House of Horrors

[John Laird]

Yes, I know it's crap TV, but faced with a pile of ironing on a wild and windy Friday night, oddly compulsive.

I now understand the stories about ex-city types retraining as plumbers. £150/hr in 30-minutes lumps, nearly all of which is spent standing about looking at one's watch, farting, making up lies, or rubbing your head. It's just like being a market trader !

One loose wire on an immersion heater turned into 1.5 hrs labour, unnecessary replacement of element, new seals on drain c*ck which were a figment of the imagination, breaking the old element over knee to "prove" that was the fault, finally finishing up with the wiring being re-made. Spent 10 minutes (chargeable) adding up invoice for £400-odd.

Next up, a loose ballcock on a water tank. Nicked a torch found in the loft, sat around, replaced two ballcocks (one on ch tank), kept old ballcocks, claimed second one was about to flood house, charged for three half-hours even though only present for two, £350 thank you very much.

Breathtaking.

[Phil]

Yes, but they have now two new ballcocks..

[PoP]

And presumably a plumber they won't be using again.

PoP

[Neil]

Haven't you anything better to do on a Friday night?

[a]

Quite. Dont forget the fence they were having put up on the patio that had a

3' drop onto the garden. The guy that did the quote suggested 8' posts sunk 2' into the ground giving a 3' high fence abouve the patio (sounds reasonable). When they came to do it, they just bolted metal post sockets on to normal 1-2"(?) thick patio flags and put 3' posts in them then nailed the panels to the posts with a nail or 2. It was flimsy as hell and you could see all the bolts protruding 3" below the flags!? This cost them £495 IIRC.

[Rick Dipper]

This is why I DIY.

I may screw up a few jobs, and maybe not get some as good as a good pro, but I have no coyboys ripping me off...........

Rick

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

Coyboys are too shy to rip you off.

[John Laird]

True. I try to make a point of acquiring a basic understanding of a job that I am not going to do myself in order to get a feel for a reasonable charge. I also wouldn't leave a tradesman on his own for long at £150/hr. Probably better to lay on the smarm, point out how skilled he must be and could you watch a master in action ?!

[Angela]

It's a pity they don't show a few excellent tradesmen to balance the show - at least if they are in our area we would know who we could call and get a good service!

Angela

[Steve Firth]

While I was out of the UK my daughter's PC stopped working. So she called out a "PC repair technician" on the advice of another (brain dead) relative. When I got back it still wasn't working and she had a bill for £72. Not only that but the "technician" had set a BIOS password so that it wasn't possible to get into the BIOS at startup.

The invoice detailed his work as "detect and eliminate fragmented files, repair damaged files." That's right, he started the PC and ran Scandisk and Defragmenter. So that's £75 he expected for an hour of sitting on his arse and he tried to make sure that any future problems would have to be referred to him by passwording the BIOS. Cheap little crook.

I called at his office, strangely enough he has decided to forget about the invoice.

[No-one]

The only one I remember was a programme dealing with woodworm. Plenty of "crooks" but one chap just said leave some paper down and if the holes were active, there would be holes in the paper and then you would no treatment was needed. Either no charge or jut a fiver. The programme did name him, which I thought rather unfair. Other "tradesmen" called to the same thing wanted to treat the whole house for hunderds/thousand+

[Witchy]

Yes, but that wouldn't make 'good telly' would it, and if it's on the Beeb it would be unfair advertising.

You never see shows about excellent driving do you :)

-- cheers,

witchy/binarydinosaurs

[Huge]

We had a roofing bloke round to investigate where we were getting water in, and he just showed me where the problem was and how to repair it - no charge. Top bloke.

[John Laird]

I "had" to call a plumber one cold Sunday morning (i.e. someone made me) to attend to a failed boiler. He replaced the thermocouple, showed me how to do it, and told me where the nearest plumbers merchant was so I could obtain a spare. And charged the grand sum of £15. (Maybe £30 in today's money.)

*And* that was in the middle of the Thatcher years.

[Andy Hall]

Which demonstrates very well that excess regulation is not in the interest of the consumer..........

.andy

To email, substitute .nospam with .gl

[Zapp Brannigan]

have no coyboys ripping me off...........

Agreed totally.

I just finished making a large back garden fence (12 x 8ft posts, 72 x

14ft planks). I did it to match the nextdoors fence on the other side. They paid a "pro" to do theirs, and it cost them £1200. I bought the materials and did the job myself over a long weekend total:£450. The fence is better than nextdoors (at their own admission), as i paid attention to detail whilst building it, and was not working to a deadline. The neibour now wishes they did their theirself....