Quality of repeat trade work

[jgharston]

I've been lying in bed for four hours waiting unsuccessfully to fall asleep, so I've come here for a grumble.

I really wish I could have faith in being able to go by past performance in the building trade.

Roofer did a wonderful job reroofing my house, so two years later I went back to him to reroof my flat. It dragged on and on, bits of it leaked, it was left unsealed overnight, they ignored my specific instructions to check in with the tenants on site each morning who were having to live through this, instead they were zipping up the scaffolding and bashing away at the roof with no warning, they got worse turning up, didn't return calls, so eventually I fired them and paid them off.

Scrabbling around I found an old receipt from a chap who'd repair by by window roof some years ago. I spoke to him and he was able to come and finish the job off, and did it perfectly.

Last year I needed my yard resurfaced, and some internal building work at home. Ok, I'll go with the chap that did such a good job for me a couple of years ago. Job dragged on and on, almost broke up the concrete hardstanding that was specified to stay, almost tarmaced over the broken concrete that was specified to be removed, instead of straightening the garden edging it was smashed up and replaced with road kerbs. Refused to take instruction from my business partner on site 'cos "you're a woman, you won't understand, love". Managed to stop it getting out of control, removed about a third of the work, and just got everything that had been started finished to satisfaction.

All the best advice is to go with somebody who has done well in the past, but I'm dispairing of past work being an indicator of future quality. Of the trades I use I've only got a plumber left, and he's been a star for 15 years, and at least I know that when my knees finally go he can take over the electrical work as well as he's a plumber-electrical engineer, in particular, not just a fitter, and insists on his apprentices he takes on going through on-the-job and college fitters' training and then engineering training so they're not just box stackers but understand the underlying concepts and can design a system not just follow the instructions on the back of the packet.

I'm currently feeling like I'm circling a drain again as I have a bathroom refitted and just feel that everything *will* go wrong, particulary as I'm juggling dealing with my other tenant's scote of an ex-boyfriend who came around to try and make up with her and ended up kicking the door down instead.

I dispair of constantly having to re-seek out the same trades. My ex- wife said the other day that "they" do one decent job to suck you in knowing they will be able to feed off you for future jobs.

I know this doesn't apply for the majority of people on here. Just feeling a bit pissed off with the world.

JGH

[Andy Cap]

Did she feel this way about you then ? ;-)

Andy C

[Brian Gaff]

I don't think its that they deliberately do bad jobs, but often as firms grow the staff are not all as competent or indeed committed as the founders of the business were. The trick I think is to limit your size so you can still control it and resist the temptation to use subcontractors. Its the old joke of the passed down message at the war front. Send reinforcements we are going to advance soon becomes, send three and for we are going to a dance.

Brian

[jgharston]

That's why I like my plumbers, he only takes new people on when he's got existing people trained up and competant and proved themselves on jobs.

I think that's impacting my work as well. A shop and two flats was easy to manage on my own, adding the *one* extra unit has just tipped things just so slightly over the ability for one person to look after.

I'm a Housing Association member and in the AGM reports I've noticed that their property to staff ratio, top to bottom, front line, back line, admin and everything, is about 5 properties per employee, and that does seem to be the optimum, I've seen other HAs with about the same - the local council's arms-length housing company are outraged that at 3-to-1 they are overstaffed[*].

[*]They used to have about 10,000 employees and about 65,000 houses. Due to sales, transfers, and other stuff, they now manage about 30,000 houses, but are outraged at being told they shouldn't still have 10,000 employees. [**]My figures may be way out, but it's that sort of qualitative ball park. It's been years since I've been involved in any detail of council housing. I was barred from sitting on the Housing Committee 'cos I was a landlord. Didn't stop me being a Housing Association board member - they positively welcomed me.

JGH

[ARWadsworth]

That is pure class Andy.

[Steve Firth]

You have my sympathy, it's happened to me over and over again. That's not counting the times that someone turns up and is just bloody useless from the start. Even the ones who do a decent first job can turn out nasty. The bloke who roofed the garage here quoted a fixed price and did a decent job. Then he turned up on site demanding that I pay him another £5k on top of his invoice. He brought son, wife and daughter with him.

I said I wouldn't pay him over the invoice price and that having given a fixed quote he had no right to demand the extra. He was blagging about the reasons (unexpected rise in the cost of materials etc) simply not true, I had a quote a year before for the materials and prices hadn't changed.

Then he wrote to me saying that his family had witnessed me agreeing to pay him the extra.

And I wrote to him pointing out that I had it all on tape and if he wanted to get done for perjury he could take me to court. He sent a solicitor's letter. My solicitor laughed at it. End of story.

Last month I bought five brand new doors. They were all damaged. The supplier had drawn around the damage with black felt tip pen, marked the doors with words like "damaged" and then had carefully wrapped every doors in multiple layers of plastic and cardboard and sent them to me. I rejected them.

He tried to claim courier damage, he tried to claim that I had done the damage, he offered me a 50% discount if I decided not to send them back. He made ten appointments to pick them up and never sent a courier. Sent the doors back myself, got the credit card company to do a chargeback, currently taking the bastard through small claims to get the courier fee back.

I'm truly pissed off with it and I can't understand why they do it, who lets them get away with it and how they manage to stay in business. They really deserve to go bankrupt.

[Mike Barnes]

"Men are like carpets. Lay them right and you can walk over them for the rest of your life."

[Owain]

They get a bit wrinkly after a while, but come up nicely with the vacuum cleaner.

Owain