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!

Because they are men and they think they can do what they want and piss people around.

Exactly this! I'm getting a quote tonight at 8.30 (hopefully). He was coming at 6 but didn't show. Sent him a message at 7.15pm to rearrange for tomorrow as he's obviously been held up at work. He asked if 8.30 was too late. I said not for us but it's a very long day for him so if he wants to wait till another time then I understand. He said 8.30 worked for him.

This is to finish off the work of another person who has been booked since June 2022. He came and did some work for us but wasn't able to do it all. We knew this but he promised by October it would be done. It's 1 days work. I have all the materials required. He then said before Xmas. He then said the end of January. He's been coming every other day for the past few weeks but now he's apparently unwell. I've asked him numerous times if he still has time, and wants to do it. Yes he says.

I had to chase a decorator last year 10 times to ask if he was still coming on days he said he would work but never turned up. His Facebook posts showed him in Spain, apparently he was snowed under with work and was covering for sickness 🙄 (but was posting from Benidorm🤔).

I hate having to deal with any sort of tradesmen at all. We’ve been stolen from (£11,000 deposit
then disappeared, police unable to prove fraud), scammed (paid well over £65,000 for an extension that was shoddy quality and left half finished, took 3 years to get sorted) and yesterday lost a full days income when a coiler
repair man didn’t show, no text or communication. Trades people need to be licensed and regulated like any other profession. It’s the wild west….

We have a family member who is a tradesman.
He will get offered other jobs that pay better and blow people off. He will leave jobs incomplete and take off a small discount off the bill (and costs people more money than that to finish).
He will then complain people don’t ask him back or recommend him.
Problem is he is in demand so there’s always work.

Guess what. He complains about trandesmen he uses being expensive and unreliable.

Reading this thread has made me realise that it would actually be cheaper and more reliable/satisfying to take a week off work, unpaid, and do the painting and decorating myself. So that's what I'm going to do from now on. Radio on, tea on tap, lovely. The tradesman can stuff it up their ass.

I think we are the same person. After 12 months, and us approaching probably 15 builders, we got three quotes.

We were quoted an insane amount to decorate the whole house, so did it ourselves over 2022. 7 rooms plus hall, stairs and landing over 3 floors.
Great feeling of satisfaction.

They dont just treat homeowners badly, theyre the same with businesses too.

Our Facilities Manager was complaining bitterly last week that he cant get any trades to turn up and quite for sizeable jobs - ladies & gents toilets re-fit on both floors, kitchen refit and extension, electrics to East Warehouse. New CCTV system. Theyre all booked until October due to staff shortages and pent up demand from lockdown.

@kirinm i am pretty flexible but the first time was a committed event that had been in the diary for weeks and the night before is hardly within most people’s realms of flexible! I work full time and don’t have anyone else to let tradespeople in for me. I can work from home most days but only if I know in advance!

It's very frustrating. We have been without back steps to our house since October. The contractor hired to build the stairs said ours was his next job, so DH demolished the old steps in readiness. We have the same issue in Canada, too many older houses needing work, and not enough tradespeople.

Like others have said, it's the communication that is the most frustrating part. Ours is a small town, and the contractor is known to us. He has about 5 employees. I don't understand why he wouldn't hire an admin or promote one of his employees to doing quotes and ordering supplies. So now we are looking forward to spring, and perhaps carpenters building steps so we can use our back door!

Meanwhile our son in law does wood floor refinishing, and has such a good reputation. He encourages all customers to leave a review on google, and they are all glowing reviews... on time, quality work, no changes to quotes, and cleans up afterwards. So I do know there are some good ones out there!

Had a horrid experience in 2020. I naively paid him in full the day he'd brought in all the doors etc cos he messaged afterwards claiming he needed to sort some issues out with some suppliers. After a few months he'd blocked me so I resorted to Facebook groups in the area he said he lived. Posted the invoice, proof of payment and photo of the work not done. People where on it immediately. He'd relocated to his country and opened a restaurant. After the public outcry he contacted me and refunded part.

Of course there are unreliable tradespeople, but there are also a lot of customers who are arseholes too. DH is a highly skilled tradesperson and runs a very successful and in demand business that is booked up months in advance.

Some of the wealthy, highly educated people that he has worked for in the past have been some of the most despicable excuses for human beings who think they are above tradespeople and treat them like dirt.

Add to that the customers who think they can tell him how to do the job (did I mention it's highly skilled work), how long it should take and how much it should cost, with the added bonus of a relative (usually an elderly dad or someone who is a bit handy but is in no way qualified at carrying out said highly skilled work) thrown into the mix randomly turning up during the job and interfering with the work. Ask yourself why good tradespeople are so scare these days? If it's that easy perhaps we should all do it ourselves?

Young people are not training or going into trades so this the scarcity will only get worse. Poor attitudes towards tradespeople don't help.

My DH will absolutely pick and choose who he works for because, between him and the other highly skilled tradespeople that he works with, they have a good idea of who the arsehole customers are and so they will avoid them. He won't ignore you but he'll just tell he can't do the job or that he's booked up.

They need to be regulated and taxed properly.

I rely on word of mouth recommendations from friends and have never been let down 👍

They keep getting repeat business as have been messed around too much by so called professionals

I voted with my wallet 👍

I definitely don't think they're rich, far from it. The only exception being large businesses with multiple employees, especially builders. They're often the more organised and reliable too - though I prefer a good word of mouth recommendation.

Not Bill or Dave registered from his home address. Those seem to be poorer and are keen for cash in hand payments. 🤔

We've had the same issues, OP. I've ranted about it on here before. I've come to the conclusion that there are a couple of issues, all interlinked.

Shortage of tradespeople, many retired or went back to their home countries in Europe during lockdown and we haven't been training enough up.

I'm in a city with lots of building work in the city centre. Most of them want the big jobs like that which will go on a few months. Not many people want domestic jobs. Out here in the suburbs all the housing stock is a similar age and so all need similar repairs at similar times. Victorian terraces or pre-war semis. The big old Georgian houses of the old merchants are all slowly getting either turned into flats, or knocked down and rebuilt into boxy overpriced flats. Plenty of business there though for the trades.

Plenty of families wanting home office space or loft conversions because adult children can't afford their own place now. So plenth of work available there on extensions or loft conversions so demand for them is VERY high.

It's easy to hide in a big city if you're shit at your trade or unreliable or dishonest. My mum and dad live in a large village and can get trades easily. Word of mouth is easier so recommendations are easier. Conversely if someone does a shit job or is dishonest, soon the whole village knows and they're left out of work.

The shortage of decent tradespeople means they know they can be more picky with choosing their customers. I've noticed that they seem to be wanting to be able to just turn up when they like and so one of the first questions they ask is if we work from home. Once they know we both work long hours, FT, out of the house they seem to lose interest. They don't want to have to liaise with us to make an appointment with us to come to our house. It doesn't matter that I only leave 7 mins drive from work and could leave with some notice to come home so they can quote. Or that DH can arrange, with notice, to work at home on a particlar morning or afternoon. They just don't WANT the hassle of liaising with us on that level.

We have gone beyond desperate and have more or less given up now. We have plenty of money sitting here waiting for home renovations for a couple of years but we've honestly given up trying to get anyone booked in. We don't have the time for repeated failures to turn up. We have been living with tarpaulin on our roof for 2 years now and damp slowly appearing inside on a wall. We know about getting it fixed before there is any major damage, we know this. But at this rate, we stand a better chance of it getting repaired if the roof falls in and we have to call the insurers!!

Your DH can't possibly know who the arsehole customers are going to be on the strength of a 10 min meeting to discuss the job, in the same way as the customer doesn't really know if they're getting an honest, reliable and skilled person to do the job for them. A lot of it has to be done on trust.

The builder who did our extension was reliable, honest and hardworking but wasn't perfectly skilled, used the cheapest materials he could get away with and was a bit slapdash sometimes. The roofwork was shoddy (he'd got someone in to do that). Nice guy overall but not sure I'd use him again because of the quality of his work. Not terrible, just not great. I trusted him money wise and we got on personally, as I did with his lads. He used to chat to me about going to quote for other customers and he'd be talking to his lads like "oh you could just tell he was going to be a nightmare, I won't bother getting back to him." The stuff that "made him a nightmare" sounded quite trivial to me, such as people who just wanted to discuss their requirements thoroughly - I think he just wanted very easy jobs with quick money in the run up to retirement.

Same here. Roofers are the WORST.

A good client will itemise the scope of works in detail so there are no grey areas pertaining to the works. A bad client hands over a piece of paper with nothing more than “kitchen unit Howdens”….. nothing about prep work, substrate works, material choices for the walls and floors, measurements etc. That means the contractor has to raise all these queries and that’s even before they get round to submitting an estimate.

Your average domestic client wouldn't know where to start with itemising a scope of works in detail. "substrate works" - wouldn't have a clue! Who do you suggest write such things, because I would have thought that was why the tradesmen came out to discuss the job in depth - so they could do a detailed estimate. And where they had no details yet put something like "door handles to customer's choice" r "customer to supply door handles" etc. with the explanation that the estimate total was for the most basic materials and if anything non-standard/basic is required, like door handles, that the price would increase to reflect this.

I have had no problems at all. Maybe just been lucky.

What I see is a prevailing attitude of:

• getting it cheaper ("off Amazon") -researching windows on the internet without knowing anything about them and suggesting you buy them and builder reduce price accordingly.
• not paying for service (see the "why should I pay £3 for a teabag in a cafe just because I sit there and use their loo and someone brings it to me - when I could make the tea myself for 40p?" threads.
• not trusting anyone - ("they must be ripping us off")
• "negotiating" - ie trying to beat someone down on price
• complaining if it's not perfect - and withholding payment
• lack of respect for the work done and what goes into it, (see the "he pissed off for three hours" threads). (Yes.. to buy the materials, order the fittings, speak to a subcontractor etc etc)
• zero understanding of how a small business works, (admin time, quote time, cash flow, work flow, subcontractors)
• general lack of respect for so many other people in work - complain/report/complain/report/ escalate/sue/ shame on social media. (See threads about nurseries, teachers, delivery drivers, supermarkets, Etsy sellers, restaurants, hotels, and certainly tradespeople.) Awful.

So the workers often react accordingly and it's a vicious circle. Workers have less respect and trust for customers ("they'll only complain and try to get out of paying anyway") so don't do such a good job or go the extra mile.

And supply and demand of course.. If YOU could get paid more for an easier job - would you do it? Even it meant cancelling something you'd agreed? But it was an extra £5k??? Hmmm...

Anyway I've got a builder starting a project on Monday - so I just hope he's a good one!!!😂(I might be eating my words!)

That’s a very good question, normally if it’s a larger job where the client has engaged an architect to do drawings it is advisable for them to prepare a scope of works for when it goes out to tender.
if this is something they don’t do then ask them to recommend a company to undertake this.

For smaller works, ie kitchen or bathroom rip out and install new I would suggest the following:-

Firstly take measurements of the said area.
Floor measurement, wall heights and measurements, size of windows and doors.
Further information what is the current substance? The substrate is what is underneath the tile/carpet. Is it concrete? Wood?
Take photographs of the area, and mark the measurements up.
This is called an existing plan.

Then sketch up a proposed plan,
for example if you have one central light fitting in the ceiling and you wanted 6 Down lighters mark them up on the photograph. Perhaps you’ve seen the tiles you like, for the floor so write it up something like:-
Floor Tiles 12m2 Porcelain Tile Madagascar Bianco 60x60cm

Put your list together, it also helps you with your materials budget.

It really helps the contractor and it’s also good for the client because it clearly shows visually how you want it to look.

Ive seen some really frustrated posts on this thread regarding trades not turning up, deposits being paid and slow works on site or in some cases no works done!!

I will state this now, and if it saves anyone of you handing money over to any cowboy trader it can only be good.

On absolutely no account never EVER a hand a deposit over Willy Nilly. If your contractor asks for a deposit, you should ALWAYS ask for a breakdown of what materials this is for. Also ask what the lead time is on these materials. Ensure that these materials are delivered directly to your home or the site. Never ever hand a penny over to secure a contractor who can “fit the works in 3 months down the line”. If you are handing over a large amount of funds for materials, ask for a VESTING CERTIFICATE! This effectively means that although the materials have been purchased by the contractor you are the legal owner of said goods.

You need to discuss payment plan and “milestones” when the milestones are reached in the works then payment is made.
Ultimately there will be extra works, always get the contractor to give you a quote as a separate item and confirmed in WRITING. If you are happy with the quote confirm it in writing if not then discuss it! NEVER EVER agree verbally to any extra works without a cost or not in writing.

Secondly do not and never hand over any money to Joe Bloggs Building on Facebook market place. Check your contractor out run a search on companies house, check they are vat registered, and in the case of a sole trader run a credit check. Ask for references and check them! Take those references up! Check the references and the address of the property, and for more major works they have completed check the council planning consent records on that property.

There are some amazing contractors, but there are also some appallingly shocking ones.

Thirdly don’t be swayed into engaging Billy Bullshit Builder because he’s got the gift of the gab. Remember what I wrote about running checks on contractors? Please use this as your mantra. Don’t be intimidated, stick to the script, and that way you can sort the wheat from the chaff.

Nobody who isn't thick as two short planks should need further education to know how to do basic admin. If you've taken GCSEs you'll have had to learn to organise yourself, communicate with others effectively, and submit various forms of paperwork to your course tutor and exam board. If someone for whatever reason (perhaps they were off sick for the majority of their basic schooling or something) does need to learn basic admin there are various courses available at colleges up and down the country.

It was my post and yes it blooming well was all about manners. It was a response to an idiot insinuating the OP didn't deserve respect and manners because she's employing tradespeople, who this poster claimed people on the thread had said were low intelligence (nobody had), but herself working in hospitality did deserve everyone's respect (obviously, nobody had said otherwise given this thread wasn't about her industry), then she made a derogatory comment about middle class people. An absolute Muppet displaying no ability to read what was being posted and with apparently a huge chip on her shoulder about class, definitely someone who lacked education and manners

Because their skills are with those hands not time management or admin I'd imagine

Feckin annoying though !!

I've recently found an electrician who is brilliant , it feels like winning the lottery .

I am currently waiting on four different tradesmen to turn up to finish jobs that have been left in an unusable state. They don't respond to phonecalls or texts. I have been waiting for months - they turn up for a day and then dissappear for a month.

At what point do I find someone else? What about things that have already been done but now not fit for purpose/failed in first week? I have a long list.

I think legislation is needed to stop tradesmen from quoting, giving timelines and then not showing up. There also needs to be some sort of quality control over these cowboys. I am now thinking of complaining to their professional bodies and writing bad Google reviews in desperation.