Arrgh! Tradesmen!!

Slinky

Why did you need an invoice?  You have known for some time what you would have to pay.
You might need him again.  I would have paid him on the spot.

Having waited 4 months for him to turn up, I didn't have £85 cash just lying around waiting for him and my other half had gone out with the cheque book.

Hope I don't need him again, we're moving across the country in 6 weeks!!

Invoice turned up today and he'll be paid tomorrow. Not only did he fix the tiles, he also scraped out a load of loose mortar around another gable and put new in.

plumb1_2

After being ripped off by 2 sets of "plumbers" both doing 3/4 of the job asked of them and then dissapearing, I came to the following conclusion.

Most tradesmen will do a crap job as in almost all individual cases they'll make more money by cutting corners than they will by doing a good job and getting repeat custom \ word of mouth custom.

So what you need is to find someone who uses tradesmen a lot. So repeat custom for their jobs IS worth it and any bad sorts have been weeded out. Then we need to find out who their guys are and get them in to do the job.

The only type of person who uses tradesmen on a regular basis that I could think of is a big letting management agency (IE your local estate agent).

Not having needed this yet, my plan next time I need a plumber, electician etc. is to call the local estate agent and ask them for a recommendation. Then when the guy turns up, heavily name drop the agency hinting any bad behaviour will be fed back to the agency.

Its the best I can come up with in a town absolutley riddled with cowboys and worse....

Any thoughts on my plan?

Fionnuala_2

I don't understand tradespeople at all!! Can understand they don't like small jobs - I need the entire inside of a new house painted - all walls and ceilings - and is anybody interested? Pah!
However I did get my bathroom walls/floor, and kitchen floor tiled with absolutely no pain whatsoever (though don't ask my wallet). I basically used the tilers who operate through the shop I bought the tiles - may have been expensive however the tiles were delivered on Monday and the ENTIRE job was done by Friday. Didn't see the tilers as they had a key and my working day was longer than theirs. Oh and they cleaned up after themselves. There was a loose tile - told the shop owner and it was sorted the next day! Kitchen and bathroom are both beautiful!
Today was a laugh. Asked a gas fire shop to send their boys round to connect my gas hob, and the woman in the office booked them in for the morning. They didn't show up so off I went into the shop to do a bit of ranting. Was fobbed off of course (we left a message yesterday...they had a flat wheel blah blah blah), but the person in the shop phoned the boys to find out when they could fit me in, and they did eventually show up but at 6.00 pm. Turns out that nobody had told the boys they were booked to come to me in the morning and they were really embarrassed that I waited so long for them. AAAAAAaaHHHHHHH!!!

Travelqueen

I'm just having my bathroom done at the moment. After a shakey start I seem to have finally found an way to work with the plumber & plaster/tiler/chippy who are doing the work.

I would say to try & buy local & get their recommended fitter - see if the shop will guarantee their work. Then you have somewhere to go to should something go wrong. Also, local shops know local builders, plus, they're more determined things shouldn't go wrong and damage their reputations & therefore trade than places such as B&Q. Also, in my experience, they seem to be cheaper.

E.g. my travertine tumbled marble tiles (which are lovely) would have been approx £50 pmsq in Topps & slightly more in the 'tile warehouses' nearby. The specialist shop at the end of my little street owned by turks, who import them direct, sold them for £35 pmsq... And no, I didn't buy a lot!

BaldGit_2

Firstly, as a newbie let me say "Hi" to you all.

Secondly, after reading the threads of this topic my question has pretty much been answered. However, I'm going to ask it anyway. . . .

Before that, some background. I am currently approaching the end of a 23 year career as an RAF Engineer and am re-training as a plumber. My aims and ambitions for my future as a tradesman are too great to go into here, but suffice to say that I want to try to maintain a customer focused attitude always. I don't want to be tarred with the same "rogue" brush and I want to be proud of any work I do.

So, before I start rambling, my question is this. . .

What do you, as customers, want from the tradesmen that you employ? What are the essential qualities that would set one tradesman apart from another? How could I ensure that my name is the first you think of when you make a recommendation to a friend?

Okay, that's 3 questions, but I think you get what I'm after.

Your help would be much appreciated. Thanks.

Bozzy20

I think the three answers to your questions are :-

obviously reliability (do and finish the job, turn up on date and time as agreed and call the customer if you have problems which mean you cannot do the job or go on the agreed time/date).

secondly, fair reasonable price.

finally, do the job to high standard.

MarkyMarkD

Similar feelings about this:

- turn up when promised
- quote a fair price and stick to it
- behave decently whilst you are there*

*According to my wife, complaining that the kitchen isn't big enough whilst repairing the cooker (repairman over 20 stone) and p**ing in the garden (some window fitters) don't fall within the category of "decent".

People are crying out for good plumbers so anyone who met these conditions would get recommended frequently by me.

alanobrien

I can relate to this.
We recently moved into a house where the central heating boiler is circa 25 yrs old and is in dire need of replacing.

So far i have contacted 6 corgi gas people.
2 didnt want to know "only doing landlord safety certs guv"
one no longer does installations, two made appointments but didnt show up and the one that did show up two weeks ago has not sent the estimate yet.

needless to say still looking.

webmasterpolo

I wanted a new double driveway put in, arranged for quotes from 5 companies. None every turned up or called.

The only tradesman I've used who were satsifactory was my local locksmith and heating engineer, mainly because they are local and l've used them before, as did the previous owner of my home (I get the annual reminder postcard).

I gave up with the driveway, l've now decided to move house (due to other reasons as well ).

welnik

As a carpenter, I do find that I get 90% of all jobs I quote simply for the reason that I turned up in the first instance.

Why not contact your local trading standards. I am registered with mine and the amount of vetting I had to go through was phenomonal. They take references, check your work, check all your papers (public liabilitiy, corgi registration etc) and a full blown interview. Its free for trades to be listed with them.

I myself was looking for a plasterer and used trading standards. I had 3 people turn up to quote (this is in Birmingham too) and then chose the one I liked the look of. All were off Trading Standards list. I made sure I also obtained written quotes of them.

Obviously there are arm chancers out there as with every line of work but follow my advice above and you wont go far wrong. Another tip, try and use people your friends have recommended. About 50% of my business is from that route.

I am lucky as all my friends are in trades (apart from Plastering) so were usually do favours for each other.

I would love the opportunity to do a refurb as I have loads of knowledge, know loads of trades but just have no money!