Are there really that many bad tradesmen around??

pearl123

comeandgo wrote: »

Yes they do have apprenticeships, proper three or four year ones. You just have to check the qualifications they have.

By apprenticeship I mean the old fashion way. Spending a long time working with skilled craftsmen. Not a government day release.

shortcrust

Another thread started by the OP is asking whether £70 is too much to pay for someone to come and fix a problem with a carpet that another tradesman has been unable to sort. I wonder if this thread is more about getting what you pay for than tradespeople being generally rubbish.

surfsister

Well my experience in the South East is that many tradesman are dire. It took four plumbers to manager to fit a replacement stopcock without leaking into my cupboard. The fourth one who came did a great job and told me that many plumbers now do a quick training not like the old apprenticeship. He also told me that it is common practice with some gas engineers when they service boilers to fiddle with things to make them go wrong a bit later on.

A relative had his gas fire break down and was told it was a small part and could be fixed but when the gas engineer came he fiddled about with the fire and made lots of noises then condemned it, asked them to sign a form agreeing to it being condemned and when they did said he could do a replacement gas fire for £350. When my relative agreed he suddenly decided the fire would be too small for the room and a more suitable one would cost £550. At this point my relative told him to leave.
On talking to another gas engineer he was told he should have been told he could have a second opinion on the fire before it was condemned.

Sure things are getting worse.

I had a builder clear a gutter for me and it has leaked ever since but didn't before and he left me his card in case I have any jobs I need doing.

[Deleted User]

Where to start...

Gas board kept repeatedly bodging the repair to a jamming gas valve on my water heater. It took 16 years, a new water heater, several explosions, and a threat of legal action to get it repaired correctly.

A contractor walked all over the tiles on the lean to roof whilst fitting fascia and soffit. First he accused me of breaking them, and then he glued them all back together like a jigsaw puzzle using bath sealer. When he broke the landing window I had to stop him re-glazing it with polyfilla. I went up the ladder to repaint it afterwards, and it turned out that he had left all the old putty and glass in the rebate, and just glued the new pane over the top of it all with bath sealer. Then to humour me he had covered the whole lot with a layer of putty. He threw away the bathroom extractor fan vent with the old soffit, and then didn't fit a new one. When I complained that the hose was discharging into the loft he fitted a vent with no flange for the hose, so it was still filling the loft with damp. Next he fitted a louvered one so that all the flaps hang open and let the birds in. Fourth time lucky.

Plumber replaced my water main and threw the spoil back into the trench without compacting it, so it all subsided afterwards. He also left the electrical earth bonding wrongly connected.

After taking my watch back to the jeweller three times because the new battery kept stopping, I decided to make a key and unscrew the back of the watch myself. It turned out that the battery clip had been bent by someone who couldn't be bothered to unscrew it.


Hotpoint fitted washer dryer pump wrongly so that it kept cavitating.

Currys broke my TV trying to remove a circuit board without undoing the necessary screws.

Currys scratched screen of previous TV.

Local trader repaired my video with a second hand PCB with someone elses postcode in it.

Bike shop laced a wheelbuild incorrectly.

Bike shop ruins all the screws on the bike by forcing them into threads choked with paint whilst fitting new frame.

.......and probably many more, if I spent a little longer thinking about it.

Doozergirl

I think some of these jobs are things that people would have DIYed years ago. Competent people don't get up the morning expecting to clean a gutter, fix a stopcock, fiddle with videos (it's 2017 - we gave up our DVD player 8 years ago, I can't remember the last time I played a video and I worked in Blockbuster ). It just doesn't pay the bills. Especially when people don't add a value to them.

I thank my lucky stars that I know people who will come and do little jobs for me. The fact that our guttering kept leaking from another place when we had it fixed three times made me realise that it was too short in the first place.

I think a lack of respect generally for trades and drop in the desire to be trained and actual courses available for people who do, is an issue.

I think throwaway culture also means that people themselves aren't prepared to fix things and people qualified to fix them find that it's cheaper to replace than repair, so they don't bother anymore.

I think throwaway culture and the gig economy also means that labour is devalued. The OP will argue that travelling between jobs equals "commuting" and it's okay to pay them only for their physical time on site, but people can't do eight jobs in one day because time. They don't even know how long each job will take and people will complain when they don't turn up exactly on time as well.

Then there are people who decide that things should be free, like the garden wall lady earlier in the week who mentioned nothing about a drainage problem and expected the person employed to build a newwall to create new drainage afterwards for free.

It's a simple fact that being a general, jobbing handy or tradesperson is not a desirable job. It is far easier and more reliable to do Larger, regular jobs.

There is certainly a gap. And the gap is filled with people who aren't educated, personable or sometimes even sober.

I've just been told today of someone with an excellent rating on Rated People who I won't have on my sites. He's doing a key trade when he used to be a 'mate' and couldn't get that right.

phill99

AbsoluteReturn wrote: »

We've started using PropertyHeads to find tradesmen. It's great because you can actually see the tradesmen reviewed by people you know. So no more worrying about fake reviews. Also I understand it's free for tradesmen which means they won't get upset about you getting more than one quote for your job. Booked a tiler that had been reviewed by one of our neighbours - very happy with the work done.

More spam.
You have done a cut and paste on this at least three times today.

AndyMc.....

phill99 wrote: »

More spam.
You have done a cut and paste on this at least three times today.

And you quoting him has ensured at least on remains.

phill99

AndyMc..... wrote: »

And you quoting him has ensured at least on remains.

Well you f'ing well report it then.

Doozergirl

Enough people have, it's gone. It's just that your quotes keep it all on the forum. You'll need to delete your own posts to get rid of the spam now.