Builder not busy - is this an issue?

aliwyc

Rosa_Damascena said:

What happened here? I'd be inclined to use this chap if your neighbour is happy with their work.

Our neighbour had him round as he was contracted by Magnet to fit their kitchen, but he said he did building work too.  They seemed happy with him and we got a good feel when he came round. But he never got back to us and they were only round at our neighbour's for about a week.  You've prompted me to drop him a chaser email.

Some way through this process, I did question whether it was "me", and that they didn't like me/us and didn't want to do the job for us. Although this still may be the case, when I Googled it, it did seem that lots  of other people also experience problems with getting quotes from builders. 

Mistral001

Yes builders will judge their prospective customers as I said above, but you have to take into account that there is a very high demand on small builders just at the minute, because of Corona Virus.  Many people have excess money in the bank because they have not gone on foreign holidays and cruises and not spending money travelling to work.  Some who have been working during lockdown  will have quite rightly had extra overtime.

Also you have to take into account the increased daytime TV viewing. Many more people will be watching the many  programmes like "Homes Under the Hammer" !    

Doozergirl

aliwyc said:

Rosa_Damascena said:

What happened here? I'd be inclined to use this chap if your neighbour is happy with their work.

Our neighbour had him round as he was contracted by Magnet to fit their kitchen, but he said he did building work too.  They seemed happy with him and we got a good feel when he came round. But he never got back to us and they were only round at our neighbour's for about a week.  You've prompted me to drop him a chaser email.

Some way through this process, I did question whether it was "me", and that they didn't like me/us and didn't want to do the job for us. Although this still may be the case, when I Googled it, it did seem that lots  of other people also experience problems with getting quotes from builders. 

You'd only use a kitchen fitter for fitting a kitchen, right?! 

That's not a resume for a job that requires three steels, one of them massive! 

aliwyc

Mistral001 said:

Yes builders will judge their prospective customers as I said above, but you have to take into account that there is a very high demand on small builders just at the minute, because of Corona Virus.  Many people have excess money in the bank because they have not gone on foreign holidays and cruises and not spending money travelling to work.  Some who have been working during lockdown  will have quite rightly had extra overtime.

Also you have to take into account the increased daytime TV viewing. Many more people will be watching the many  programmes like "Homes Under the Hammer" !    

Yeh, we got the impression from almost all builders that there's high demand at the moment for the reasons you've said.  Hence me being cautious about this Builder 2 who can start at the end of September.  From others' comments, seems perhaps I'm overthinking it. 

And yeh, we understand that they'll be judging us as much as we are judging them (lol) and appreciate that we need a good relationship with the builder to make things work, so we filtered out those who we didn't get a good feel for / thought they didn't want to take on the project. 

aliwyc

Doozergirl said:

aliwyc said:

Rosa_Damascena said:

What happened here? I'd be inclined to use this chap if your neighbour is happy with their work.

Our neighbour had him round as he was contracted by Magnet to fit their kitchen, but he said he did building work too.  They seemed happy with him and we got a good feel when he came round. But he never got back to us and they were only round at our neighbour's for about a week.  You've prompted me to drop him a chaser email.

Some way through this process, I did question whether it was "me", and that they didn't like me/us and didn't want to do the job for us. Although this still may be the case, when I Googled it, it did seem that lots  of other people also experience problems with getting quotes from builders. 

You'd only use a kitchen fitter for fitting a kitchen, right?! 

That's not a resume for a job that requires three steels, one of them massive! 

Yeh, well we thought that he was just a kitchen fitter but it turns out he is a builder too (who undertakes structural work).  I looked him up online and it does seem that is the case.  It was a bit hard to find reviews, but at the same time, we don't even know how much emphasis to place on the online reviews we read - they could be made up etc.

We would have much preferred a builder recommended through word of mouth, but we are new to the area and don't know anyone who has had building work done.  There is someone else on our street who has just finished having work done, and we spoke to them and they said their builders were good, but when we called, they said that they were only taking on extensions at the moment because of how busy they are.  

Slinky

We were going to go with a builder who had done a similar extension for a neighbour 3 doors down who was happy to recommend them.  We didn't plan on starting immediately as we were getting married. In the meantime several months passed and our immediate neighbour passed on a message from the people having work done, that they were no longer happy to recommend their builder due to issues which had emerged later in the build and which the builder wasn't fixing. They fell out big time, he moved to Australia shortly after and didn't fix their issues. 

Make sure that any recommendations you receive are for work which has been completed for a while.