To be fed up of trades men and their lies

Some of them aren't terribly bright or evolved.

For anyone whose kid is training to be a tradesperson, there is a massive gap in the market for a brand with a strapline ‘I’ll turn up when I said I would’. They would win lots of business.

Sounds good in theory, but we've used that kind of firms a few times and nearly always, whilst the "owner" comes out for quotes etc., and the office people do the administration, it ends up that a random subbie comes out to do the job, and neither the owner nor the admin people could give a shit when the subbie(s) turns out to be a waste of space.

We've had that with a boiler replacement, new kitchen, and new bathroom. The kitchen in particular was very annoying as it was very expensive and from a "posh" local showroom. The people doing the work were just random subbies who didn't seem to have even worked together before and were constantly blaming each other for delays, blaming the owner for not allowing enough time, not ordering the right parts, etc. May as well have just ordered the kitchen directly and got some random subbies ourselves to fit it!

I think you also need to check with them that they use their own employees - a good sign is if they have their own sign-written vans (though not always a guarantee) - at least it looks more like they have their own staff if they have their own vans!

I've had my fair share of lying, clumsy, careless, unreliable tradesmen and have found that the only way I can get a decent one is to go through a business that has office premises and a receptionist to organise the jobs. They're more expensive but reliable and the work is to a good standard as they're accountable to the company.
We have a very good home maintenance business locally that will arrange any and every sort of work (if you're willing to pay their exorbitant rates).

This is a really important point - in theory, the technology would make things easier, but as a lot of tradies have gone into trades because they might have struggled with comprehension and organisation in school, and even with good apps, a lot of people still need someone to sit down in person and show them - we all learn differently after all!
I do also wonder if the worsening organisation is to do with your second point - often women were funnelled into admin or typing at school, and then women traditional have taken charge of social calendars in the home. You can see how in a traditional setup, a SAHM would step in to help. Now people generally need two wages coming in, so there isn't someone at home able to manage it.
The cynic in me would also say women got sick of doing all the organising for men for both of them in their personal and his professional life. A family friend had a couple of friends where this was the setup in the 90s/2000s, and in one of the couples the husband wanted the wife to do all the organising and admin, as she was part time, yet referred to it as 'his' money, and paid the bills and spent it down the pub but was very tight on her getting a haircut or them taking the kids anywhere. The other, the wife did all the admin etc, including the requisite loophole finding to avoid paying as much tax as possible/cash in hand. They were both shocked when they divorced - her that he was very quickly filled in by others in the industry that his low income reporting (enabled by her) meant he could pay bugger all child support, him by the fact that he had for years derided her contribution as 'helping me out a bit on the admin' which actually was quite a lot of hard work that he struggled to wrap his head around.

Drives me nuts!! I hate needing anything doing that needs a tradesman because it's so much faff.

Like getting them to come out and quote in the first place is the world's hardest task.

We are currently having 4 new internal doors upstairs. After weeks of faff we managed to get a guy to come, granted he came exactly when he said he would but could only fit 3 because the 4th needed a new door frame.

He's now let us down 3 times since coming to fit the 4th door and door frame. Was meant to come today, then text and said the frame needs ordering in and won't be here until Thursday now. So we'll see if he shows up Thursday...Will probably 'get delayed on his job' again and not show up and it'll be another week waiting. We're due a baby in Sept and I just want the work finishing and my house clean and tidy again!

Is it partly to do with too many one-man bands who don't want to employ someone to organize things and deal with the customer service side?

As a Project Manager I found it painful to watch how they 'organised' our work. Builders are often juggling multiple jobs, and I think prioritise whatever way of working that will increase their profits (or they're just incompetent). I mean, I can see why, but it's painful for the client...

@PTAProblems
Thank you for taking the time to explain the situation from your side of things 🙏

Ok I feel like to need to defend some (not all) tradesmen and give my opinion on why so many tradesmen are like this.

DH is a roofer, he is punctual 99% of the time, gets his quotes out quickly and runs a tight ship. The reason for this is that I run the back office. On his own he would be useless at that side. I am making some generalisations here based on DH and his tradesman friends ...

• They are excellent at their trade but have no experience outside of this and have learnt their ways from the tradesmen they did apprenticeships under.
• The attitudes in the way they treat customers are ingrained in them from when they start their apprenticeships.
• Many have poor computing and literacy skills because they didn't do well academically and many left school as soon as they could aged 15 or 16 and didn't sit GCSEs etc. The exception to this is electricians and plumbers.

People underestimate how difficult a job it is. The more reliable and customer focused either have help with admin, often from their partner, or work from 7am to midnight and often work weekends too. The majority who are disorganised, it's not that they don't care, they just can't manage the customer service/admin side. I'm not saying this is good from a customer point of view just the way it is.

Customers have become increasingly difficult and demanding since the pandemic. Many jobs now we get customers trying to persuade us to do extras for free, some even trying to withhold money if we don't do them. Pretending they didn't understand the detailed written quote they received before work started.

There is no understanding at all from many if a job overruns often due to bad weather, and their job has to be pushed back. Even though we inform them as soon as we can when this happens. We have had customers sending in complaints because they had a job that needed dry weather to complete and it wasn't done on the day we gave them because it was raining that day. We never don't just turn up, people are always told and still they complain. How we are supposed to control the weather I don't know!

We have had two cases of neighbours leaving false, negative reviews because they have been unhappy that their neighbour was getting work done and objected to it before the start of the work. They don't state this in the reviews of course, just make up lies pretending we've done shoddy work for them.

In the main our customers are OK. We get a few nice ones who make the job so much more pleasant to do.

Don't get me started on apprenticeships! We have stopped doing them because without fail every single one has been a disaster - turning up late or not turning in, constantly on phones, spitting off scaffolding, foul language, I could go on. These all came recommended from the college as 'nice kids'.

My tip when choosing a tradesman is to make sure they are a member of a trade association. Then you do have somewhere to go if you're unhappy. We get calls to rectify so much work when people have used the cheapest roofer and there are so many con men out there.

I wouldn't advocate telling them that you'll give them an hour to turn up for the quote as suggested previously. They will just put you down as a nightmare customer and not turn up or refuse the job!

Hope this helps to shine some light on the other side if you like. I'm not saying there aren't some awful tradesmen just trying to explain the other side!

@Flyinghighhighinthesky
I salute you!

For example my tiler said yesterday he'd be here around 11. He said that in front of the project manager who was giving him a dressing down about the importance of being honest and really emphasising that if he said 11, be there at 11, don't lie, if you mean 2 say 2. The guy was all 'Yes, yes, I know, sorry'.

Was he here at 11 or even 11.30? Was he fuck! No sign of him yet...

PeachSnake
I’m going to borrow your genius!! I think I’ll have like 17 grannies whose funerals I have to attend (not all at once). That’ll be my excuse.

I'm a single female, living alone. This week I am fitting a new sink and toilet in a downstairs loo. I am also laying a new floor. I also re-fitted the main bathroom and a new kitchen. Next project is digging up the garden and laying a patio, including building a new shed. I'm 62 years old!! My family are all tradesmen and I wouldn't dream of asking for their help - they bodge work in their own houses so there's no way they are touching mine. I don't even ask their advice - thanks to the internet and trades forums, I get all the 'training' I need.

Everyone knows they're not all like that. I'm sure everyone has had a good one or two who do what they say they're going to do, complete work to a high standard and are straight with customers.

But it's the fact that you really remember those guys as the exception rather than the rule. And are usually pathetically grateful for behaviour that really should be standard!

I'm sure from the other side plenty of customers are arseholes too.

Can I just quietly point out that not all tradesman are like this. Dh is an electrician and we have been running our own company for 25 years, no advertising just word of mouth.

We are a very small company and have always had an apprentice, supporting them completely through their training. I talk to the tutors every term to find out how they are doing and what we can do to help them. All of our apprentices have stayed with us after qualifying only moving on with our encouragement as I feel they need to see what other companies are like and to stretch themselves, telling them they can always come back. We take students from all local schools for work experience for years 10 and 12.

We book work in and turn up when agreed or communicate if there is an issue with a previous job or an emergency- just like you would if ill or sick children..

Over the years however I have found that some customers manners have deteriorated. Our terms are payment within 4 weeks of invoice but the majority will ignore that and not pay for 6-8 weeks despite emails and phone calls, or they will try to get the price dropped as although they agreed the quote they no longer do. One recently asked me to drop the price as their holiday cost more than planned!

Yes, there are bad tradesmen, just like any other profession but it certainly isn’t all.

My bathroom disaster was years before brexit. The guy was a local, really pleasant and I knew him and his wife from the gym. Started off with so much goodwill. Ended up with no bath or shower a week before christmas, when he walked off the job. DS was three. Oh god it was all absolutely awful.

Wow, I reckon this would be the first 100% yanbu post if you'd included the votes.
I'm longing to phone my plumber once we hit big recession time, tell him I've got a shed load of work and I need him there at 8am on Friday. Come 8am Friday my phone will be off and he'll be at my gate phoning me. I'll reply at 3 pm to say I got called off for a cup of coffee with my mum so couldn't make it, come Monday instead. Repeat.

I leave honest reviews. A plasterer contacted me and asked me to change the review as I was literally taking food from his children's mouths. I had paid him 5K for a poor experience and questionable finish so I declined.

They are taking the piss.

I also blame Brexit for the lack of competition that makes charlatans think they can overcharge for poor service. Apprenticeships are not the answer. Competent tradespeople undercutting prices is the way to go and that means opening trade so that we who pay are not held hostage.

I agree with this.

I could have written your post. We had our house gutted - new kitchen, flooring, bathrooms, plastering etc.

I would say EVERY single one the people involved in the house has lied.

“Oh no we had to leave that gap between the tile and your kitchen cabinet because of x”. Next guy comes along and tells me that’s bollocks.

Paint “snot” everywhere, and when I pointed it out to the painter in the nicest way humanly possibly he got massively defensive and explained why its impossible for that not to happen.

So many lies. Very demoralising.

Me too. I am honestly still traumatised by last renovation we had done which was eight years ago.

"Cashless" won't work to stop tax evasion. They'll just find other ways. Look at money laundering and drug dealing - the "big" money changes hands in ways other than cash/bank, such as guns, works of art, yachts, sports cars, etc.

Tradesmen who do work for each other, do it on a "bartering" type of system. I.e. a plumber will do a bit of work for an electrician, and in turn, an electrician will do some work for the plumber at a future date. It's done that way, without money changing hands, to avoid tax, CIS tax, VAT, etc. Not much of a problem when it's work for others, as the tax loss/gain balances out, but it's plain and simple tax evasion when one tradie is doing work on another's own home or an investment property, etc., where there is a tangible tax loss.

We even had a "cash in hand" gardener once who wanted us to pay one of his suppliers directly so it wouldn't go through his books "to avoid VAT". The thing was, the supplies weren't even for our job - we were having a lawn laid and he wanted us to send a cheque to Howden's kitchens! Obviously, we refused as we're not paying for someone else's kitchen! We may have paid the bill for the turf if he'd wanted us to pay a landscaping firm directly, but not for something completely different. He was most put out and couldn't understand why we were being "awkward"!

This is a problem that’s been going on for at least 20 - 25 years.

Yeah it’s got nothing to do with Brexit. I had exactly the same problems pre 2016. Worst ever tradesman was a builder back in 2008 who put the kitchen he’d torn out in the back garden and then informed me he’d been banned from the tip!