Plumber call out

SoozyJ22

I had to call out a plumber due to a leaking toilet cistern. This was a company recommended by a friend and while not cheap, I was happy to pay more for a company which would turn up when they said they would and I've had excellent service from the office which I know comes at a price. 

They were clear up front there would be a £x call out fee which covered the first half hour and any subsequent time would be £(x/2) per half hour. 

The guy turned up and I left him to it while I worked in the next room. To start with there was some noise (cupboard door opening to access stopcock, cistern cover being removed, toilet flushing) and then it went quiet apart from him talking on the phone - I didn't hear everything but it was predominantly, if not entirely, social rather than work related. He had hands free so I presumed he was just chatting while doing whatever work was needed. Then he came to get me and instead of finding the issue fixed, he told me he'd have to come back as he didn't have the necessary part, plus he wanted to replace the flush mechanism as it wasn't working properly (which I knew, but has not been a problem as there's a knack to getting it to flush anyway) and put in a stopcock isolated to the toilet. He said it wouldn't be worth going to get the parts and come back (bear in mind it was only about 2pm, he was already an hour and a half earlier than my booked time and his company base is less than 15 minutes away) so he'd take some photos and ask the office to get back to me with a quote to come back and do the actual fix. 

He was in my house for between 35 and 40 minutes, including the time on the phone where he can't have been doing any work. I don't know if I'm missing something but I don't understand why it took so much time to not fix the problem? He did have to un-stick my stopcock, but in his words "I just put a bit of WD40 on and got my grips on it and it turned ok" - so not a time consuming job. With hindsight it feels like he waited until half an hour before stopping his call to come and talk to me, but of course I wasn't noting down timings of anything. So while I'm a bit disappointed he wasn't able to do a fix at the first visit I understand that I agreed to the call out fee so have to pay that, but having to pay for the extra (part of) half hour is a bit grating. Or am I being unreasonable here? Does the time slot include other time like writing up reports for the office etc. that might have tipped it over the half hour anyway?

I don't feel in a position to query this so will pay anyway, but I'd really like to hear others' views so I can make a better judgement on whether to use the company again in the future. 

twopenny

It's tricky if you don't have a regular plumber. Personally I'd have hovered even if it annoyed him and asked questions like what do you think is the problem.

Always keep a track of timing subtly so that you have something to present, though that doesn't always help.

Since being caught out by someone coming for a job and 'have to go back to the yard for parts' which took half an hour at my expense and not realising I was paying by the hour. I did mention it to the boss as the job needed redoing and he looked suitably embarrassed and the rework was free.

To be fair he wouldn't have known what the problem was until he'd visited and looked.

I think you are stuck with this now as you want the toilet working. Happens to us all.

I've had people who fix for free or minimum charge when it's simply a matter of tightening and charged for something that takes 10mins.

Jeepers_Creepers

Hi Soozy.

I'd be inclined to wait until the job is done, and then see what sort of time and cost they are going to land you with. If you want you can come back on here and folk can help to assess it.

The parts he wants to add are fair enough - you agree the flush is troublesome, and almost certainly that will become worse with time. Also adding an isolating valve to the inlet makes sense and will make any subsequent repair much easier.

As to how long he took, it does sound as tho' he was in no hurry... If you take the lid off your cistern right now and look inside it, try timing 10 minutes and you'll soon be bored. In that time you could have ID'd a weak flush, WD'd the ball arm and worked out what was causing the leak. 35 minutes? It does seem excessive, but then we cannot be sure - there may have been other complexities like finding off how to shut off the supply.

Anyhoo, I'd wait until the bill arrives. You can then decide whether to complain about the time taken to diagnose the faults. How long will the actual repair take - ie remove the cistern and replace all these parts? Not sure, but I can't see it taking more than an hour. If he'd had all the parts with him, then he might have done the whole job within an hour, but it's probably unreasonable to expect him to have all the cistern internals for all makes of toilet. So if it costs you 1.5 hours in total (with a cheap first 0.5 hour), then it won't be hugely more than you first expected.

As said above, tho', find yourself local trusted recommended plumbers, sparkies and handyfolk. 

Come back and tell us how it goes :-) 

SoozyJ22

Thanks for the feedback so far.

@Jeepers_Creepers , thanks for confirming my thoughts that 35-40 minutes is too long assuming no complications that I've not been made aware of.  I'm quite happy for the additional changes to be made so no problem with paying for those since he'd be here anyway.

The actual fix has been done now was fixed price, so if you can give me a feel for what the parts should cost (pre-VAT) I can work out how roughly much labour they included.  According to the report I have parts were: "clouds couple set" (presumably that should be close not clouds), isolation valve, paste, turbo siphon. Of course, I understand there's a premium to pay for the peace of mind of fixed price and not being charged extra if something unexpected happens, but my gut feel is that what I've been charged is excessive there too. 

I've had bad experiences with plumbers in the past and the only good one I used had gone out of business the next time I needed them! By all accounts this should have been a good one, they came recommended by a friend who used them just before lockdown, claim to be rated in the top 3 plumbers in town (not sure on what criteria) and have glowing feedback everywhere I look including from reputable letting agencies. On the face of it they seem a very professional outfit - and as I said the owner and office have been really good and responsive all along, so I was happy to pay what I suspect is a higher than average hourly rate. Which just makes it much more disappointing to have this happen. 

TELLIT01

If the only thing he was supposed to do was fix the leak he shouldn't be replacing anything else without your agreement unless the leak can't be fixed without doing that work.  That said, replacing the innards doesn't take long and as it's faulty it does make sense for it to be replaced when he's on site anyway.

The other concern he may have had was that you could call once he left and say the flush worked fine before but now it's faulty.

SoozyJ22

Actually, I've just googled the parts and it looks like £5 each for the coupling kit and isolation value and £20-£30 for the siphon, including VAT. So it looks like they've included 3.5 hours labour for something that actually took 1.5 hours. And that's on top of the original call out fee + half hour. I know with hindsight I should have checked the fixed price quote before agreeing, but having already paid out for the original call I just wanted to get them back in to finish the job and while I accept there has to be a degree of contingency added on a fixed price quote, I never expected it to be that far off the mark. Gutted  

SoozyJ22

Thanks @TELLIT01. As I think I said in a later post, I'm happy for the other work to be done too while he was here. It was mainly (originally) that it took over half an hour (and thus more ££) to tell me that that was the plan. 

EssexExile

I don't think it's unreasonable to take over half an hour to identify all the problems and come up with a solution, better than a quick look and jump to the wrong conclusions meaning he doesn't bring the right parts next time.

As other have said, when you find a reliable plumber/electrician/whatever be very nice to them and don't lose their phone numbers.

fenwick458

I don't think it's unreasonable either. you sound like an awkward customer to be honest.

SoozyJ22

EssexExile said:

I don't think it's unreasonable to take over half an hour to identify all the problems and come up with a solution, better than a quick look and jump to the wrong conclusions meaning he doesn't bring the right parts next time.

I would agree with that in some circumstances, but it was pretty obvious where the leak was coming from and it took a couple of attempts to flush to notice the issue there. The lack of isolation valve was immediately clear given that nothing's boxed in or hidden away - all very easy to access. When he left after fixing it he said there was a crack in the cistern which he hadn't noticed before - so he can't have been looking that closely. Luckily that crack isn't leaking so I'm hoping it will hold out until I get the bathroom replaced some time early next year.

I haven't mentioned costs so far, as I wanted to concentrate on the time aspects, but between the two visits it's come to £470 (incl. VAT) so quite a significant sum of money. The initial call out £126 was and then £343 for the fixed price second visit. It just seems a lot for what boiled down to an hour and a half's work + what could probably have been half an hour's investigation. 

SoozyJ22

fenwick458 said:

I don't think it's unreasonable either. you sound like an awkward customer to be honest.

Thanks for your honesty. It's my first time getting a plumber out for something like this so I really didn't know what to expect which is why I'm posting here asking for feedback to try and understand better whether this is normal or not so that I can adjust my expectations accordingly for the future if necessary. The final bill was quite expensive so I do want to be sure that I wasn't ripped off, given that unfortunately some tradespeople give the industry a bad reputation.