SMS text alert credits are designed to keep you informed if you want to be notified directly to your mobile phone when a lead matching your requirements (i.e. your job types and in the areas that you want to cover), is posted.
When a job comes on the site, administrators check that it's genuine and once satisified that it is a lead which we can let matching tradespeople know about, we trigger the job lead here. If you have SMS text alerts enabled on your account, a text message will be sent to your mobile with a brief description of the job and also the area that it is in (location). There is also a unique code which will be sent with it which is different for every tradesperson it is sent to. If you decide that you would like to buy this lead, you simply text back the unique code as a reply from your mobile and the customer contact details will then be sent directly back to your phone so that you can contact them quickly.
Please note: SMS text alerts are not free - you will need to top up your SMS text alert balance in 'Buy Text Credits' in your Top Tradespeople account. SMS text credits are £10.00 for 100 credits, meaning that you can receive 100 alerts to your phone. Keep any eye on your balance and ensure that you've always got some SMS text alert credits in your account.
Of course, you'll also need some job lead credits in your account too, as you won't be able to buy the lead by mobile (or in any other way), without them. Go to 'Buy Credits' to top up your account with job lead credits.
Once you text back the unique code, as long as you have job lead credits, the price of the lead will be knocked off your balance and you'll receive the customer contact details back by SMS. You'll also receive an email at the same time with the customer contact details, and the customer will also receive an email with your contact details on. This should give you every opportunity to catch up with each other.
Additionally, next time you go to the site, in 'My Jobs', you'll see the lead that you bought and when you go to this lead you'll see the customer contact details there too.
SMS text alerts are switched off by default, so you will need to switch these on in 'Buy Text Credits' too. We have this in place so that if you decide that you don't want SMS text alerts for a while (e.g. you may be going on holiday, or are busy with work already), you can switch text alerts on and off so that you don't use SMS text alert credits during a certain period of time. You will still get the free email alerts about jobs even if SMS text alerts are switched off. Of course, even if SMS text alerts is switched on, you'll still need to have some credits in there to get messages to your mobile.