Replace Boiler

Canucklehead

wii_man1 wrote: »

too many spanner monkeys thinking they have a right to rip people off for doing a simple task.

Comments such as this do give me pause for thought....makes the trades increasingly reluctant to post advice on this forum. The poster did benefit from advice on his own thread

The cost of any goods or services will be what the particular market will bear.

Canucklehead

maryhillgirl

As has been said before, these forums are for advice and guidance to members of the public who are, perhaps, inexperienced new property owners, or others who simply want to know that they are not paying too much for a job to be done.
To summarise, (without resorting to blind criticism of a fellow tradesman's workmanship or insensitive, personal comments about Tesco employees)
1. Get at least 3 or 4 quotes. We had prices from BG, Npower and 2 local tradesmen, both personally recommended by work colleagues who had used them in the past.
2. Ask around friends and colleagues for recommendations - word of mouth is the best advertising a tradesman can get.
3. Check the price of materials, appliances etc either on the internet or by phoning local suppliers, to give you a pretty accurate figure to work from.
4. Find out how long a job should take, barring unforeseen problems. A good tradesman should be able to give an accurate time-frame, and also warn of any unseen problems which might arise.
5. Do the sums - you know how much the materials are, so work out how much you are being charged for labour, and decide whether this is reasonable.
If the company or individual will not clearly itemise a bill, find someone else who will. Reluctance to be honest about labour charges should ring alarm bells.
It's interesting that no gas engineers have yet revealed the approximate breakdown of materials, time and labour costs which I requested in an earlier comment.

EliteHeat

What is irritating is prospective customers demanding to know what your labour rate is.

It is obvious that they are immediately going to do some quick sums and come up with an annualised rate that is as naive as it is spurious.

It is a rather sad inditement that most will compare a calculated hourly rate with either their own, or that of their very highly educated and intelligent other half and wrongly conclude that they are being overcharged.

I’m not going to bore myself or other by explaining why this exercise in remedial mathematics is wrong – you are either a tradesman and know or aren’t and don’t - but suffice so say that a great deal of time is wasted by rogue customers, idiots and chancers.


Interesting comment by Canucklehead which will resonate with the rest of us I suspect.

The_Governor

I'd have thought a customer would ask how much is parts and how much is labour on a given job Eliteheat, as opposed to demanding the standard labour rate?

Realistically, I'd expect a tradesman to charge a higher labour rate for a really difficult job, but a lower rate for something easy?

From the point of view of someone paying, it does make sense to know where the fixed costs are (like materials) as it helps to gauge the overal cost of the job when getting quotations.

EliteHeat

One problem is that people look on the internet for items such as boilers and make two assumptions:-

• The tradesman will provide the item for the cheapest price possible
• That is all you need to complete the job

Tradesman generally support their local merchants and source their gear from them and not from eBay or similar. The merchants are never going to be able to match online prices and I am never going to charge cost price for anything - I am in business after all and part of my business is sourcing and collecting materials and also prividing unlimited call backs during the warranty period free of charge. Unfortunately, some customers seem to have the attitude that your time, diesel etc are somehow free of charge.

Secondly, the OP clearly states that a whole load of other gear has been specified which seems to have passed over the heads of subsequent posters who happily quote what they paid for dissimilar jobs. Probably because these incidentals should also be provided free of charge, even though they will cost a few hundred quid.

gasbag1602

Canucklehead wrote: »

Comments such as this do give me pause for thought....makes the trades increasingly reluctant to post advice on this forum. The poster did benefit from advice on his own thread

The cost of any goods or services will be what the particular market will bear.

Canucklehead

I just want to echo these comments. I will pick and choose my requests for advice in future i think.

EliteHeat

gasbag1602 wrote: »

I just want to echo these comments. I will pick and choose my requests for advice in future i think.

Good idea, let's go on strike and leave it to the enthusiastic amateurs to give advice.

gasbag1602

More botch ups means more work for us to correct. God bless B&Q...

Razor

I've got to say I sympathise with the comments above; the engineers that contribute to this forum and give up their free time clearly are not amongst the ripoff merchants or we would not be here giving up our free time for nothing.

On the other hand the three most prolific posters of heating advice have nearly three and a half thousand thankyous between them; perhaps some people do want and are genuinely grateful for the advice given, it's just a shame for the OP that this thread has been hijacked by people that have no clue what they are talking about.


If you are still reading the quotes sound quite reasonable without seeing the job.

The_Governor

Before I take offence razor Who exactly was the "haven't got a clue" comment aimed at?