Tradesmen! Am I Being Ripped Off!!!!

Hi All,

Is it me!??? I have had about 15 so called Heating Engineers com out & quote for replacing my old floor standing boiler with a ne condensing one and replacing my old copper tank with a new pressurise one.

Most have not bothered to quote even though they said they would others are quoting £1000+! (just labour)

At most i would say it would take a competent corgi engineer 2 days. would hope a reasonable labour only rate would be £20 - £25 a hour...Or am i being silly?

Regards,

S.

-- handypandy

Reply to
handypandy
Loading thread data ...

Yes. A self-employed CORGI is likely to be charging £40-60 ph (more in London and SE) and for at least some of the job would need a 'mate'.

Owain

Reply to
Owain

Many self employed tradesmen are very busy and have full order books. They often run the office side of the business themselves which is why they can sometimes be slow to react/seem disorganised. They can pick and choose what jobs they want,especially the better (not necessarily cheaper!) people. I suspect that your expectations for hourly rate and way short of the mark. Dont forget all the overheads that have to come out of that. I have been in the industry for over 25 years and I am afraid i wouldnt work for £25 per hour as a self employed person.

Reply to
Psst

At the risk of offending the folks in here, I'd say that I've put two professions at the top of my "do not trust" list: tradesmen and estate-agents. My wife says that I even have this "special look" when talking to them.

Last year, when looking for someone to do the driveway (yeah, that one with the weeds popping up), we had about twenty (twenty!) tradesmen coming round for evaluation. Quotes ranged from £1,700 (too good to be true) to £4,000 for the same job.

So, how does one find a good(?) tradesman these days?

Eddy

Reply to
Eddy Young

On 14 Apr 2007 10:17:41 -0700, Eddy Young mused:

Recomendation. Pretty much most, if not all, of my work is word of mouth. Has been for the last 8 odd Years bar the odd 1 or 2 enquiries from Google hits.

Schemes, lists, registers etc... are only any good if they are maintained and members are checked etc... Most are not and as a potential customer you have no idea that one is useless and worthless where another is well maintained.

Reply to
Lurch

I had my Floor mounted Potterton Kingfisher removed and an Alpha wall hung Condensing Combi installed at New Year and it cost £1980 .It took just short of 2 days . I'm in Glasgow and that was cheaper than some other quotes I got.

Why did you need to get as many quotes . What's the boiler .You still need a copper cylinder .?

Stuart

Reply to
Stuart B

So, how does one find a good(?) tradesman these days? Eddy

Easy......Ask family, freinds and nieghbours for recommendations.

F
Reply to
The Simpsons

It helps when your neighbour is head of building control at the local council. If they do screw you, they aren't going to stay in business. ;-)

Reply to
dennis

I have my Tradesperson Rule of Halves;

- Half of those called will not return your call.

- Half of those who return the call will not come to give an estimate.

- Half of those who come to estimate, won't actually submit one.

- Half of those who submit an estimate will deliberately price themselves out of the job.

- Half of the reasonable estimates won't turn up on the day.

So, to get a tradesman, you need to start with 32 phone calls.

And this is why last weekend, this weekend and the next half dozen weekends, I'm up a ladder painting the house.

Reply to
Huge

By personal recommendation.

Reply to
Huge

Very silly. By specifying labour only, you are denying the tradesman the profit made from buying at trade price and selling at list, so they will whack it onto the labour rate instead, which won't be as low as you estimate to begin with.

Colin Bignell

Reply to
nightjar

Fraid so...

Sounds reasonable enough...

To do the job properly I would guess more like 5 man days.

Yup, that may well expect to earn at least that. Now you just need to add on the overheads of running a business.

Reply to
John Rumm

Oddly enough, P&D was the only thing that I found didn't conform to your rule.

tim

Reply to
tim.....

Word of mouth - from people that you trust - especially when you can see the job as done, a year later.

Ask around - someone you know locally must have had a job done by the type of tradesman you need.

HTH

Tim

Reply to
Tim S

I think you need to start off with very pretty daughters...

Owain

Reply to
Owain

Reply to
Andy Hall

This shouldn't be a problem

Go into any trade supplier and you will find loads of them propping up the counter and drinking machine made beverages.

They all call one another "mate" and even refer to them in the third person, so there is no shortage.

Reply to
Andy Hall

But they still demand some of the folding stuff, readies, wonga, beer vouchers etc before they'll be anyone's mate. It all adds to the final bill.

I suppose one could find a woman of the night skilled in manual dexterity and retrain her on compression fittings.

Owain

Reply to
Owain

Nah, that doesn't work.

Reply to
Steve Firth

Consider the following:

Number of 'working hours' per year 1800 (taking into account holidays etc) Likely max. number of 'chargeable hours' 1800x0.8= 1440h (sickness, van maintenance, office work etc) Rule of thumb for overheads1.8 to 2 times chargeout rate. Expected annual income after all overheads £35,000/yr Chargeout rate (35,000/1440)x2= say £50 per hour.

Substitute your own numbers if you dispute mine but you realistically must expect to pay anywhere between £40 to £60 per hour when you take into account factors like supply and demand.

Reply to
Edward W. Thompson

HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.