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 actually probably would if the person then showed up on time

@Theelephantinthecastle yes of course you would and of course everybody else would.

I would avoid recommendations from Facebook. They're almost always someone with some sort of connection to whoever is being recommended.

But quoting is part of the business anyway - lots of businesses involve taking time to quote that isn't paid for.

I used to work for a consultancy firm - we built into our business model time to do proposals. I am sure you do the same as a lawyer - if a new client approaches you, you spend some time quoting that you build into your overall prices. And yeah sometimes you lose money because the client gets multiple quotes and goes with someone else, that's just part of running a business. Only tradesmen seem to feel like they don't have to invest any time in the running of the business itself

I'm going to suggest my DP puts his day rate up to £450 so all the quotes and admin everyone is willing to pay for can he done during the day.

Good idea.

This! The quote I was waiting for last night which moved from 6 pm to me contacting at 7.15pm to him saying 8.30 pm to quote. To me saying yes never actually showed up at all nor did he contact me back to say he couldn't make it!

I messaged him again today at 9am to reschedule.....no reply back. Not even a, I'll contact you later, sorry can't fit a quote in until next week etc.

It's this kind of behaviour which would never be accepted elsewhere.

On a plus I have had a gentleman get back to me. Can't quote until next week, can do job but won't be for 4-6 weeks. Now this kind of response is infinitely more professional and for this reason I am more flexible and willing to wait. The problem is my confidence in them is shot because it's good responses like this which are so infrequent I now don't trust any of them.

My trades people are recommendations from people I know as well. I'm not just contacting anyone I find! Out of 6 businesses I've contacted this week only 3 have replied at all. 2 no shows and 1 hopeful. That's a pretty poor rate of professionalism.

Considering this is after 9mths of waiting and numerous promises of turning up to do the job but never appearing it's dreadful.

So help me out here at what point is it ok to dump the verbal contract made regarding work due to no shows even when quotes and materials have been sourced? Do I just look for someone else? Do I tell the person who's not shown up to forget about the job or do I hang on to them just incase they do actually show up to do the work?

I have no idea what's considered ok. Do I tell my initial tradesman that I'm looking elsewhere when he's actually brilliant at his job and i have no issues with the quality of his work. I'd actually like him to do the job? He's given me no indication that he doesn't want the job and keeps saying he still intends on coming.

What am I meant to think/do?

Often self employed, so only answer to themselves. Take jobs as and when need them to suit them, not customer. We have found in the past if they quote wildly ridiculous prices, they don’t want the job but will take if customer agrees to stupid price. Yep, we’ve had our fair share of unreliable tradesmen too!

Don't want to tradie trash but since lockdown I have had terrible time with tradespeople, self employed and sub contractors.

Every little job is never finished properly. For example

• bathroom was fitted, bath still leaks 2 years later. They were called back 3 times to fix it. Never fixed it.
• new radiators fitted, they lifted floor boards under the carpet and one floor board is loose and pings up when you walk on it then slams back down great noise to make in the middle of the night toilet trips!
• got new flooring done and there is a big dent in my living room floor from improperly laid screed. I can't put a coffee table down as the floor is too uneven.
• got walls plastered and coving dropped off two days later. Just crashed off the wall dropping plasterboard everywhere.
• electrician wired my exhaust fan onto my lights in the bathroom so no matter what the fan comes on with the lights or if it's daylight and I don't need the light on just fan, both come on anyway.

I'm sick of it. Every job has never been finished properly. Every single thing has a problem with it. We have paid £12k plus in the last 3 years for shit work that no one takes responsibility for and you get NOWHERE trying to make your point. Lazy bastards all of them. All different trades all the same result. Lazy.

I kind of feel like I'm being made out to be the bad guy for even asking for a quote
I don't really understand - say for example I have a leaky bathroom or my roof needs replacing, how is a tradesman supposed to know how big the job is, how long it will take, how many materials it will need, without coming to look at it?

@motherofkevinnotperry

Ofcourse it does!

If you have that many things to do in a day you can simply lose track.…or an emergency comes up….or something happens at home and you need to get back…

There are so many genuine reasons why someone would simply forget to call. The world does not evolve around your paint job or whatever it is you need doing. Life happens unfortunately, you have no idea what situation that person is in at that moment so try not to be so short sighted about it.

What you say, could explain the occasional failure to call……but it’s extremely frequent and lots of people experience it multiple times from the same tradesman. That then is an issue of professionalism and poor customer service…..not having respect for the customers to give them the basic courtesy of saying they are delayed or won’t be coming.

No one expects the world to revolve around their job. But this a far cry from expecting someone who has said they will come at a certain time, to do so or let you know, and not make multiple arrangements with you that they then cancel.

Ultimately it’s because they can get away with it and still have enough work. If it resulted in them being without work, it wouldn’t happen nearly so much.

Essentially, unless it’s a tradesman doing it very irregularly, it is a lack of respect and consideration for customers and potential customers. It’s an attitude of ‘they can just wait’ and ‘I can do what I want’. How anyone can argue it’s acceptable or reasonable, I don’t know. It’s a basic human courtesy to let people know if you’re significantly delayed or won’t be turning up at all. We would expect any other worker to do this and consider them extremely rude if they didn’t…..and they probably wouldn’t get more work. However shortages mean they can get away with it.

I know there are decent tradesmen out there, who know quite simply that the right thing to do is to let people know if they won’t be coming or are delayed. What they are doing shouldn’t be unusual….it’s basic manners, and I think anyone you’re doing business with or who is a prospective client deserves that.

I have been waiting for one particular tradesmen to turn up for three months - I contact him at least once a week and he gives me a day. I wait in and he doesn't show up. Are you trying to tell me that he has a genuine reason for not showing up every day for 3 months!

'Take a chippie for example, maths. Science, bit of engineering in there. Self employed. Pricing, tax returns etc.' @cocksstrideintheevening

I hope that you are joking here. Where is the science and engineering? Please don't insult those of us with a masters and PhD in engineering. And whilst I'm here, during my undergrad for Chem Eng, I worked for the Tax office as a summer intern looking at self assessments etc.

have I wasted the past 20 years in a profession when I could have just used my 'science and engineering' at the chippy? MN has gone to the dogs

A chippie is a carpenter, not someone who works at a chippy!

Of course they need to quote - but the obvious issue is that going to someone's house to quote a job isn't paid work, and doesn't always lead to paid work.

People are always (rightly) encouraged to get multiple quotes for big jobs before proceeding, but that means there's 2-3 people who give up their time for free and get nothing out of it. No work, no recommendation and a loss in terms of time, fuel and hours.

Obviously quotes are part of the job and are factored in to overall pricing but they're also time consuming and a hassle when you know a decent percentage of them will never turn into actual work.

I'll be looking for quotes this year for a house extension we've been waiting for years to afford.

This post is worrying, is this a nationwide problem or mainly a certain area? I'm in the south west and have no experience of builders here so fingers crossed I can get someone reliable.

It seems ridiculous that there's such a shortage of decent trades, why the government doesn't include trades into the curriculum is beyond me, someone has to do these jobs.

There were special schools/colleges which were opened to do just that, i.e. for more "manually skilled" pupils - this was at a similar time to specialist schools for languages, sports, maths, etc. We had one in our county. It closed a few years after opening because it had so few pupils. Parents don't want to admit their kids aren't academic whizz kids and wanted them to go to uni instead of learning trades!

We needed some landscaping done, tricky job:

1. quoted £24k
2. took 10 days to reply to a text
3. waited 3 weeks for a quote, guy finally admitted he didn’t want the job

Began whole process again - eventually found someone quoted £13k and started work, exactly as previous people said he kept bobbing off all the time so this job has taken 4 months

I am fully encouraging my son to go into a trade and as long as he provides a basic level of customer service I think he will be on to a winner

With the benefit of experience I would have established a finish date as part of the quote.

I know on big jobs contractors can get penalised for every day they go past the agreed completion date however from reading this thread if you start being too demanding as a customer I don’t think you’ll get anyone!

Thanks @taxguru

Yeah it's crazy isn't it, since when have we developed this attitude that having a trade is not something to aspire to? Its a job and one that if you're good at is well paid.

Most of my dps friend have a trade (unfortunately live miles away from us) and they're all financially better off than us and we went to uni. Having a skill or craft is something to be proud of, not everyone is academic.

That makes sense, except then we have a bit of a conundrum don't we? If consumers are (rightly) encouraged to seek several quotes, but tradespeople (rightly) don't want to take on unpaid effort

Also I can echo what PP have said here. Often you can't even get people to reply to your request for a quote. And then if you're lucky enough to (1) get someone in after sending out many requests to many tradespeople (2) eventually get a quote after several weeks of reminders (3) out of desperation agree to their quote because it's the only one... (4) suddenly they stop replying to your requests for a start date.

And then (looking at advice upthread) apparently what the homeowner should have done is realised beforehand that that particular tradesperson was going to give them the runaround for months, and therefore should have contacted somebody else.

Which would circularly mean that the original tradesperson who had gone to all that trouble of attending the house and preparing the quote, had been unfairly cut out by inconsiderate clients.

This is exactly it. As a sole trader you have to wear so many different hats, and the chances of being great at all of them is slim. If I was awesome in everything - practical skills, job knowledge, accounting, customer services, sales, admin, procurement etc - I expect I would be ruling the world rather than being a sole trader in construction. I am very good at a number of the roles, but not all. Having the time to do all the above job-hopping is tricky too. I expect many of the people complaining here are great at their job, but it generally doesn't involve such a variety of skills and roles. There is a reason why once a company is big enough, they employ dedicated experts rather than have everyone do a bit of everything.
Add in all the other things mentioned above such as materials not arriving, jobs overrunning due to additional unearthed horrors once you start, other trades messing up your schedule, and a lack of cover if sick and it's a nightmare keeping everything on track with the proper paid bit of the job, let alone the back office stuff. I mostly manage it by blocking out breaks between jobs, but that then negatively impacts my earnings when things go as planned as I could have booked something else in. I can see why others don't do this!

My friends have a set up like you describe (even though the DW works herself), and I'm very jealous! Unfortunately I can't see DH offering to do the same for me, despite have a paperwork-based job and all the skills that come with it.

I think quite a lot of tradespeople feel guilty (and a bit embarrassed) when they've let people down or forgotten to send the quote. I think it mostly is just down to having too many balls in the air. Often a little 'have you forgotten me...?' text will have a quick response, apology, and result IME (as both a customer and a tradesperson).