Dealing with kitchen fitters/electricians

sindygirl58

zax47 wrote: »

My rates;

£30/hr capped at £250/day

or;

£45/h if you want to watch,
£55/h if you want to help,
£75 per hour if you rejected my quote, ballsed it up and then call me out to sort it,
£150/h if you want to "micro-manage" me. :eek:

:rotfl:

Dont get me started on customers who pull up a chair!! and follow you around!!

sindygirl58

All replies I agree with JAckie glasgow, well said, I do my husbands quotes.

I cant tell you the stress caused by arrogant customers who like to think they can manage the tradesman , and fins the tiniest reason to not pay!

After a long working relationship with a militry gent, we finally waked away over £23 ! only so much crap a man can put up with.

My sis is a laywer but would not play this card at every turn!
this thread leaves me gobsmaked, at an educated person, clever with words impliying he will use this as backup!!
give the good guys a break.

sindygirl58

brightontraveller wrote: »

Your state that the going rate for an electrician is £150 per day there are lots of different types of electricians there skill levels , knowledge, pace of work, type of work undertaken, hours worked, location, demand for services, vary greatly. So to say they all should work for £150 a day is at best naive which could account for your budget being insufficient to start...

You do not state what level competence the person has, what exactly the works required are… There is just too much information missing for anyone to give you an answer that would be anything other than speculation or guess work?

Also contracts tend to fall into two groups: "commercial, arm's-length" contracts with, for example, exclusion of liability and similar clauses, and less formal agreements
(Some of the your terms would come under the Unfair Contract Terms Act and a court would strike them out)What exactly makes you think you have any expertise to make a judgement as to weather a price is fair or not as you have no experience, qualification in this field from what you have state.

The fact that they are not willing to work for less “for cash” sounds more that they unwilling to defraud the revenue service which maybe says more for there morals and beliefs than the person asking them to do so…

Suppose it’s a good thing your not actually a solicitor, barrister or alike then as you would be struck off for instructing someone to commit a criminal act.

I would have thought an “academic lawyer” would have known to deal in facts not speculation...

:T:Twell said

Aristotle67

Thanks again to all who have taken time out to post.

brightontraveller wrote: »

Your state that the going rate for an electrician is £150 per day there are lots of different types of electricians there skill levels , knowledge, pace of work, type of work undertaken, hours worked, location, demand for services, vary greatly. So to say they all should work for £150 a day is at best naive which could account for your budget being insufficient to start...

I take that point, but am using the figure from a thread elsewhere in the forum. It at least provides a starting point for consideration; though a charge of twice this for labour (and I am nowhere near London) seems just too much to me.

What exactly makes you think you have any expertise to make a judgement as to weather a price is fair or not as you have no experience, qualification in this field from what you have state.

Indeed! I don't; which is why I pointed out that if I thought it was unreasonable I would be happy to let a court determine whether it was or was not! They will be the arbiters of this. I am sure no reputable tradesperson would object to that.

The fact that they are not willing to work for less “for cash” sounds more that they unwilling to defraud the revenue service which maybe says more for there morals and beliefs than the person asking them to do so…

I should very much hope they are unwilling to defraud HMRC as if I thought for one moment that anyone was considering doing so I would be the first to inform the HMRC about it.

Suppose it’s a good thing your not actually a solicitor, barrister or alike then as you would be struck off for instructing someone to commit a criminal act.

I am not instructing anyone to do anything of the sort. I am merely offering to pay by cash. Cash is a convenient way of paying all round and it is not unreasonable to expect a discount for this.

What has happened in this situation is clear to me.

The kitchen fitter/decorator has given what he thinks is an atractive quote for his services; he has factored cash into the quote, according to him, and went to great length to explain that for that amount I get "him and all his expertise", or similar words to that effect. That's good.

The electrician is overcharging, in my opinion. That is not good. The electrician will not come down a single penny.

I have suggested using another electrician; the fitter will not have this. No doubt he will hide behnd the line that he must work with this electrician for one reason or another.

Unfortunately for the fitter/decorator, the more people talk, the more likely they are to trip themselves up. The fitter/decorator has done just that! In response to my point that the electrician was charging too much, the fitter said that the only way to decrease the price is to reduce "their" wages, which they are not prepared to do. But that is not so, is it? Because, the fitter's wages will come out of the payment for his services! So "their" wages would not be reduced at all; unless, of course, that is not how it actually is!

The fitter and the electrician are working together in this. A competitive quote has been made for the fitting and decorating, but an uncompetitive quote has been made for the electrics. which cannot be reduced at all. That is intended to sound good to the naive customer, and for many customers it would sound good; but it doesn't sound good to me. If "their" wages would be reduced by the electrician coming down in price, that can only mean that the quote from the fitter does not include his wages; in which case, I am being misled. And that is a serious matter.

Whenever anyone is pulled up over something they have said, they usually try and get out of it by saying that they didnt mean that as it sounded, or it was a slip of the tongue, or that their words are being twisted. None of those lines ever succeeds, and when people try any of these they merely dig themselves in deeper and deeper.

Once again, my thanks to everyone who has posted. It has been very interesting.

Aristotle67

sindygirl58 wrote: »

I cant tell you the stress caused by arrogant customers who like to think they can manage the tradesman , and fins the tiniest reason to not pay!

sindygirl58, you have my full sympathy if any customer tries to find a reason not to pay. I am one customer who would never do that, once a contract price is agreed. As I emphasised earlier, the correct procedure if a customer is not happy is to make the payment which was agreed in the contract and then take action; it is not correct to withhold payment to the tradesperson.

its_all_gravy

Originally Posted by zax47
My rates;

£30/hr capped at £250/day

or;

£45/h if you want to watch,
£55/h if you want to help,
£75 per hour if you rejected my quote, ballsed it up and then call me out to sort it,
£150/h if you want to "micro-manage" me.
Brilliant post brought a smile to my otherwise miserable kipper
thanks:)

sindygirl58

Aristotle67 wrote: »

sindygirl58, you have my full sympathy if any customer tries to find a reason not to pay. I am one customer who would never do that, once a contract price is agreed. As I emphasised earlier, the correct procedure if a customer is not happy is to make the payment which was agreed in the contract and then take action; it is not correct to withhold payment to the tradesperson.

Unfortunately many people do try to scam us. We use debt agencies, but they are useless too. One lady deducted something for her time, helping to carry rubbish.its unreal. Another case, £400 witheld for a scratch on laminate flooring he laid, but customer refused to allow him in to repair it. they just want money off!!
Good luck with your project, find someone else you trust.

Aristotle67

sindygirl58 wrote: »

We use debt agencies, but they are useless too.

Yes, indeed; if they come up against anyone who is not ignorant or invulnerable, they are unlikely to get anywhere.

One lady deducted something for her time, helping to carry rubbish.its unreal. Another case, £400 witheld for a scratch on laminate flooring he laid, but customer refused to allow him in to repair it. they just want money off!!

I dare say I am not telling you anything you don't know but in each case the customer has acted in a totally unreasonable way; both are obliged to pay the full contract price. I hope you managed to get the agreed amount in the latter case, though from what you have written I suspect not.:(

shandypants5

Go elswhere.

Stop wasting the tradesmens time with your silly "bartering"

They have quoted you a price and YOU cant afford to hire them.
Thats YOUR fault, not theirs.

I would have your number in my phone by now so that I could recognise and ignore your calls.

While these people are negotioating with you they are not earning anything at all.

booty40uk

Here here shadypants