OTish. Why does my heart sink....

[ARW]

And you managed to post that whilst looking at Seven of Nine's t*ts?

[Windmill]

I don't think it's always cut-and-dried. If you want something done that's a little unusual, it could be difficult and expensive to find someone who will do it.

I would really like to see coax clipped in some way to tenement buildings, especially at the roof edges, but no one does that. Too difficult when they're three or four stories high and each flat has traditional high ceilings. So the cables just swing in the wind. (Not that I know how one could do better. I'd imagine cherry pickers cost too much.)

I'm hugely impressed by the skill of some tradesmen, and totally underwhelmed by others. I'm no kind of a craftsman, I'm as slow as all hell, but I'm better than some of them.

Recently I was happy to pay someone to lay carpet for me. But if I hadn't first moved the furniture, removed the old carpet, screwed down a loose floorboard, and put down some new springy underlay, I would have been charged quite a bit more and very likely nothing would have been done about the floorboard. (Which was loose because some tradesman in the past had installed a ring main, without proper cable protection above the notched joists. I was going to nail, but luckily I looked before nailing.)

As a matter of curiosity, do you pay a plumber his normal rates when you need to have minor plumbing work done?

[Jethro_uk]

When I used to work in the motor trade, you'd get the occasional customer who'd argue the toss over paying the retail price for spares. My reply was that part of the mark-up we made on spares covered the customer in the event the parts were faulty, since the warranty only covered the parts, not the labour for replacement. Which used to satisfy some.

But you'd always get one who'd go to a motor factors, buy the spares, and tell us to fit them. Which got "customer supplied" written across the invoice. If those failed, we'd charge upfront *before* removing the failed part, plus insist on refitting the parts with own own supplied one. At full price.

Best time was a really arsey customer who object to paying MRP for brake pads, and turned up insisting we fitted the ones he bought. Duly we put the car on the freewheel ramp, removed the wheels, and calipers, and discovered the ones he'd got were for an earlier model. Boss called him up and said would have to pay (cash) for the labour we'd already done to remove the old parts. Plus labour to replace the old parts. When customer objected he was told it was either that, or pay for storage as the dismantled car was clogging up the workshop.

That said, one customer that was music to our ears were the ones who came in, explained the problem and then added ..

"So I had a look myself ...", as it almost invariably would lead to an inspection with sheared bolts, rounded heads, bent or broken covers, cracked mountings, and a general (costly !) clusterfuck.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Remember taking an old Jaguar to an exhaust specialist to have the entire system changed. Don't like working on exhausts - it's so much easier with decent access and the right tools. After they had broken most of the studs on the manifold, they stopped and said I'd have to take it to a proper garage as they couldn't fix that. Grudgingly they replaced the bits they'd removed so it could be driven again.

Got it home and removed the manifolds to replace the studs. And replaced the entire system with one bought from the local factors.

Point of this story? You've probably got to search hard to find a garage which will do a better job than a competent DIYer. Not difficult to find one to take your money, though.

[Jethro_uk]

We knew from experience to NEVER touch the downpipe nuts until they had been heated cherry-red with acetylene.

We had a good trade in fixing other garages fuckups. The best being the local branch of KwikFit. They'd mess up, customer would come to us, we'd quote for the job* and they'd sue Kwik Fit.

*Depending on the car it could be a few hundred quid: 1) remove cylinder head 2) remove exhaust manifold 3) If you are lucky, you can manage to weld a nut to the stud, and then heat the manifold in a kiln to be able to tease the stud out. However if not ... 4) Purchase new manifold (upwards of £100) 5) decoke and replace cylinder head.

Another classic was garages who seemed to have no idea how to replace the timing belt on the classic FIAT twin cam engine. To this day I can't see how they managed to get it so wrong, but having to strip the cylinder head and change all 8 valves was a nice little earner.

[ARW]

Yep. I have had "customer supplied" written across invoices before. It was not because I was bothered about saving a few quid it's just I bought a part that I could swap eg brake pads or disks that were getting due for replacement and then something else went wrong that I cannot easily fix (eg a wheel bearing) before I fitted them. Whilst my car/van is on their ramp they might as well fit my parts that I had bought.

I have no problem with a lack of warranty by supplying such parts myself in this situation as I could still replace the parts I had supplied myself.

[The Medway Handyman]

IME plumbers simply aren't interested in minor plumbing work. Which is where I come in.

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

Usually, cheaper, nastier stuff that doesn't fit right or takes an age to fiddle around getting pipes to seal or bracketsin the wrong places, etc.