Money Moral Dilemma: Should I keep the money my plumber would have made from selling my old taps?

akwexavante

This is interesting in so many ways and yet i'm struggling to believe it has actually happened though!

I am a tradesman and a few years ago i found myself in a little bit of a pickle.......

I repaired a desktop PC for a customer and took away the waste (Essentially a broken graphics card from a desktop PC).  Five months later the customer wanted the graphics card back!!!!  I had already sent it away for recycling.

On researching the problem i was legally in trouble for two reasons, firstly the graphics card still belonged to the customer (For up to six months after it was taken away by me) and i was handling trade waste and didn't have a waste transfer note or a waste carrier's licence.

The plumber (All trades people) should have a waste carriers licence when handling left over stuff from customers and have a signed and dated waste transfer note from the customer.  On disposal of the left over stuff (Waste) the plumber should get another waste transfer note from the person or business that received the stuff.

So unless the plumber has a signed and dated waste transfer note from the customer for the taps then the taps still belong to the customer for the next six months!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!   If the plumber can't return the item to the customer on request within the six months then the plumber is stealing and can be prosecuted for theft.

This is true for the broken pump out of a washing machine or the replaced TV aerial, anything and everything in fact, even the rubble left over from knocking that bathroom wall down.

I modified my invoices so that they doubled up as waste transfer notes and i now have a waste carriers licence too.  All spare / left over parts and broken components now become my property on day one when i hand over an invoice to the customer.

Scrap copper, lead and brass is of value to the trades' person as a perk of the trade and is often traded in as scrap at a metal merchant for cash.  If the same trade person can get more money selling an item elsewhere then so the person should.

Tradesmen don't qualify for sick pay and don't get holiday pay and often have no pension to look forward too.

I recently had an old boiler changed to a new combi boiler and insisted i kept the scrap copper and brass.  I took it to the metal merchants to sell as scrap and was shocked to discover that the left over stuff was worth a tad short of £140.

Keep the money, the taps were not the property of the plumber to sell.  Share it or give it to the plumber if you want to top up the plumbers pension fund!

SirEcho

Building on kilanel's comment, it's always worthwhile trying to recycle stuff.  When we last changed our kitchen, the taps went on Ebay and thence posted to Scotland.  Slate floor tiles (heavy!) yielded £40 - yet would have cost me time, effort and cash to take to the tip!  An earlier kitchen refurb yielded some money from old units, and the rest were freecycled - saving us / kitchen fitter the cost of a skip.

meknowalot-51

What was the initial agreement with the plumber?......If it was agreed that they would take away the old fixture and fittings then the taps belong to him,here's why.When pricing up the job he took into account the potential value of the scrap and deducted it from his quote,you take the taps then he will add the're value.If there was no agreement about disposal then it's all still yours.

akwexavante

meknowalot-51 said:

When pricing up the job he took into account the potential value of the scrap and deducted it from his quote.

This never happens!  If scrap has no value then disposal has a cost to the customer for disposal (The customer either pays the trades person to dispose of the waste or disposes of it in some other way themselves).

If the scrap has a value then a trades' person will often just take it away free and disposes of it at a scrap merchant or sells it in some other way as a perk.  One of few advantages of being self-employed.

A plumber does not know how much scrap metal will be leftover after a job and therefore cannot value it before he/she starts a job.  Scrap metal value goes up and down in value daily, today it might be worth a tenner, tomorrow you might be lucky enough to get a pound!

To the plumber any scrap metal leftover is a perk with which he might treat the wife and or kids out to a Sunday lunch or a holiday at the end of the year.

impuzzled

akwexavante said:

This is interesting in so many ways and yet i'm struggling to believe it has actually happened though!

I am a tradesman and a few years ago i found myself in a little bit of a pickle.......

I repaired a desktop PC for a customer and took away the waste (Essentially a broken graphics card from a desktop PC).  Five months later the customer wanted the graphics card back!!!!  I had already sent it away for recycling.

On researching the problem i was legally in trouble for two reasons, firstly the graphics card still belonged to the customer (For up to six months after it was taken away by me) and i was handling trade waste and didn't have a waste transfer note or a waste carrier's licence.

The plumber (All trades people) should have a waste carriers licence when handling left over stuff from customers and have a signed and dated waste transfer note from the customer.  On disposal of the left over stuff (Waste) the plumber should get another waste transfer note from the person or business that received the stuff.

So unless the plumber has a signed and dated waste transfer note from the customer for the taps then the taps still belong to the customer for the next six months!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!   If the plumber can't return the item to the customer on request within the six months then the plumber is stealing and can be prosecuted for theft.

This is true for the broken pump out of a washing machine or the replaced TV aerial, anything and everything in fact, even the rubble left over from knocking that bathroom wall down.

I modified my invoices so that they doubled up as waste transfer notes and i now have a waste carriers licence too.  All spare / left over parts and broken components now become my property on day one when i hand over an invoice to the customer.

Scrap copper, lead and brass is of value to the trades' person as a perk of the trade and is often traded in as scrap at a metal merchant for cash.  If the same trade person can get more money selling an item elsewhere then so the person should.

Tradesmen don't qualify for sick pay and don't get holiday pay and often have no pension to look forward too.

I recently had an old boiler changed to a new combi boiler and insisted i kept the scrap copper and brass.  I took it to the metal merchants to sell as scrap and was shocked to discover that the left over stuff was worth a tad short of £140.

Keep the money, the taps were not the property of the plumber to sell.  Share it or give it to the plumber if you want to top up the plumbers pension fund!

As a retired plumber, my advice is:-
1 If the taps are  not that old scrap them, usually you can not repair 
2 If they are very old they could be worth  a bob or two especially if they are globe taps (these are taps that come out of the side of the bath) or have packing glands not o rings. These can be refurbished

meknowalot-51

akwexavante said:

meknowalot-51 said:

When pricing up the job he took into account the potential value of the scrap and deducted it from his quote.

This never happens!  If scrap has no value then disposal has a cost to the customer for disposal (The customer either pays the trades person to dispose of the waste or disposes of it in some other way themselves).

If the scrap has a value then a trades' person will often just take it away free and disposes of it at a scrap merchant or sells it in some other way as a perk.  One of few advantages of being self-employed.

A plumber does not know how much scrap metal will be leftover after a job and therefore cannot value it before he/she starts a job.  Scrap metal value goes up and down in value daily, today it might be worth a tenner, tomorrow you might be lucky enough to get a pound!

To the plumber any scrap metal leftover is a perk with which he might treat the wife and or kids out to a Sunday lunch or a holiday at the end of the year.

To say,"this never happens" is not correct,as this situation happened to us in 2018 when our kitchen was partly renovated.Unlike the situation we're all discusing here that involves bathroom taps,ours was the old fitted cooker and some kitchen cupboards.When we recieved his quote,which was the cheapest by far of three,it stated clearly that they,"Remove all waste".I said to him that we will take the old cooker as a friend of the wife wants it and he said,"you can't take that as it's re-sale value is included in the quote".If we would have taken it the quote would have been £150 more.So in effect he was paying us £150 for a cooker that we were going to give away and taking that into account he was still cheaper than the other two quotes.So you see,this does happen and those old bathroom taps clearly had a value to the plumber and the lady who purchased them.

akwexavante

meknowalot-51 said:

akwexavante said:

meknowalot-51 said:

When pricing up the job he took into account the potential value of the scrap and deducted it from his quote.

This never happens!  If scrap has no value then disposal has a cost to the customer for disposal (The customer either pays the trades person to dispose of the waste or disposes of it in some other way themselves).

If the scrap has a value then a trades' person will often just take it away free and disposes of it at a scrap merchant or sells it in some other way as a perk.  One of few advantages of being self-employed.

A plumber does not know how much scrap metal will be leftover after a job and therefore cannot value it before he/she starts a job.  Scrap metal value goes up and down in value daily, today it might be worth a tenner, tomorrow you might be lucky enough to get a pound!

To the plumber any scrap metal leftover is a perk with which he might treat the wife and or kids out to a Sunday lunch or a holiday at the end of the year.

To say,"this never happens" is not correct,as this situation happened to us in 2018 when our kitchen was partly renovated.Unlike the situation we're all discusing here that involves bathroom taps,ours was the old fitted cooker and some kitchen cupboards.When we recieved his quote,which was the cheapest by far of three,it stated clearly that they,"Remove all waste".I said to him that we will take the old cooker as a friend of the wife wants it and he said,"you can't take that as it's re-sale value is included in the quote".If we would have taken it the quote would have been £150 more.So in effect he was paying us £150 for a cooker that we were going to give away and taking that into account he was still cheaper than the other two quotes.So you see,this does happen and those old bathroom taps clearly had a value to the plumber and the lady who purchased them.

He had already promised the wife a new cooker or had a buyer for it already, and was in trouble and said what he said in the hope you'd let him have it rather than pay up an extra £150.

Did you pay him £150 extra or did you let him have it?

Scrapit

Money for old rope. The plumber will have charged for disposal and then sold the taps. Double bubble.

Stuart4

I would keep the money. They are YOUR taps after all. Unless you had agreed this with him before work commenced, and you would know if you had.
I had a row with a heating engineer when he tried to take away my old tank when I had a new combi boiler installed. He insisted that it was the law that he disposed of it. I checked up and also rang his company. It was total tosh. 
I got £55 for it - thank you very much.

WilliamJohnston

Unless you are no longer on speaking terms, I would speak to the plumber, and find out what they intended.