Why are trades people so incredibly unreliable?!

[motherofkevinnotperry]

I need someone to explain why. What's so difficult with "I'm sorry, I'm not able to do that" or "I'm going to be late", "I'm fully booked", "I need to reschedule" etc etc. How long do you give them before moving on and finding someone else?

I have had more than my fair share of trades just not turning up, making false promises on work then not fulfilling it. They're all so unorganised and terrible communicators. It's so infuriating. Just tell me!

I get your frustrations but as the wife of an electrician who works 7 days a week, I can assure PP’s it has nothing to do with him being slow academically. If you educate yourself on how to actually be an electrician and what goes in to it, I can assure you wouldn’t be quite so hideously snobby.

Not my builder - he has very white Turkey teeth 😬

Not entirely sure he is my builder anymore, I’ve not seen him for nearly a month. We are 6 months into an 8 week loft conversion. He’s been sending various tradespeople round who put in half a day per week at the very most. And he never comes at all.
Grr 🤬zero communication and he never answers his phone.

This is a builder who was highly recommended - it must be me he doesn’t like.

DH has given up and is attempting (unsuccessfully)to get other tradesmen in to the finish the bits.

He’s probably on a beach somewhere spending all the thousands I’ve given him.

WTF is wrong with you ? You're the one behaving like a knob

🤣🤣🤣

Are you a psychologist? I doubt it. I am angry at being let down frequently by various different types of trades people over the past 2-3 years. If by "one of them" you mean I'm busy and find people not being respectful/aware that wasting peoples time is rude then yes I am "one of them". Let's turn this round to a perspective of a trades person. I imagine your husband would be not best pleased if he'd turned up to do a job, all equipment ready etc to find nobody in and the doors locked. He calls the homeowners, they tell him they're 10 mins away. So he waits, and waits and waits some more and nobody arrives. This continues to happen on this particular job and he's bought materials (in my case I'd paid deposits for some of the jobs as requested). He's had to put other work back because of it and rearranged other clients. Now if this happened frequently on various house calls it's not ideal is it.

I've not experienced this before from any other occupations. I'd be sacked in my job if I behaved like this and rightly so.

If you turned up for a GP appointment to find no record of your appointment and you weren't seen you'd not be happy. If this continues to happen your not going to be overly impressed. If you turned up to a hairdresser to be told they couldn't see you as planned as they'd double booked you'd not be happy. Next time your hair colour isn't in stock but nobody told you that beforehand. Sorry your car can't have a mot today as prearranged because they over booked. If this was repeatedly the case you'd be really unhappy.

Why is it considered acceptable for appointments to not go ahead simply because your customers are in their homes?

Even more unacceptable when rooms are stripped and ready to be worked in which has also happened recently to us.

It's not acceptable in any line of work but the only experience I've had is repeatedly with trades.

I agree most tradesmen are unreliable and bad at communication. The trick is to get tradeswomen, if you can find them. They communicate better, arrive when they say they will, and aren't rude fuckers ime.

Which further education specialises in teaching you how to do admin? It's not a degree.

This has ALL happened to him - repeatedly- but he doesn’t call them crap wives and mothers. Just for info he worked all last weekend with no days off to accommodate a family who needed to take their autistic daughter away from the disruption. I call that excellent customer service and spot on timing to fit their half term . 9 days with no weekend break to ensure he did the job in one stretch. What is offensive about you is that you lump all tradespeople into one, low intellect mass and then insult their families. You can’t argue objectively can you. Im not a psychologist but I do know about the concept of ‘the other’. Look it up. Im leaving now but may pop back later for amusement at your apoplectic responses.

This is the reason why we are waiting until October for our builder.

He’s local, I asked for recommendations from local people. Everyone speaks highly of him and his company. He’s been round three times to adjust quotes and help me plan things.

He’s so popular he’s booked up until them.

YANBU, I have a backlog of jobs that need doing and experiences so far are putting me off trying to get them done. I’m still waiting for a quote from the joiner who came round in January 2022 (just say if you don’t have the capacity to do the work!) and the next one I contacted about a small job (note they were advertising on Facebook that they had capacity due to a large job that was cancelled at short notice) first offered me 8:30 on a Saturday morning which I declined due to another long standing commitment (also, you can’t get tradespeople on a Saturday normally for love nor money usually, let alone ones who are supposedly short of work!), and then he messaged me at 5:30pm one evening to say he could come the next day……except I was working so couldn’t be at home as I’d left my laptop in the office or I’d have WFH…….never heard from him again.

Bloody plumbers! Boilers and plumbing. They're the worst in my experience. Complaining about the scarcity of work too 🤔

We did have some builders in last year, they were here for 4 days, all I kept hearing him say on the phone was, “sorry, my van has broken down”.

On the 5th day, it got to 11am, no builder, so called him. Yep, it was “sorry, my van has broken down.”

Oh god! I've not read the whole thread yet but I've literally just been having a rant about this. Plumber booked - says he'll be there at10am, 10.30am I text to ask where he is? 'Be there in 30 mins' was the answer. 15 mins later 'sorry can't come today I'll come tomorrow'
Err no you won't mate! Dick.
I'm of the opinion that if all tradespeople were women, we would be on time, organised and efficient.
I'm really not a man basher but as the majority of workmen are men, they don't have a great record.

Levels or types of education/skill do not determine good manners and consideration for others time and ability to communicate.

So what if our careers are academic or practical skill based. We all live in the same society with basic rules for manners and respecting each other.

I know this is annoying but being flexible about when someone comes often makes a difference. We had a joiner who had a weeks long waiting list. We said we were happy to be called at the last minute if he had some time and got in much quicker that way.

We also got a discount for our sash windows by agreeing to an underdetermined date for installation.

Neither of these were emergency things though and we were prepared to wait for as long as necessary for them.

@motherofkevinnotperry the post I'm responding to isn't anything to do with manners.

i have a reliable plumber but he relies on the electrician to turn up on time to do work before the plumber can finish of the plumbing work. The electrician is excellent but if i see him suddenly in my house it’s like seeing the Messiah 😂

And .... I bet when they book a doctors/dentist/accountant appointment, they expect the service provider to turn up on time and do the job they're promised to do.

No-one is saying tradespeople don’t work 7 days a week, nor that they are stupid or that none of them have academic qualifications or the ability to study and learn….clearly they are highly skilled, which is why people need them.
No-one is suggesting they don’t work hard…in fact some are doing far too much and that’s one of the reasons why their admin can be poor and why they are unreliable.

So people asking about unreliability, and poor communication are simply asking about these frequently experienced behaviours from tradespeople. They are not character assassinating tradespeople or suggesting they are workshy. People married to tradespeople don’t need to leap to tell us how academic and well trained they are and how hard they work.

What we want to know is why the experience of failure to keep appointments or arrive late, both with no communications is so common. Why is it that if they won’t be able to do the job, don’t they simply say so. Why do they often give false reasons for why they have not arrived? These experiences are SO common and hugely frustrating and I agree that you don’t experience the same thing from other people you might make appointments with - financial advisers, cleaners, babysitters, funeral directors, other people that you book an appointment with…..they manage to turn up when they said they would and if they can’t….they let you know in advance.

Scarcity of work!?!?
My dh is a plumber/gas engineer. He can’t move for work at the moment! There is so much to do and so few people to do it he’s running around like a madman most of the time - big jobs booked in until the end of May, leaving days here and there to do little jobs for his older more vulnerable customers that he can’t let down.
I’m sorry that so many of you are having a shitty time with tradespeople - recommendations are key. We haven’t advertised for the last 5/6 years, everything is word of mouth. If someone is any good at what they do it’s usually via recommendation and you’ll need to wait a while in my experience.

As if no one else is self employed and has to organise jobs. I am utterly sick of tradesman this week /month/year. Rude, entitled and disrespectful of anyone else and their time.

Just say if you don’t want the work, don’t just not turn up.

Basically they're self employed and instead of employing an admin person they try to do the admin themselves and do a shite job of it.
Also take on too much work (tempting to do when self employed), get a job started, nip off in the middle of the day to do a shorter job as pay for the first one is already set up.
That's my theories anyway.

Scarcity of work!?!?

That's what they've said! It makes no sense when they don't appear to want the work. Grumbling about money and costs too. They have chattiness in common! I can only guess it's working solo.

But they're generally rude and entitled, if they turn up. There have been exceptions but very few.

Yes definitely.