Dealing with kitchen fitters/electricians

Aristotle67

shandypants5 wrote: »

Go elswhere.

Indeed; that is what I decided to do, largely because of what the fitter and electrician are up to. There has been a happy ending to this.

Thanks again to all who posted their thoughts.

zax47

Aristotle67 wrote: »

......largely because of what the fitter and electrician are up to. .....

Perhaps you could explain this comment, for the sake of us poor, stupid, tradespeople?

What EXACTLY are you suggesting they were "up to"? Quoting you a price beyond your budget? Not wanting your business (as you are obviously a pompous, holier-than-thou, nay supercilious, git of a customer)? Good luck to them, I hope they realise just what a close shave they've had.

I pity the poor sod that you do employ. :eek:

Aristotle67

zax47 wrote: »

(as you are obviously a pompous, holier-than-thou, nay supercilious, git of a customer)?

A bit less of the "git", please!

booty40uk

Well said zax47. I hope i never have the misfortune to run into this person.

Plasterer

:eek: :rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

peedorf

I think you're being slightly harsh on aristotle.

There is a big disconnect between the way professions work - and probably a bigger disconnect in our understanding of different trades.

Tradespeople (by which i mean skilled in the way of plumbing, electrics, plastering, etc) work in a different world to a lot of us and are very much in demand. As such, they're at the phase that in my industry, for example, we were at about 10 years ago. Our skills were in demand, we were able to charge what we liked and justify it, etc. Somebody would always pay, so life was good.

Fast forward to today, and life isn't so good. Each and every piece of work we price for, we have to negotiate. Nobody will pay 'full rate' - i.e. the rate the market 'sets' (or apparently sets!). If you put a quote in, you can expect to knock 30% off it and then also expect to be held to a fixed price - even if not contractually bound to it (as it has never been agreed - i.e. you are on a day rate). Dealing with larger organisations mean court action would be unlikely to be cheap, so you have to accept that not only has your day rate been reduced 30%, but you're also stuck working three times as long on a job for no extra money.

For the tradespeople, their skills are in demand, and as such you get to choose your customer. I think the issue is, that much like many people assume tradespeople are dumb, then many also assume non-tradesfolk are dumb too. The number of people we have spoken to where a tradesman couldn't actually split out the costs for say, a 10k labour job, give customers a feeling of concern. How can a job be priced at 10k, without there being evidence of how that figure has been arrived at? You will likely say experience - but then that experience and therefore price must still have a basis, even if it is just the amount of time you expect a job to take? How can a tradesperson say 'worst case scenario for a job is 5k' but then when pushed not in any way want to fix the price at that level? Doesn't that imply that the 5k has no basis as a 'worst case' price?

These are just general comments from general observations - i can see things from both sides, my concern is that while decent tradespeople have every right to charge whatever their skills are worth, i worry that there are a lot more unskilled tradespeople riding on the back of it and throwing out crazy numbers just on a whim. We're currently looking for a team of people to fit our kitchen and bathrooms - the quotes vary by about 50% and i just don't know what the fair figure is and the variance worries me - we had a friend of a friend come round to quote for the job and he openly said to them that 'he'd bumped up the price because he'd seen we'd bought decent fittings and he needed a grand to spend on his wife's birthday' - i think it's things like this that cause concern. For example, we spent 3 months sourcing parts to make sure we could get everything we wanted at a decent price - i wouldn't say the fittings etc are anything too special (crosswater, etc) yet i find it a bit concerning that part of the variance in price is down to someone's estimate of how much they can get out of us?

zfrl

On the face of it £300 a day does sound a lot. I would say £250 is more reasonable here. But does he work long days? Will the job be completed in less time?

On the cash part - it is no help just hassle. We would much rather have cheques as they go into the bank so much easier!

RobertoMoir

The electrician's rates are what they are. Of course you can haggle.
But of course he can choose to stick on the original figure. You don't have to accept his price, and you realise that, but that doesn't mean he does have to accept yours.

bootman

I just paid £350 to an electrician for 3 new downlights to be fitted in a bathroom, a new extractor, run a wire through from shaver socker to wall in front for 2 mirror lights. I thought that was high myself, especially as it only took him 3 hours.

He supplied downlights and extractor, but I know they only cost him around £50 all in.

I did not watch but would have liked to, I actually find it interesting to watch trades people, as it's something I can't tackle myself, and it's myu house I want to see wht they are doing!