Are you Ok with workmen in your house when you are not there?

JQ.

I don't have a problem with workmen in the house. Quite often when having major work done we'll time if to coincide with holidays. We go on holiday for 2-3 weeks, give workmen the keys and let them get on with it. Never had a problem so far.

silvercar

MaybeI'm too trusting, but I generally work on the basis that if anything went missing on a day that a workman had been left in the house, I'd know where to point the finger.

I'd much rather workmen worked when I'm not at home.

PasturesNew

One of the issues I find with any workmen is that if they need something then they'll just grab your nearest belonging to fulfill that work need. e.g. they might use your immaculate, inherited, grandmother's bowl from the sideboard to catch water from the U bend when they take it apart, or they might grab your pure white cashmere jumper on the back of your bedroom door as they're opening the door... they're just not careful/aware of items that might be valuable or special.

I had some work to be done in my house once and have "privacy issues", so the first job I had done in the house was to have locks put on all the bedroom doors (old victorian house/looked proper). Then I put my stuff in my rooms and that was it. When I hired a builder I mentioned to him my concerns that a lot of builders would snoop about and not be aware of what's important and he agreed I was right. He himself had been in charge of a team of lads in a job once and as soon as the homeowner had left the house they'd all dressed up in her clothes and were standing around the piano having a sing-song in her clothes when she returned home ... and caught them.

LittleMissAspie

PasturesNew wrote: »

One of the issues I find with any workmen is that if they need something then they'll just grab your nearest belonging to fulfill that work need. e.g. they might use your immaculate, inherited, grandmother's bowl from the sideboard to catch water from the U bend when they take it apart, or they might grab your pure white cashmere jumper on the back of your bedroom door as they're opening the door...

That's what happened to us. We're tenants and the letting agent got someone in to replace the washing machine. I came home to find my very last teatowel (had been without washing machine for 3 weeks) covered in gunk. I was livid because the same thing had happened a few days before with another cloth when the radiator had been changed. Well the letting agents took it seriously luckily and investigated. But I was really upset.

We have more workmen coming here next week and I don't like it but I can't take all this time off work to stay home, I'll run out of annual leave. When you're a tenant you have no say in who is hired or when they come. I absolutely hate renting. A colleague's washing machine broke at the same time as ours, they had a new one delivered in a couple of days. We had to go without for three weeks. When I've got my own house I'll be able to choose whether to repair or replace, choose who comes to do and choose when they come so I can be there. I'll be glad to pay for the maintenance in return for having control over it.

poppysarah

Have you read your insurance policies about leaving strangers in your house?

Do you check workmen have insurance?

emms1981

I wouldn't be happy about having people in my home when I wasn't there, we had a plumber in a couple of years back and I didn't trust him one bit! he was fitting a boiler in the kitchen and kept going upstairs he said he needed to do something with the radiators he prob did but he kept going up without saying anything, my son was in his cot at one point and he went up in his room and took a lightbulb out of his celing light ??? !!!!!!? if he asked me for a lightbulb I could have got him one! I had to leave him for a while to go to the doctors and I wasn't happy about that

Hermia

I think it would depend on the workmen, but generally no. I am a tenant and I am happy for the letting agency's caretaker to be there on his own.

I have had a couple of friends have stuff stolen by workmen, but the police weren't interested and the owners of the building firms said their men would definitely not have stolen anything so they ended up hitting a brick wall. I have some expensive computer equipment which I cannot hide away as I live in a small flat with very little cupboards and no lockable doors so I am quite wary.

C_Mababejive

Heres the case from the other side.....the wheres theres a blame culture and general slandering in the media of "tradesmen" has now become so bad that I will not enter someones premises even if they leave a key with a neighbour unless that neighbour comes in and stays with me.

I also knock on doors and cannot believe it when lazy,stupid parents leave a child in the house to let me in...I walk away again.

Also,I do not do anyone any favours. I do the job i am there to do. I will not take responsibility for anything else.

Only the other day i knocked on a door,a young girl let me in still dressed in PJs..and then went straight back to bed without hardly a world. Obviously too p&ssed from the night before even to converse? I just walked and shut to door behind me.

There are people who are beyond reproach and others who are less so.

Plenty of customers cannot be trusted either.

Wee_Willy_Harris

LittleMissAspie wrote: »

That's what happened to us. We're tenants and the letting agent got someone in to replace the washing machine. I came home to find my very last teatowel (had been without washing machine for 3 weeks) covered in gunk. I was livid because the same thing had happened a few days before with another cloth when the radiator had been changed. Well the letting agents took it seriously luckily and investigated. But I was really upset.

We have more workmen coming here next week and I don't like it but I can't take all this time off work to stay home, I'll run out of annual leave. When you're a tenant you have no say in who is hired or when they come. I absolutely hate renting. A colleague's washing machine broke at the same time as ours, they had a new one delivered in a couple of days. We had to go without for three weeks. When I've got my own house I'll be able to choose whether to repair or replace, choose who comes to do and choose when they come so I can be there. I'll be glad to pay for the maintenance in return for having control over it.

Tenants, like owner/occs, have the right to decide when workmen come by virtue of the right to say when they don't. SOME LA and LLs rely on tenants not knowing/not excercising this right. However, as with owner/occ, if you restrict the available hours you will effect the timescales within which things get done. Many owner/occs would be unable to simply replace a defective appliance due to affordability constraints. These constraints wouldn't effect a tenant where the LL has a duty over the maintainance of said appliance.

The grass isn't always greener!

Out,_Vile_Jelly

As I said on the other thread, I've rented for years and it's genuinely never occurred to me to worry about this. Every property has been managed by an agent using their own inhouse workmen, or the LL was present with the handyman for the apartment block.

I don't have any valuables at all (in terms of electronic equipment, jewellery etc), but plenty of sentimental objects of coursee; I think I'll take the odds of a plumber wanting to nick my racecard collection or photo albums.

It's rather crass to assume that all workmen are thieving pervs.