. You can browse through the complete Jobs Board switching from category to category and viewing the jobs that are of interest.
The new Jobs Board provides a lot of transparency into the status of each job request, showing whether each job is - 'Available Now', 'Notifying Providers' or 'Job Closed'.
'Notifying Providers' means that a job opportunity is being sent to premium providers that are registered for that category and region via SMS or Email.
'Available Now' means that the job opportunity is available for other providers to accept. So, for example, if 'Jo' in Reservoir is too busy to pick up the job, 'Steven' in Moonee Ponds can jump in to help.
'Job Closed' means that Service Central has found the customer as many providers as they requested.
In addition to being able to view each job on the Jobs Board, the Service Central IT team have built in a number of great new features, including:
RSS Feeds that provide a regularly updated list of jobs which can be accessed by your web browser without even going to www.servicecentral.com.au
'Email This To A Friend' which helps you easily email a job listed with Service Central to a friend. For instance, you might want to send your job to your partner, or send it to a tradesperson you've used in the past. Already this function has been very popular for emailing around amusing jobs as well as letting friends know about jobs that they might be interested in doing.
'Post Similar Job' helps you to speed up the job posting process and makes it easier. You can now see how similar your needs are to other people's, and that we've found great providers for them!
Each provider must still be appropriately qualified and insured to take a job. Keeping our quality standards high is of great importance, and businesses can't accept a job opportunity that they're not licenced to do!
We invite you to check out the new Service Central Jobs Board at http://www.servicecentral.com.au/jobs/jobs-list/ You can browse through the jobs and see what kinds of jobs people have posted, clicking through to the jobs that interest you most.
Finance4Trades
Everyone seems to love easy money. In these tough times when the economy is slowing and it is becoming harder and harder to find finance, it is fantastic to see Finance4Trades putting their hand up to make it easy for home owners to renovate their property.
Thanks to Finance4Trades, paying for your home renovation is much easier. No longer do you have to wait until you have all of the money in the bank. Instead you can start your renovations now and pay later!
Do you know of any great tradespeople that would like to do some Service Central jobs?
Service Central is always on the lookout for high quality tradespeople who can respond to your jobs. All providers need to prove that they are qualified, experienced or authorised to undertake the work and that they are fully insured and a properly registered business. Quality businesses that meet the Service Central registration criteria are always welcome. Perhaps you could do your friends and community a favour by recommending good tradespeople to visit www.servicecentral.com.au/become-a-provider/ and register their interest.
Humour
Listen to Fox FM's Matt Tilley's gotcha call highlighting the frustrations of gaining council approval for your home renovations.
'Notifying Providers' means that a job opportunity is being sent to premium providers that are registered for that category and region via SMS or Email. 
'Available Now' means that the job opportunity is available for other providers to accept. So, for example, if 'Jo' in Reservoir is too busy to pick up the job, 'Steven' in Moonee Ponds can jump in to help.
'Job Closed' means that Service Central has found the customer as many providers as they requested.