Is this a thing? Landscaping gardeners lying about family crisis then ghosting you. ‘Cos it’s happened twice

[bellinisurge]

We have a small overgrown back garden that needs new fencing and decking removed and replaced with paving. We went through “Check a trade” and matched it with local Facebook recommendations. Start Date and price agreed (about £5k) then silence. When he didn’t turn up, I contacted him and he explained he’d had a family crisis. I accepted that, wished him well, then started looking again. Found another. Same thing happened. Start date and price agreed (about £6k). Then , after a no show, another family crisis and a promise to get back to me after I chased. Again utter silence.
Is “agreeing a £5k job then going silent and, when chased, faking a family emergency to get out of it” a thing?

I try and get recommendations from places like garden centres or bathroom suppliers - I ask to speak to the manager and ask for any recommendations they might have. Usually works well especially as I always get more than one quote - so I know the chap who wanted 20k to do a job that others had quoted max 10 was either pricing the job so high he didn’t want it or thought I was a mug.

Every. Single. Tradesman.

I now live in absolute fear of something going wrong in the house. I was without a shower for three months and had a toilet I had to flush with a bucket for nearly six months. Could not get anyone out for love nor money (which, in the end I had to spend a very great deal of just to get some action!)

Should this thread be moved to the Property/Home improvements section for advice as maybe we are all just doing something wrong 🤔 😬 😅

And don't get me started on the botch jobs done by emergency call-outs via home insurance.

Seriously, how difficult can plumbing be?

A variation on ghosting happened to me with a local window supplier. We’d done the measurements, I’d selected what I wanted, then nothing…
After a week or so, I called them to ask what was happening & was told that a member of staff had died a few days before. Well I felt awful as you can imagine. They assured me that they would be in touch in a fortnight.
3 weeks later, I’d still heard nothing so I called again. They told me a member of staff had died a few days before.
The words ‘another one? One of your staff died 3 weeks ago’ just kinda slipped out of my mouth…
After a pause & a chat with their manager, they fitted me in the following week.
Once everything was fitted & finished to my satisfaction & the FENSA certificate had come through, I wrote scathing reviews of the company on every site I could.
I deliberately went to a local business rather than one of the big chains & they treated me appallingly.

Yep, it’s all tradesmen pretty much. It’s hard enough to get the to come to quote when they say, actually send you the quote and come to do the work. The FB recommendations don’t help much tbh. If you check the profiles it’s usually wife/girlfriend/mate or other family recommendations. Poor tradies with their constant family tragedies and subsequent resurrections.

Back in the day a lovely tradesman returned to ask me to re-write my cheque as it had got wet and the ink had run.

And could I make it out in his wife's name this time.

I’m finding this with all the window cleaners in my area. They never turn up and all say it’s due to ill health or family emergencies

Also can we all spare a thought for the appalling quality of trades vehicles? I don't understand how motor manufacturers can get away with building vans that break down with such high frequency!

I've had this with a landscape gardener before. Unfortunately I'd already paid and they'd started the job but then kept going AWOL due to alleged crisis (probably another job)

I think there's a lot to be said for the fact most tradies these days are not people who succeeded at school or had much about them, a lot of them got pushed into it after failing most of their GCSEs by well-meaning teachers or parents because it was something to do after school. Or sometimes instead of school. We all remember what "those" lads were like at school. They didn't improve with age.
Obviously not all tradies but I think a lot of the unreliable ones. It's not the same as back in the day when they'd learn it as a mate to an experienced tradie and took pride in their work.

What happens in that scenario then? Do people have to take the tradie to court? Did you manage to get your money back?

I think the problem with the trades stems from the obsession with "clever" youngsters being forced down the Uni/academic route, which goes back a few decades now. That leaves a vacuum in the trades, where there aren't enough decent/educated/intelligent people so the conmen and fraudsters and incompetents move in to bridge the gap. The decent ones are always booked solid for months ahead, and tend not to even need to advertise because of repeat/referral business. It's often said that the tradesmen who advertise a lot are the ones to avoid, because they have no repeat/referral business!

Yep. That’s what we’re going to do.

Yes, it's all very well everyone who says you have to get three quotes for every job and pick the one that appeals most - but usually you're so grateful to get ANYONE to even come out, let alone to give you a quote, that you'd sell them your children, allow them 8 days off a week and pay for their grandmother's funeral if they'd only come and fix the bloody issue!

The days of lots of people fighting to quote for jobs is long gone.

And that's why so many tradesmen are now crap re turning up, quality etc., because they know demand is high and they will still get work however crap they are.

Window cleaners, cleaners, loft boarding, double glazing.

None of them get back to me. I think it's partly because I live someone grotty and they assume I won't pay.

Instead I use larger, local, multi-trade companies. They seem to be more organised and do the job nicely.

I did the three quotes thing. Preferred choice’s “mother died” a week before start date and he didn’t contact us to say so - I believed him at the time when I chased him. 2nd choice was all great until he asked for half the cost upfront. That got a polite fuck off from us. Third choice was another one with the family emergency and failed to contact us.
#3 actually just called my husband very surprised that his lads didn’t pick the job up while he was out of action because it was “in the book”. I’d actually spoken a week ago to one of his lads who told me it wasn’t “in the book”. I can only assume he’s lost whatever better job he had and is scrabbling around to fill the gap with work he’d dumped. My husband is more polite than me so he didn’t tell him to fuck off. No thank you instead.
I’m spending this weekend undoing the disruption in the house caused by this proposed work. My cat is thoroughly pissed off at having been taken to the cattery 3 times and rescued 3 times.

Can you share the name?

Yep, I had the 'you're in the book' for getting my shower fixed. I live quite rurally and there's only one local plumber that will come out to me, so I went in to their shop three separate times to arrange to get the shower done. I was put 'in the book' every single time (while I watched) and someone was going to phone me to arrange a time to come out.

Did they buggery.

It really screws your life up doesn’t it, so frustrating.

If anyone reading this is a friend or family member of someone who treats customers like this, can you even trust them to buy toilet roll?

Your poor cat, OP! :-) Catteries are not fun, even when it's essential...

Tradies are an unfortunate bunch, and victims of much more death and illness than the rest of the population. There’s definitely a TV opportunity for a Death in Paradise style cosy murder series 😂😂😂

Really, this is a skills issue. There must not be enough, or more than are being trained are being absorbed my the bigger contractors for commercial work. The government should take responsibility for knowing where skills shortages exist and resolving them. This has been the case for some years, at macro level, and it is clearly going wrong somewhere.