You just can't get he customers these days......

[geoff]

Yes, I do that occasionally

[Steve Walker]

Hang up here - no point in wasting time on skinflints who are going to argue the toss.

[Steve Walker]

Well, that'd depend on the specific model & performance spec of the Female Customer, presumably

[The Medway Handyman]

Alas, in 18 months I've never come across anything like the 'Confessions of a Handyman' film.

Mind you, I have given up sex for religious reasons - God made me ugly.

[Andy Hall]

Maybe you should take up doing DIY shows on the TV - being ugly is a pre-requisite for that.

Production costs could be saved as well - some sleight of hand and here's one I made earlier.....

[The Medway Handyman]

I'd love to! Wanna be my manager?

[PJ]

Did not seem to stop the last Deputy PM.

[Stuart Noble]

We all argue the toss, it's part of our hard nosed commercial culture. It's called shopping around. If builders think they're immune, they're kidding themselves. Let's see what happens next year when the money supply dries up further.

[nimbusjunk]

The idiot builder who took two of our decorative lamps and used them as lead lights and covered them in plaster and seemed genuinely perplexed as to why I was annoyed just before a huge influx of cheaper polish builders came to our area may have ended up wishing that he had looked after his existing customers a little better.

HTH Phil

[Andy Hall]

You're kidding. British people who have not traveled much beyond our shores or Beni generally have little concept of negotiation. Most will pay the asking price in a shop for example.

Travel the relatively short distance to Holland and the culture is quite different. There is considerable sensitivity not only to price but also to discount - hence often high starting prices with plenty of room to come down. The game is not so much about the price paid but the extent to which the customer feels he beat down the supplier. The term Dutch auction is well applied.

Go further afield to parts of the middle east and it's far more so. Even after the price is agreed, the customer may well continue to ask for more things or a lower price, so saying no and being prepared to walk away is certainly necessary.

That's not shopping around. Shopping around is simply following the prices bid by the suppliers. It has nothing to do with being hard nosed. Picking the lowst price is really easy

This is simply market dynamics at work - supply/demand

[ARWadsworth]

They have gypsies in the middle east?

Adam

[nightjar]

I am not in favour of having all my eggs in one basket. However, since I gave up making medical devices, there are only two - printer supplies and specialist plumbing and heating supplies.

Colin Bignell

[nightjar]

I prefer the phrase large boned.

Colin Bignell

[Andy Hall]

Definitely

[Weatherlawyer]

I would let the man go with the idea that he was getting the job done at rock bottom prices first thing in the morning but on the condition that he gets everything ready first.

Then not turn up.

Then if he phones to complain say I was just going to phone him and tell him that I had an emergency call out that was just finishing off and would be there a little later.

And so on.

I might even turn up about 6 o'clock at night -if I was going that way to the pub or wherever, just to see if he was still cooking.

[Stuart Noble]

Nice

[Mike Clarke]

Didn't they originate from Egypt?

[nightjar]

Low surface temperature radiator covers for hospitals and care homes and insect screens for air inlets and overflows on water storage cisterns. In the domestic sizes, the latter are known as water byelaw kits, but our screens are for commercial systems and stock sizes cover overflow pipes up to 4" diameter;6" and 8" overflows are not unknown and we have been asked to supply screens for overflows up to 600mm diameter. Being known by people like NHS Estates Departments, HM Prisons Service and Local Authority Education Departments is more important than having a web site, but we inherited a rather poor one from the previous owner at

that shows the radiator covers. If I can ever get Norman to reply to the emails that Nominet keep sending him, when I have told them they need to write to him, I might even get control of the domain and be able to put up a decent one.

Colin Bignell

[Lobster]

Maybe you just set up

instead...

[Ed Sirett]

I find your time estimate for the assembly agrees closely with mine.

This guy is such a pillock you would not want him as a customer.

I would have been tempted to say to him, "Why don't you change your job to do what I do, if you think I'm earning such a lot!"