01Background
I moved to Bulgaria in 2013. Not for a holiday, not on a work contract. I came to live here, which means I went through all the things British arrivals go through: buying a property, dealing with notaries, trying to find a plumber who speaks enough English or enough patience to communicate across the gap, sitting through building jobs where the scope shifted by Wednesday of the first week.
Thirteen-plus years of that gives you a specific kind of knowledge. Not expert-on-everything knowledge. The much more useful kind: knowing which questions to ask, which assumptions do not travel from the UK to Bulgaria, and which Bulgarian-building-trade customs are going to catch a British expat badly off guard if nobody warns them first.
I started writing about Bulgaria for other Brits because the information I wanted did not exist in English in any form I trusted. That habit became Shumen.UK, an independent guide to life in north-east Bulgaria that I have been running since 2013. fixbg.uk is the natural next step: the same peer-to-peer approach, applied specifically to finding tradesmen.
BIOGRAPHY · 01
02Why fixbg.uk exists
The standard advice for finding a tradesman in Bulgaria is word of mouth from another expat. That works well until you are new, until the person recommending had a different job done, or until you are in a part of the country where the expat network is thin.
The alternative, which is picking someone from Facebook or a Bulgarian directory with no English-language track record, works less well. A lot of the problems I hear about from Brits in Bulgaria are not cases of deliberate fraud; they are cases where expectations on both sides were not made explicit and there was no mechanism to surface that gap until money changed hands and work started.
fixbg.uk is built on one idea: make the process visible. Tradesmen who list here agree to let selected jobs be documented publicly from start to finish, to accept honest customer reviews, and to address serious complaints within 14 days or risk suspension from new enquiries through the platform. That is not a guarantee. It is an accountability structure. Which is the best honest thing I can offer.
EDITORIAL POSITION · 02
03What I actually know about tradesmen in Bulgaria
Thirteen years of renovation conversations gives you a working picture. These are the things I have learned through direct experience, through other Brits describing their situations, and through watching how Bulgarian construction jobs actually run versus how they are quoted:
Scope creep is the norm, not the exception. A Bulgarian builder quoting for a job is almost always quoting what he can see. What he cannot see is a separate conversation that happens when he opens the wall. Having that conversation on paper before work starts changes the outcome significantly.
Stage payments matter more than the total. A 50% deposit followed by nothing until completion is a high-risk structure for the customer. Smaller, milestone-linked stage payments, written into a simple contract, give both sides a natural checkpoint.
The cheapest quote in Bulgaria is frequently a problem. Not always; sometimes the market has simply priced a job lower than UK instinct suggests. But a quote dramatically below the others usually means either scope misunderstanding or the intention to revisit the price when the job is already half done.
EIK numbers are real and findable. Every Bulgarian business with a registered EIK (company number) is searchable at the Commercial Register. A tradesman who refuses to give you one is operating cash-only for a reason. That is not automatically disqualifying, but it is information.
Photos are cheap insurance. Before work starts, after demo, after rough-in, at completion. A phone photograph record costs nothing and resolves disputes that would otherwise become intractable.
PRACTICAL KNOWLEDGE · 03
04Editorial standards
fixbg.uk is a one-person operation. I read every application, I handle every complaint, and I write or commission every word on the site. That is a constraint and a guarantee. The constraint: things take longer and I do not scale. The guarantee: nothing appears on fixbg.uk that I have not personally decided to put there.
I do not take referral fees from traders. They pay a flat setup fee and a flat monthly listing fee, published on the pricing page. Whether a trader attracts one enquiry a month or twenty, my income from their listing is the same. That matters: I have no financial incentive to push one trader over another, and no mechanism to do so even if I wanted to.
I do not claim fixbg.uk verifies or certifies anyone. The platform makes the process more visible and gives customers a defined escalation route if something goes wrong. I have been honest about what that means and what it does not mean on every page of this site.
The reviews policy, complaints policy and privacy statement are all published in full, written in plain English, and carry my name as the signatory. If you think I have got something wrong, write to me at editor@fixbg.uk. I read every message.
EDITORIAL COMMITMENT · 04
05Sister site: Shumen.UK
Shumen.UK is the longer-running of the two sites. It covers life in north-east Bulgaria for English-speakers: property, utilities, healthcare, transport, local culture, and the practical questions that come up when you actually try to live here rather than visit. The readership is overwhelmingly British expats who are either already in Bulgaria or seriously considering the move.
fixbg.uk and Shumen.UK share an editorial family. The same voice, the same standards, the same refusal to publish anything I would not say to your face. They are different products with different purposes, edited by the same person, for the same audience.
SISTER SITE · 05