Getting trades and work done! - venting and rant

Anthony147

Just my two pence worth and more a rant than anything else as having to look at roofers and contractors with my advancing age.

I remember when “You get what you pay for” was valid all day long.

Now increasingly and it’s my frustrating experience - “You get what can be got away with”.

I think it will continue and most likely only get worse until customers actually refuse to engage or pay professional prices for non professional services, behaviours and work outputs from trades.

Rant over!

robatwork

Seems to be a massive lack of skilled tradesmen everywhere at the moment. Therefore what fills the void is...what you're finding. 

Silvertabby

You need to get lucky.

We asked for 2 quotes for a solid base for my new 6 X 6 greenhouse.  One never got back to us, and the other wanted £1,600.  Assume this was the old trick of 'can't be *rsed with such a small job, so put them off with a totally ridiculous quote'.

I just happened to ask my hairdresser (as you do!)  if she knew of anyone, and she gave me the name of a lad she had been at school with.  Lovely chap, superb job, £600.

tacpot12

Yes, it's so frustrating when you are used to being able to do jobs yourself and then cannot. I'm struggling to put my ladders up these days, so expect that that it won't be long before I have to stop doing this.

cannugec5

We had an electrician out to give us a quote for solar panel installation. He came on a Thursday, had a look around, asked about our existing electricity tariff and said he’d do all the calculations. He commented that he was away over the weekend so was Tuesday ok for the quote. 

2 weeks later I reminded him that we were still waiting. He said he’d been on holiday, but please could I send him photos of the roof and the existing consumer unit (that he’d seen when he’d visited). I sent said pictures. We’ve not heard another thing! 

Clearly he doesn’t want the job - but why not just say so? 

We have decided to forget it for this year now, and will think about it next year with a different company ( If we can find one with the appropriate registration). 

[Deleted User]

Yes, exactly the same situation here @cannugec5  

Murphybear

I have friends who are trying to get a decent trader to do their driveway but they are struggling.  

About 20 years ago we had a bungalow on a small hill and we got the driveway totally redone with bricks and they built a stepped wall.  It looked really lovely.  We trusted the two man firm who did it because they didn’t want a single penny up front, even for material  . We were very happy with it and although it was expensive they offered a big reduction for cash.  Happy to oblige.  When we sold the bungalow the buyer was very impressed with the drive.

Is it impossible to get this level of service these days?  

Albermarle

Clearly he doesn’t want the job - but why not just say so? 

My take on these situations, is that tradesmen always want to be busy/working. So they have more work on the go/in the pipeline than they can realistically cope with, just in case a job falls through. Also they probably have in the back of their mind that the current situation will not last forever, and they will have memories of tougher times, so find it difficult just to flatly say no to a job.

I tried the website 'Rated People' about 4 years ago. Although things were not so tight then, it was always still difficult to find good  people for the smaller jobs.  The tradesmen register themselves with  the website . You enter the details of the job you want doing and the website contacts the relevant tradespeople on the area. I think they have to pay a fee to see the enquiry, which is how the website makes its money, so this makes it in their interest to follow it up properly.

We wanted a garden wall, and had three enquiries/estimates, and went with one of them.

Maybe in the current climate it would not work so well, but costs nothing .

ComicGeek

Sometimes it's just luck with timing - the right kind of job when they've got time to fit it in. 

I get about 5 new enquiries every day, and might be able to respond to 2 - of those I can probably only do 1 as am too busy already, so cherry pick which one. Just based on what fits into my diary. At least 3 a day don't get any response - just not enough hours in the day to get back to them, I'm still working at 11pm every night as it is! 

Murphybear

We needed someone to tidy up our very small garden.  We got someone from Rated People.  We paid him for 4 hours and he worked non stop for those hours, didn’t even have a tea break.  He even chopped off the branches of a tree that was getting scruffy.  The difference was amazing.  I wrote him a good review on their website.  

greyteam1959

I think that lots of good tradesmen are being soaked up by the house building boom.
They can earn seriously good money for no aggravation.
They just don't want to be bothered with all the time consuming jobs that people moan about the cost of.