To be at the end of my tether with tradies

Huh... That's literally what they're called.

They call themselves that lol

Anyway, OP.
I've said this before on another thread, but I grew up in NZ where being a tradie is a great, well paid and respected job. They treat it like a proud career and don't nearly mess about as much. We still have the issues with misogyny though.

When I moved to the UK I was shocked and disgusted at how shoddy the work was, how unreliable they were and they just didn't give a shit about anything, including their reputations.

Everyone I know says the same thing and has the same issues, so I think it's a huge problem in the UK.

(Now I am in Thailand and it's different again. You can get someone to the house within an hour and the job is just done immediately. It's almost disconcerting haha).

I can't understand why poor service has anything to do with being busy, give a date for 6 or 10 weeks in the future. I get trades can have a lot of variation time wise so if a 2 day job turns into a 4 day job then you msg the next few jobs and advise them. There is no excuse for the constant poor management of business. I often wonder how these trades people feel when they make appointments. Would it be OK if they turn up to a 7pm restaurant booking and be told it sorry it will be 8.30 or go to the dentist booked a month in advance to be told they are busy today, try tomorrow. I don't understand why they operate the way they do. I recently had to chase up three people and found myself thinking how ridiculous they were being, 1 was excellent by comparison.

Where in the UK are you, @hereismydog? I have a pretty decent builder/bricklayer and plumber on hand (DH and his mate) and can usually rustle up other trades, too but you'd need to be in Kent.

Are you being the dramatic, annoying little lady, sort yourself out and let the man get on with it, make sure you praise him daily, and question nothing. Maybe pay him extra 🤣🤣
Ah Op seriously I could have written your post myself saying all of the above a few years ago, it’s a walking nightmare, then when the work is done you so traumatises you can hardly bring yourself to like it. Just have lots of wine to get yourself through it😉

Going rate round here for basic electrical work is £115 an hour.

For wiring a plug?

Ach, their time’s running out - overconfident breed.

‘So Mr Handyman, what did you do with your life?’

’Messed good humans around. I irritated and overcharged people - the other type, the nice ones who achieve stuff.’

Yup. I'm glad it's not just me. We've been trying to get french doors put into our kitchen - for the last two years. May as well be asking for the moon. I don't know if we'll ever get it done

Our next door neighbour is a heating engineer. I may not have this totally correct but he says the problem is that if he takes on an apprentice he has to pay minimum wage at least from the start, but the apprentice knows nothing so he has to take time teaching, putting right their mistakes etc. I think sending them off on courses to to get certificates as well. This eats into his time and profit for at least a year.

Once qualified the apprentice usually buggers off and sets off on his own in competition, so all his investment has been for nothing - he doesn't get his investment back in the shape of a competant employee for a few years. The government is effectively using him as a free trainer - very little help for taking on a student.

In ye very olden days parents paid skilled workmen for training their children and were grateful if their kids were accepted.

However I think that decent, thorough training at colleges is needed now for trades, because there are too many fraudsters who would take advantage of an old fashioned apprenticeship approach, ie. being paid to take on an apprentice, and rip off both students and government funding..

I genuinely think we need more women in trades as I think as on a whole we are more efficient than men. I am being serious when I say getting a new kitchen really affected my mental health. Working and saving all that money and picking what I wanted, being treated like a queen in the showroom. Deposit paid and then treated like a piece of shit on their shoe for 8 weeks while work was being done. Big fat lazy assed men with their ass cheek showing. Doing very little each day. Not over the trauma yet 🙈

A few years back someone was meant to call to give me a quote , waited in all day they didn't call. Then they said they had but I didn't answer.
Arranged to rebook ....and asked me my address.
So not the house you bloody well called at then 😡

My favourite is when they turn up several hours late and then brush it off with ‘oh sorry there was traffic’.

I have been waiting for you since 8am, it is now 3pm, traffic cannot possibly be the reason. Just bloody call me!

@LavenderFields7 8 weeks to paint a 3 bed semi sounds about 7 weeks too long.

This is my current irrational rage.

We have a person in our family who wasn’t too invested at school. So left without real qualifications. Has, not unusually, realised that they now need some practical ones to better themselves. Can they get any kind of help or loan? Absolutely not.

So the country is crying out for properly trained electricians, plumbers etc and if you want to qualify you’ve got to fund the course yourself. Absolute madness - but don’t worry you can go to Uni and do a pointless course at 18 and get all the money you want.

Why on earth isn’t there some kind of learning fund available to those who weren’t or aren’t exams/university fodder, that is repaid in exactly the same way and delivered through approved providers? It would let them get the qualifications they need and provide a better qualified workforce.

This person is the hardest working person I know and is currently working 7 days a week - working overtime to pay for said course alongside their normal job. The sums required are minimal compared to to a degree but huge for young people having to self fund.

All trades are utterly unappreciated and undervalued. If we allow people to get better training and create a proper path into what is pretty essential work then things will improve for everyone.

Also hard agree about the current standards - it’s painful trying to get anything done!

Blame Tony Blair he was the one who encouraged everyone to go to university instead of learning a trade. As a result we now have a shortage of trained people. This means that they can mess you around and charge you what they like. If you don’t like it, there’s plenty of work around for them.

What an entitled twat.
Get a student to do it for £80-90 per day. Ridiculous

We're in the middle of an extension and re-model and I'm hating every minute of it. I've lost all trust in our builder/'project manager' (like I can call him that when he has very little in the way of organisational skills) - he randomly does things without asking us I.e. putting the underfloor hearing manifold in the utility rather than under the stairs and LYING that we told him to do that?! He is trying to charge us for things he's done without asking us and has to rectify. When I ask him questions about work detailed in the quote I'm accused of micromanaging the job and 'never in his 18 years of experience has he had a customer who goes through the quote line by line'. Hate, hate, hate the whole gaslighting, rip-off process....

What really saved me was chatting to people in my local swim group asking (sometimes begging!) for personal recommendations. If you can find someone retired whose been in the area a long time and still works because they genuinely love it—not just in it for the money—it makes all the difference as they will have their own network of electricians, plumbers etc. I agree it's a nightmare out there, I've had some absolute clowns charging £250/£350 per day without even being fast. I think it's worse out of London, at least in London there's loads of competition and it keeps it a bit cheaper.

I feel incredibly lucky reading this thread. Honestly, almost without exception the people we've had work on our house have turned up, given reasonable prices and completed the work to a decent standard and on approximately the timescale promised. This goes for roofers, carpenters, plumbers, gas people, drainage people, landscapers, electricians and the builders who did the extension - including all their subbies (apologies if that's an offensive term 😉).

This is so true. Most people don’t want a cheap price, they just want a good job done for a fair price. That seems to be too much to ask most of the time.

Honestly I think the issue is that a lot of tradespeople will mess you around, say their going to turn up for quotes and don't, or never send you the quote. Charge excessive quotes instead of being honest and say they don't want the job, do a shoddy job or lie to you and act like what your asking is unreasonable, when they actually either can't be bothered or don't have the skill. Tell you their going to do one thing and turn up and try and convince you it was you that's in the wrong when you've paid for a specific service they offered

I think most people would love to shop around but half the time trying to get one actual quote is hard enough

How on earth does it take a professional 8 weeks to paint a 3 bed semi?!

My DS has had to pass exams to qualify as a plumber- and he is now apprenticed to learn gas plumbing. It's not easy. His aim is to go onto industrial plumbing but it takes time.

I think the issue is that people want cheap and quick. I grew up with parents in trade and it was ever thus. Fact is, at the moment all supplies are very expensive. Then add in time, transport, skill. At the moment, anyone doing a job cheaply is likely not a good choice. Just as in any business, you need to do your research. People spend ages researching a sofa, yet they don't do similar for tradespeople. And then they usually go for the cheapest. Take a look at what the real costs are.

Get many quotes. Ask lots of questions. A good tradie will completely be able to tell you why their price is that price. You want quality, you pay quality prices. That doesn't mean gold plated, it means accepting that the tradesperson is buying quality pipes and fittings etc and wants todo thejob well. Any tradespeople will be able totalkyouthrough why one fitting isbetter than another. Or more suitable for your house system. The onus is on you to ask- you ask for a quote, but you need to ask questions too. Just like with any other big purchase.

The constant pressure to be cheap, quick and right now is one of the reasons my son wants into industrial- they recognise that they need to pay for proper quality and there isn't the huge pressure to be cheap when materials are expensive.

You were lucky

My experience with tradies is one of frustration and anger. They either rip you off or do a shit job or both. All bunch of chancers and time wasters. I'm getting tough now and calling shodding jobs and poor timekeeping out to their faces. Release my inner bitch. Getting worse imo with traditional older people retiring and new youth coming along thinking they know it all but know sod all....