AIBU to think that if a tradesperson doesn't want a job, they could just bloody well say so?

[SerenityReynolds]

We're looking to get a bit of work done in our garden - probably a couple of thousand pounds worth. Looked around on Which? etc and asked friends/family for recommendations and duly booked for 3 people to come and look/give us a quote.

Guy number 1 asks me to email him after he's been over so he can email me a quote. I do so. Never hear anything back.

Guy number 2 quotes for part of the work and makes some suggestions over a couple of back and forth emails about slightly different things to do with the garden. Very nice and enthusiastic. DH and I discuss his ideas, but decide we don't think they'll suit us, tell him we'd rather go with what we originally asked for. Never hear back.

Guy number 3 gives competitive quote for the work that we want. Email to confirm we'll go ahead. No response. 3 days later (today) I call and speak to him. He says he probably can't start for 2 months but will call me back when he has his diary. I have a sinking feeling I'm not going to get a call.

AIBU to think if they didn't fancy/couldn't take on the job, they should just say so straight out and not waste my fucking time? Or am I missing something? Four weeks down the line and we're still at square one!

My elderly mum needs some re-wiring done. Man visits, walks round house and says he will send quote - this was two and a half weeks ago. Today Mum meets friend who recommended this man. Oh says friend electrician says he is happy to start work when you are ready. Really? He will not be doing any such thing if he communicates through friends and does not supply a quote.

I am looking forward to meeting him and tearing him a new one very soon.

Cooking, that's awful about people leaving bad reviews, just because you're being honest from the start, and not dicking them about! As I said earlier, I know that there are great tradespeople out there, and when I find one I hang on for dear life! Just as there's probably loads of twatty clients for you - I shall endeavour not to be one of those for anyone! Sounds like your customer service is fab, so I'm sure you'll be in great demand

I've got to the stage I will do almost anything to avoid getting work done. It is so hard to get someone in the first place and then inevitably the guy makes all the excuses of the day as to why he can't come everyday. The last two tradesmen I employed had to have a day away from the job because their granny died. Call me suspicious but I wasn't 100% convinced.

whereabouts are you OP? man and his son doing the garden next door to me are making a fantastic job from what I can make out. Owners are very happy with him.
Price good and they doing a bit extra included in the price. West London..

BTW Yes, totally agree with you.

Totally feel your pain. We have a large old house which we have renovated in a room to room basis. The amount of people who never trun up, never return calls or don't give quotes in unbelievable. I've always blamed the size of house but perhaps it's tradesman in general. So annoying.

In exactly the same situation trying to get a wood burner fitted. I don't know why they bother coming if they're not going to quote

Where I live, if you want a tradesman you have to plan ahead and breed your own!

I completely agree op. We've been unable to find anyone to fit stairs to our loft; at least one guy was honest and said they had no experience/availability, but another one sent us a proposed plan for work costing £20,000 we had been very clear about a budget of £5000 max!! We think he just didn't want the job. Why not just say so?

I access the loft (my main workspace) by a loft ladder now. It seems easier.

Lurkinghusband Yes a trip adviser for tradesmen would be brilliant.

I need 1 plain tile replaced on my roof. It's too far up for me to do myself. Apparently it's a bit tricky as quite near a ridge tile, but not next to it.

I called loads of places, even the 'no job's too small' brigade. I only got 2 people to come out. One gave me a stupidly high quote and says he needs to erect scaffolding to meet heath and safety rules. The other said he would use a ladder, his quote was was still too high. All the others never replied.

I get the impression, they overcharge instead of saying they don't want to do it. I know it's a small job, so I'm happy to wait until they are working near my road and so it's not a special journey.

We had the same when looking for a decorator, we contacted loads of people and only a few came back to us.

We were also looking to get a new en suite fitted, we had the same issues, we had one guy come out to give us a quote but we never heard from him again and won't answer the phone. We just gave up.

Perhaps it's sometimes a case of the tradesperson being good at the trade but not very good at the admin side of things?

on Checkatrade you can leave negative feedback if you've had an unsatisfactory experience

Not quite.

www.checkatrade.com/Consumer/Complaints.aspx

it's clear from there who's paying the piper.

An old story by now, but I had a guy who called to look at doing a job on our garden. He was full of enthusiasm, took measurements, listened to what we had to say. Away he went, promising to be back with plans, quotes etc. That's nearly ten years ago...
At the time there were stories constantly in the media of how hard it was for tradespeople to get work. Obviously not in his case, I guess.

I'm another one who avoids getting work done because it is such a nightmare. Having had my bathroom utterly botched, I now only have local people who have been personally recommended. If I can't find a recommendation from someone I know then the work will not get done.

The people who botched my bathroom went out of business a couple of years later and do everyone lost their job and it got into the local paper. They told the paper that they didn't know why they'd gone out of business - they just had no orders! Well, no shit, you've fucked up loads of jobs and people don't want that! I recently had a very good man in who spent two long days repairing and replacing all the fuck ups that the original people made.

I have two kids, I was thinking of getting one to become a tradesperson and the other to become a doctor. That way I will be able to access healthcare and home repairs/maintenance.

Also experience from the other side. DH was an electrician. Eventually he had to fold his business after a few years. Lots of people wanted quotes but would then say something along the lines of my brother/cousin/cat said he can do the bodge job for 20 quid. Of course DH couldnt compete.

Also didnt help that many people would only decide to look at the wiring after they had redecorated/recarpeted and were surprised to hear that putting in a new socket would require some channeling in to be done. Some people honestly seemed to think that electricity existed like a forcefield behind the wall and all the electrician needed to do was stick a socket on the wall to tap into it.

DH went out to many many houses and gave an enormous amount of advice for free. Unfortunately you need paid jobs.

I thought it was just me! Another one who can't get a bloody roofer for love nor money to do a straightforward job that I will pay decent money for.

We had six round to look at the job. 4 of them sounded positive, said they could do it and would drop off or email us a quote the same day. ... not a dicky bird from any of them. (One even came to look at the job twice with the scaffolder to plan where to site the scaffolding.)The fifth guy tried to rip us off and pressure me into signing for stuff we didn't want or need.

The sixth guy gave us a reasonable quote on paper the same day and booked the date 8 weeks later . He looked bemused when I nearly hugged him.

We had issues finding someone in late April last year to do some work in our garden. Eventually a well recommended guy came saw what we wanted and gave us ball park figures, but was honest and said he wouldn't give us exact figures until nearer the date and earliest start time was early August.

Its a reasonable amount of work to price up and create an estimate for materials and labour. At this time of year most good tradespeople for gardens are no only fully booked for the late spring/summer months they are also too busy to progress all the detailed quotes asked of them for jobs they might not get.

We were lucky, he got a cancellation (and gave the slot to us as we were local), gave us an estimate very close to his rough quote and started work first week in June. Did a fantastic job.

In hindsight if I ever wanted work done in the garden again I'll be getting a quote and booking my spring slot in December!

Re Checkatrade feedback, yes, you can leave negative feedback, but there's little point. We had a painter into plaster and paint our bedroom. He made an absolute hash of it, didn't turn up at all on the first day, switched his phone off & wasn't contactable. Turned up 2 hours late on day two & apologised profusely with some blatantly made up story. We gave him the benefit of the doubt, wish we hadn't bothered.
He ruined our bedroom, dropped paint all over the stair carpets, cut through the burglar alarm wire, smashed the skirting boards, and then vanished leaving the work half done and his brushes, ladders etc at our house.
We managed to track him down, paid him a small amount for the work done, gave him back his tools etc.
His wife then emailed us and said we mustn't contact him anymore as they were 'scared' of us! It was all really surreal.
So after it was all over, I left a completely honest review on Checkatrade, just stating what had gone on.
They refused to publish it before talking to the painter, which I suppose is fair enough, he said he had had 'flu' and was unwell, hence the bad work.
He had been perfectly well! Not even a hint of a sniffle.
Checkatrade published my review AND his excuse, and then refused to publish anything further, so whine you read it it looks like I'm a horrible woman insisting an ill man works and then moaning about it. Nothing could be further from the truth!

Oh my goodness! I get it! I am currently at home waiting for a plumber to come and give me a quote for two small and simple problems. I have called three plumbers. one promised to come out, set a date and did not turn up. Texted me that evening to say he was held up so set a another date this time he cancelled the day before. I appreciate that the jobs are small but if he did not want them just say! I suspect he would have come but more lucrative jobs came up! They did say no job too small in their advert. So plumber number two calling around today sometime between now and 5pm.

I had the same problem trying to hire a gardener, three quotes, first guy never turned up, second guy comes a few times but does not do what I ask and cuts corners so let him go so hired the third guy who is brilliant!! Thank fully!

In the middle of a lots of work (two new bathrooms, loads of replastering, floors up and being replaced and the garden landscaped etc). We have been looking for someone for two years. The guy that is doing it is expensive and a has been a bit of an arse, but he is the ONLY person who gave a quote, followed up and showed us other work he had done etc. The only person in TWO YEARS of looking for someone. Just accepted that this kind of thing is expensive, and the good ones who are honestly interested come at a price both financially and emotionally! I have run the build without my husband being involved (whilst trying to fit in work too) and have been really stressed. Something I was told was not possible yesterday by the builders was resolved today because my husband spoke to them on his way to work; so don't even get me started on the sexism involved.

Its a minefield isnt it. Even the sites that are supposed to filter out the crap ones (checkatrader etc) dont filter out the crap ones! I can recommend a good carpenter/joiner/handyman for the Beds/Cambs area. Came out and did some bespoke work for my mum. Arrived the evening after she called him. Sent a quote the next morning at v reasonable price and was back to start work 3 days later. Shes clung onto him as her regular go to tradesman now, so many bad experiences prior to him!

We had this last year - took two days off work to wait in for someone to look at our cental heating and they failed to show up both times and then when they answered a call from my work number not realising it was me, went into the most laughable performance of pretending they couldn't hear me. They thought it was going to be a small job and obviously just couldn't be arsed with it - it ended up being a massive £2k job and we got someone absolutely lovely to do it the following week.

On the other side of the coin, though, our lovely central heating man sent an equally lovely electrician out to look at our heating timer to see if it was just that before we committed to a new boiler - it wasn't, but he refused to charge for his time because he hadn't fixed it, and then he turned up on our doorstep that weekend and gave us an electric heater that he'd had spare at home, because the weather had suddenly turned cold and he knew we had a young child at home and no heating, and refused to take a penny for it! So if anyone needs a fantastic electrician in Cardiff, I would love to recommend him!

I have tradesperson rage this week - we had a man out from myhammer.com - good recommendations on the website - to service our quite old boiler and replace the timer on it as we're planning on putting the house on the market. We stated the make and model of the boiler in the advert and he quoted reasonably on it. He came to do the job, as agreed, and CATASTROPHICALLY FUCKED THE WHOLE THING UP because he's "not used to working on such old boilers" and leaving me, dh and my 4yo DS with no hot water, no heating (in the snowiest April in ages) and no timer. In addition to that, the boiler (which is now obsolete) is pretty much unrepairable and will now need replacing to the tune of about £1500 in a house that we intend to move out of by the summer. We had another engineer out yesterday who also (fortunately) managed to spot and repair a gas leak that the previous engineer had either caused, or not spotted, and a water leak which he had caused. I could actually cry. So if anyone in and around Sutton Coldfield can recommend a fucking shit hot gas engineer, i'd really appreciate it.