Does this happen in other trades?

[willsy]

Don't you worry Glen We don't do too bad, just winds me up

[Streetfighter]

Yeah, we get people supplying their own parts. Still expecting some form of warranty. Or having them tell us what they've diagnosed the fault as, make us do the job, and whine when what they insisted we did had bugger all to do with the fault in the first place Man I hate people sometimes...

[D4N]

Nowt comes cheap in my trade, build off shore and mobile cranes.

 

And the company are right tight bastards so they will give no discounts

[w p e]

i get this. wayne couldnt have a look at this could yer. ME ok. fix the prob spend a hour in work time then get thanks c yer soon. not even a cup of tea. mates

 

THANKS FOR THE COFFEE KJ tell ally i said thanks

[deltamal]

Happens in all trades, I'm in engineering, and work mostly in marine grade stainless steel and employ coded welders who don't come cheap, but provide a guaranteed top quality job so I quote accordingly, and quite often get asked why we are more expensive than Joe around the corner, you get what you pay for!

[Grizzley Dell]

i do mechanical work from home, i rebuilt a "mates" sierra twin cam from scratch. when he came to collect it the lowlife didnt even say: nice one, thanks or would you like a drink for it. now i charge him 20 an hour for any work i do. funny i havent seen him for a while.

 

oh yeah WPE can i have one of your cams for a beer

[rallyesport04]

dont do private work cos people take the pi55 graft an struggle all day for a drink i can earn a better crust by doing my normal job

[bortaf]

"Hello Mr Wills, can you come and give me an estimate please?"

"Certainly Sir"

Go to see them asap

"I want an extension but i don't want to spend much money"

 

WTF!!!!!

I'm thinking of registering as a charity

Is it just me?

 

no differant to mechanics TBH, often have cars in for an MOT and get told not to spend more that a certain amount getting it through

pretty hard when you aint even gto a fail sheet to work to and if it's too much then they moan about paying for the fail and my time

seriously i had a big row with one indian doris who refused to pay for the MOT or my time cos it had failed and needed £400 of work, "well if it failed why do i have to pay" was her veiw i simply told her if she want her car back she had to pay or i'd keep it, off she goes to get her sons to come and sort me out, they turned up 10 mins later appoligised, paid me and gave me a score tip for me trouble

 

Yesterday had a K reg golf, total shitter worth maybe £200 bloke was pissing and moaning cos the repair cost £110, it had a brand new stat housing/water flange , S/H rad fan , new dizzy cap and plugs PLUSS i picked it up and dropped it back off, fook sake the parts came to £60 and i did £15 fuel getting the car and parts

[over_head_cam]

Thing is you spend hours and hours preparing a quote, then you make a load of calls and go to the job a couple of times, at your cost in the evenings and weekends when you should be spending time with your family and OSF. Only for the 'client' to be a knob

[Skimmer]

Exactly ......youve had to quote for the same jobs as me ...........

Thing is you spend hours and hours preparing a quote, then you make a load of calls and go to the job a couple of times, at your cost in the evenings and weekends when you should be spending time with your family and OSF. Only for the 'client' to be a knob

[Vista]

I've thought about the points raised and personally I don't think there's anything wrong with wanting a job done cheaply, if your available funds dictate that you can't afford to pay top dollar then what choice do you have but to look for a cheap job? In my opinion this doesn't mean that the tradesman is being asked to reduce his rates, but it does mean that he is being asked to find cheaper ways of doing things. Repairing instead of replacing for instance, i.e. patch a rusty sill instead of replace the whole thing.

 

Oh and while we're on the subject, I'd wager that for every customer that wants a good job done cheaply, there's two tradesmen who will do a cheap job expensively! There's no such program as Rogue Customers after all is there?

[bigdaz27]

im a cabbie and here this every fooking day they come out the pub and start

haggling over a few quid when they just spent £60 on beer i bet they dont go in the pub and haggle over the price of the beer

[fieldy1972]

in my experience with other decorators, plasters, chippies etc the old expression "get what you paid for" comes to mind. if a customer of mine wants a cheap job then i dont like doing them. some trades will do a cheap job and it looks like one. not all but some. im not expensive by a long shot but there are cheaper decorators than me out there and ive lost jobs to them. but 9 times out of 10 it looks like a cheap job. and ive lost count how many times ive had customers use a cheaper decorator for a job ive priced only for them to re-contact me to re-do their work. im not saying cheaper is worse, but as ive said.............."you get what you've paid for" imho

[marky4]

what pi##es me of is when you go to estimate a job, (say for £3000) then they want it all broken down and then they try and knock you down £500 i just say sorry i can stay at home and earn no money twa#s

[sarkie83]

This thread makes interesting reading, as I'm someone who is clueless when it comes to prices about doing anything do do with building work. So if I went and got a quote, i would probably be horrified with what it was gonna cost and decide I couldn't afford it.

I can see if from the point of view of quoting people/the time you have to put in, to then not hear back/try and get people to knock you down. must be frustrating...

[Von Thrash]

Hmmm . . .

 

I've worked in plant and tool hire for 8 years. In my time my depot has been through 25,000 hire contracts.

 

All the grief and shite and unreasonable demands and penny pinching and complete and utter bare faced lies our customers (builders) get from their clients, is just passed up the chain to us.

 

They all think they've got 90 day terms (and that's just before they start saying the previously quoted price is NOW too much), none of them ever ever ever admit to damaging equimpment, and when they're trying to beat me down on price and i explain that we would actually lose less money by leaving the equipment sat in our yard, i get told "not my problem, that's all i'll pay, and if you don't do this, i'll never use you again".

 

The current bulge in building firms going pop owing us big money, all with amazingly zero assetts, only to start up again next month with the same guy's wife/kid/dog as the new company director is particulaly disheartening.

 

Don't get me wrong, there are some good guys out there (mostly members on this site im sure) but, i have little sympathy for most of them.