overcharged by electrician

Ibrahim5

The savings by doing it yourself are often of the same magnitude. Someone told me they paid £70 for a tap washer. That would have cost me 10p. A car service someone would pay. £200-300 and it would cost me £30. Parts and tools are cheaper with the internet. Tradespeople seem to charge more than ever. It always seems to me that the people who charge large amounts for simple jobs are male. Not sure why. Our mobile hairdresser never had a large call out fee even though she came round to our house with her equipment.

ComicGeek

grumbler said:

greyteam1959 said:

I think that is a pretty fair price for the job.

Fuel is £1.50 a litre, plus all his other associated business costs.
Time is a minimum of £65 an hour plus Vat.

So, are you saying that £124K p.a. (65*8*5*52*11/12) is, generally, a normal gross annual salary for an electrician?

And don't tell me about the "associated business costs" as you listed them separately.

20 years ago we were working at an annual target turnover of £100k + vat per electrician (labour only), so that rate is very much on the low side for a company now. 

We have hourly rates, but it's virtually impossible to work the whole year at an hourly rate - there will always be hours here and there that you can't fill, or training days etc, so the annual turnover is never going to be close to this. I can charge £120+vat for some specialist work, but I certainly don't make £230k a year!!

Nothing wrong with the costs IMO, just poor communication on both sides. 

Grumpy_chap

If the OP knew that the problem was the £20 RCD, they could have advised the Electrician before they attended and arranged for the Electrician to collect that part on route to the OP's house.  This may have saved some time in needing to arrive, then leave and travel to the wholesaler and then travel back to the OP.  The OP would have needed to paid for the part whether or not that turned out to be the fault.

As for rates, £65 per hour for a professional with appropriate qualifications and experience is within the range of "market rates", particularly for a small job where there is no efficiency to be had.  As for:

grumbler said:

So, are you saying that £124K p.a. (65*8*5*52*11/12) is, generally, a normal gross annual salary for an electrician?

That rate of £65 per hour has to cover all the other costs associated with the employment of that Electrician - trade insurances, employer's NI etc.

It is also unlikely that the recovered hours will be as high as the calculation 65*8*5*52*11/12 suggests as that allows for only 1 month (4.3 weeks = 22 days) of unrecovered time.  To achieve that (only 22 days unrecovered) requires 238 days of recovered fee-paying time.  Actual non-recovered time will be higher as it need to cover:

• 8 days Bank Holiday
• 25 days annual leave
• Some sickness time
• Training days
• Company briefings
• Time to do selling and estimating
• Days that don't get sold

At best, a really slick business could possibly budget on 200 days of recovered fee-paying time per working Electrician.  At absolute most, 220 days might be recovered but that would then mean a larger business employing others to do some of the functions such as sales. estimating, accounts.  The nett time-split remains the same.  180 chargeable days is probably more realistic.

So, 65*8*180 = £94k gross business income.  Deduct the costs of operating the business and you are down to £70k tops for employment costs, which needs to include the VAN and employer's NI to give the "total cost to employ".  Can easily be in the range 1.5 to 2 times basic salary. 

Andthen07

melb said:

We will not be paying the bill although his terms that unless payment is made upon recipt of invoice there will be a £30 late payment fee which just makes me think he is a chancer.

Huh ? How do you work that out?

Pay the man.

greyteam1959

grumbler said:

greyteam1959 said:

I think that is a pretty fair price for the job.

Fuel is £1.50 a litre, plus all his other associated business costs.
Time is a minimum of £65 an hour plus Vat.

So, are you saying that £124K p.a. (65*8*5*52*11/12) is, generally, a normal gross annual salary for an electrician?

And don't tell me about the "associated business costs" as you listed them separately.

Read all the follow up posts.
Most seem to agree with me.

rob7475

If you didn't agree a price up front, you can't really argue about it afterwards. £65 per hour is a day rate of around £500 which for a good tradesman is not unreasonable. 

You're going to have to accept that you messed up here by not checking their hourly rate before they came out. 

Ibrahim5

Well if that rate is reasonable then asking wouldn't have made any difference. Doing it yourself for £20 is what would have made the difference.

melb

thanks for all contributions.  We have disputed the amount and apparently this debt will now be given to a debt collection agency and we will be incurring late payment charges of 7% per week.

As the work was done on 7 January is he being a little hasty - i thought late payment was after 30 days had elapsed?

he says he recorded his telephone conversation with us - can't wait to hear it as it is lies - is it legal to record a conversation without informing the other person?  What area of law would cover this please?

I know the majority of people on here think his invoice is reasonable - i got precisely the opposite reaction on an electric vehicle foru so it is open to opinion.

ComicGeek

Madness - sometimes a principle ends up costing you far too much....

Just pay it and move on, it's really not an unreasonable cost.

Risteard

melb said:

thanks for all contributions.  We have disputed the amount and apparently this debt will now be given to a debt collection agency and we will be incurring late payment charges of 7% per week.

As the work was done on 7 January is he being a little hasty - i thought late payment was after 30 days had elapsed?

he says he recorded his telephone conversation with us - can't wait to hear it as it is lies - is it legal to record a conversation without informing the other person?  What area of law would cover this please?

I know the majority of people on here think his invoice is reasonable - i got precisely the opposite reaction on an electric vehicle foru so it is open to opinion.

The EV forum will largely be EV owners/drivers rather than electrical contractors, so it is probably fair to say that they haven't a real concept of what electrical contractors need to charge to remain in business.

Clearly the pricing should have been agreed in advance if it was going to be such an issue.

Where I will agree with you is that in law 30 days payment terms applies unless otherwise agreed. So legally I doubt he could pursue late payment before this time - UNLESS this was discussed beforehand, which obviously depends on the precise conversation(s) beforehand.