Why are tradesmen so expensive

Soldato
Joined
22 Feb 2014
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2,701
i blame the internet.
As a society it has become ingrained into us to shop around for a better price.

add to that that as well as genuine tradeys out there just trying to earn a living there are also the ones trying to rip people off as much as possible.
 
Soldato
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7 Mar 2011
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Oldham, Lancashire
i blame the internet.
As a society it has become ingrained into us to shop around for a better price.

add to that that as well as genuine tradeys out there just trying to earn a living there are also the ones trying to rip people off as much as possible.

But then they don't understand why the circuit breaker keeps popping, after they just paid 84p for a re-wire.
 
Joined
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Wilds of suffolk
My main frustration wiht trades is often getting them to answer straight questions in the first place.
Eg Im in the process of selecting a company to install a log burner, we aren't settled on the design yet and some models have high markups plus some guys seem to like certain brands and not others, so I ask each one "are you willing to install only or will you work on supply and install only" 1 guy who was top of my list due to location and work done before refuses to answer the question, he wants to come round and quote (which means a survey and a fee to do so) yet until he answers that simple question he may drop to below 3 on our list and we are only inviting 2-3 to quote (to avoid wasting ours and their time)

I am dreading having to get a quote on a small area of plastering I will need doing, its literally a door size, as i am filling in a doorway. So both sides of a door, I will be doing all the blocking in, and making good so will be a simple skim. Probably 1-2 hours work for a decent plasterer. So even if they want half a days money, its going to be a ball ache getting one to actually do it as these seem to be the sorts of job they will only commit to if there is more work in it for them.
 
Associate
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5 Oct 2006
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885
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Cardiff
I don't mind paying for trades but here in Wales getting one of the lazy buggers to do a job is murder. In a Kent 75%+ would respond to an enquiry, visit and quote. In South Wales I'm finding only 50% turn up to the appointment to view, only 50% of those quote and finally I've had a few tradesmen quote agree to do the work then not turn up. I reckon I get 15% success rate on engaging a tradesman.

I would agree with this being in Cardiff
 
Caporegime
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28 Feb 2004
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Maybe I am wrong I am sure someone on here can let us know the actual facts.

But I was always under the impression that if you’re a homeowner and you carry out your own electrical work, then if should you ever move or rent your property you will be asked to present all the certification for the electrical work carried out.

Obviously as you are a diy'er you cannot certify anything, but also as far as I was aware you cannot obtain the appropriate certification at a later stage following your own installation of electrical work,

I believe most competent electricians will not go and certify home diy'ers work, only work carried out by a professional in the first place, who should, obviously have certified it themselves.

Also don't forget, if someone is injured, or a property is damaged, your household insurance will be invalid if you do not have all the appropriate certification to prove the system is safe.
 
Don
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Because I can earn more than that doing a job that I am already skilled at. I think you misunderstood as well. I'm not expecting to pay £50/day but I have just had a quote to hang 4 doors and they want £240 for a days work. A plumber came in a wanted around that as well. I don't mind paying for things but I resent paying a lot for work that is not very skilled in the grand scheme of things.

£240 for a days work, minus £40 for the VAT is £200 / day. Assuming a 5-day, 48-week year (accounting for typical UK holidays) that is a "salary" of £48,000 / year.

The tradesmen then needs to pay for insurance, tools, maintenance of vehicles and other overheads on top of that (storage / lockup for tools, office space etc, advertising). Recall they spend a lot of time visiting customers like you in order to generate quotes / sales leads too. Include time for repeat visits if any adjustments are needed (or water leaks in the case of plumbing).

I don't begrudge paying anyone a reasonable wage to do work that I am too lazy to learn to do myself.
 
Soldato
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Sufferlandria
But I was always under the impression that if you’re a homeowner and you carry out your own electrical work, then if should you ever move or rent your property you will be asked to present all the certification for the electrical work carried out.

The home report will show this. If it has all of the required certification, it'll be a category 1 on the report. If it doesnt, it'll be category 2. Doesn't really mean much though as every single home report I looked at when buying a house had the electrical system listed as category 2. Maybe it would effect a new build or recent renovation if you did some work which knocked it down from a catgeory 1 to category 2, but I dont think many home buyers care about that.
 
Soldato
Joined
30 Aug 2006
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4,746
Maybe I am wrong I am sure someone on here can let us know the actual facts.

But I was always under the impression that if you’re a homeowner and you carry out your own electrical work, then if should you ever move or rent your property you will be asked to present all the certification for the electrical work carried out.

Obviously as you are a diy'er you cannot certify anything, but also as far as I was aware you cannot obtain the appropriate certification at a later stage following your own installation of electrical work,

I believe most competent electricians will not go and certify home diy'ers work, only work carried out by a professional in the first place, who should, obviously have certified it themselves.

Also don't forget, if someone is injured, or a property is damaged, your household insurance will be invalid if you do not have all the appropriate certification to prove the system is safe.


I'm currently renovating a house. I do most things that do not involve going above the guttering (im not good with heights). Each time i pull a room down to the joists and brick work i find an astonishing amount of poor tradesman work. The electrics were signed off in this house, i have a certificate to prove it. However the work that has been done is very poor.

Getting something 'signed off' is a total farse and not to be trusted, its just as bad as letting an average diy'er loose. I'm certanly not the only one seeing this. In the real world a 'sign off' certificate is about as useful as a cardboard box is at stopping bullets.
If someone does a lot of rework, its all under floor boards and chased into walls and no one is ever going to see it again. If someone comes to sign electrics off, which they will do for a cut of your earnings, they'll take a few sockets off the wall and make sure you have got a sleeve to indicate the earth, or a sleeve on the live line on a light switch, and thats about it. They will not pull up floorboards and track cables. They will not check you have put brick pillars and insulation on a ground floor, they will not check you have replaced wood lintles with concrete.

When we bought the house the owner had to pay £65 to get what is called a 'No regs policy' this covered us for all the work that was done on the house that had not been 'signd off', this included a 'self fitted' drop curb, building an extension within a certain distance to a drain, and new windows. So they saved hundreds of pounds by not getting things 'signed off'. We understood what this meant for us, but we already had plans to pull down the extension and the whole street was going to be 'drop curbed' by the council, so all wrong doings would be sorted. This shows that you do not have to get things signed off if you want to move.

The whole ethos for someone signing stuff of is junk. If an owner has botch their electrics they are not going to tell anyone they did rework... "oh that must have been the previous owners, i didnt touch anything"

In sort, a peice of paper will not shield you from falling objects.

Next door house to us was bought very cheap and botched to hell, it was all signed off. We are on the 3rd person to move in there now, its only been 2.5 years since the builder who bought it sold it. Each new person had a full servey done on the house, and all have failed to point out the problems. The original builder who bought the house showed me around a few times trying to show off his work, it was a joke.

I'm not saying its right not to get things signed off by a 'professional' but it is pointless. Anyone who has botched their electrics will not tell anyone so therefor not get it signed off.

We had a new combi boiler fitted, the 'professional' left us with a gas leak. He had a great many good reviews on check a trade. There are just too many bad 'professionals' out there to trust any of them.
 
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Soldato
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Swindon UK
Swindon very hard to find tradespeople and more often than not you need to resort to the call centre based outfits in the Thomsons etc. That's generally £80 before they get out the van. The last time we got a plumber out (when a new tap install went wrong, a story I related on here at the time) the guy came from Newport (Gwent) some 60 miles away.

You pays your money and takes your choice and for anything water, gas or spark related I'd rather pay £200 for a decent job than £60 cash in hand to a member of the "travelling community", who happened to "Just be in your area, sir".
 
Soldato
Joined
30 Aug 2006
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4,746
Swindon very hard to find tradespeople and more often than not you need to resort to the call centre based outfits in the Thomsons etc. That's generally £80 before they get out the van. The last time we got a plumber out (when a new tap install went wrong, a story I related on here at the time) the guy came from Newport (Gwent) some 60 miles away.

You pays your money and takes your choice and for anything water, gas or spark related I'd rather pay £200 for a decent job than £60 cash in hand to a member of the "travelling community", who happened to "Just be in your area, sir".

This is exactly the attitude that makes bad trademen. You dont necessary get a better job because you throw more cash at someone.
If more people got off their backsides and worked out how to sort a dripping tap, it would put more pressure on tradesmen to do a better job.
 
Associate
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5 Sep 2008
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Karazhan
don't forget that plumbers and electricians do a apprenticeship that takes years to complete . you can't expect tradesman to work for next to nowt or near the min wage , have worked along side plumbers and sparky's believe me you cant pick all the knowledge you need to be properly qualified in quick time as you suggest. once helped fetch and carry for a plumber doing a massive boiler room on a commercial build it was a work of art.

I'll swap out a socket my self or change a light switch and change a light fitting but any more that i would get a fully qualified person in i once came a croper trying to change a light switch had multiple switches lol bugger if i could get it to work and as for plumbing nah i wont even go there :p

i would guess up here trades would charge £100 - £150 per day these days,.
 
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Soldato
Joined
29 Mar 2007
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4,510
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Swindon UK
This is exactly the attitude that makes bad trademen. You dont necessary get a better job because you throw more cash at someone.
If more people got off their backsides and worked out how to sort a dripping tap, it would put more pressure on tradesmen to do a better job.

Depends on the job, but I'd rather have a proper receipt and guarantee from a genuine company than the "word" of a traveller working off a mobile phone and leased address location. We had an example of that last year with some groundwork done in the garden, which was one of these card in the door cash in hand outfits. Never again!

On the other point, done and do plenty of odd jobs myself including draining/cleaning/refilling CH and leaking taps, The problem last time was the old mixer tap was completely seized and eventually needed cutting off with an angle grinder! And for anything gas related, it has to be a professional anyway.
 
Soldato
Joined
5 Mar 2010
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12,372
I just did a rewire and was haggled down on everything. Then I learned that the range oven they had bought cost more than the entire rewire job.

Not only had I competitively rewired the house, adding a lot of extra lighting, a whole new kitchen area with plenty of additional sockets, modernised the completely out of date earthing and consumer unit, modernised the meter tails to comply with current regulations. I had also provided multimedia points with power, TV aerials, phone and internet sockets and wired for SKY TV included in that price.

Then they try to haggle over £200 when they've spent THOUSANDS on a damned oven.

People just don't appreciate the work that goes into the job. They begrudge paying a professional to do a professional job but are happy to pay ridiculous disproportionate amounts on televisions, coffee makers, iPads and other such trinkets.

But that's the point isn't it. You don't get to see the craftsmanship of an electrician's work, or a plumber. The unforseen issues that arise during a job. It's just a socket, it's just a toilet bowl.

Look at my fancy food blender, it's got glossy red paint and flashing gizmo doodats on it.

A lot of that comes down to perception.

No-one can really see your wiring and additional lighting/sockets.

Whereas a range oven sits boldly in a kitchen.

Whilst the wiring is obviously a fundamental part of the house, you can see why people are reluctant to pay over the odds for something they can't necessarily see.
 
Soldato
Joined
11 Sep 2013
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12,324
I don't mind paying for trades but here in Wales getting one of the lazy buggers to do a job is murder.
Is there that much work for them in Wales, then?

My main frustration wiht trades is often getting them to answer straight questions in the first place.
A lot depends on the particular circumstances and they'll need to see it before they can answer it. Kinda like phoning to ask a mechanic what's wrong with your car, when he's 6 miles away and doesn't have super-zoom x-ray vision.
Can I install a boiler? Yes.
Can I install it in your custom-designed faux-brick treehouse? .....err.... dunno. I'd have to look at it.

And then there's the simple fact of it not being a big enough or particularly fun job that they just don't want to bother with... which, being self-employed, they don't have to if they so choose. Probably why they're self-employed!

I'd rather pay £200 for a decent job than £60 cash in hand to a member of the "travelling community", who happened to "Just be in your area, sir".
Sir???!!!
You have some rather polite ******, especially for Swindon...!!
 
Soldato
Joined
27 Mar 2013
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9,199
If you want to complain about overpaid and uneducated people, I suggest you look at footballers:p. I've had a few bit and bobs done to my house over the years and I can't say any of them have done a bad job. Just pay the money and hope for the best.
 
Soldato
Joined
4 Jul 2012
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16,910
Well if you had half a brain then you'd of learned how to do it by now, surely?

And if you are continuously getting people in to quote on jobs and you're surprised by the costs perhaps it's a problem with your expectations, not their inflated prices :rolleyes:
Anyone with half a brain knows that "have" and "of" aren't interchangeable.
 
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