To want to name and shame ''proffesional'' gardening firm for their nasty comments (IMO)?

[QuiQuaiQuod]

Don't know if HQ will let me name them, but if you livearound the Heathrow area I can pm you with them.

Theyre even in that 'check a trader' thing.

Anyway. I ring them to ask for a quote for one hour or so of help in garden (Im disabled and cant manage).

guy quoted me £185.00 ! whaaaat?

I said a few years ago a guy did an hours work , a proprer gardneer and charged me £20.00. (Ive lost his contact details hence me phoning around).

guy on phone said,in a sarcastic voice, and I quote,' ' only 20 quid? 'he must have gone back to Romania by now.''

I said 'pardon'?

he said 'must have been a foreigner then''.

I said ' er, no, guy was English'. thinking thatw as a nasty remark to make .

When I said gardener was english, guy on phone (again in a sneery voice) says ''well hes probably on the dole right now.'' i was like, whaaaat?

so I said 'you are supposed to be a reputable firm, and yet youspeak to people, and about people like that? thats not proffessional. especially to a potential customer, which by the way you wount get from me''. and cut phone call there and then.

AIBU in thinking you dont say things like that to anyone? Im not one of the PC brigade that every single thing would offend, but i thought his attutude and tone was certainly not proffessional.

That's interesting. I used CheckaTrade for a quote

Whose paying Checkatrade ? Because that's who they'll side with if you have any complaints.

The only sure way you can trust a trader (and even then it's not perfect is to have them personally recommended by someone you trust and (where appropriate) you can inspect their work with a previous client.

It's one of the reasons I have done so much around the house, and will be on the roof next week changing a couple of tiles.

Ridiculous amount. The whole premise of gardening is that you may have several jobs in one day all taking 1-2 hours each or one big job is there is a load of work to get it up to scratch.

You cannot expect to charge a customer for a whole day for a bit of weeding or similar that is only going to take an hour. You want your customers to come back and to recommend you.
If they had a problem with doing an hours work then they should have said so and explained their prices at the start not get snotty with op. Hardly good business management.

If you're on fb then I'd try your local selling page

OP: when a trader doesn't want to do a job, but doesn't want to offend by saying "your job is too small for me to bother getting my guys out to you" the standard practice for many is to quote a crazy high price (generally what they would regard as their minimum fee).

So far as the company is concerned, it's neither here nor there that once upon a time you got a guy to do something in your garden for £20.

To be fair, he wasn't talking like that to a client. From the way you replied to his quote, he could tell you weren't going to be a client. And while what he said wasn't good, he's probably a gardener himself not a customer services pro nor necessarily politically enlightened. Not saying there aren't smart gardeners, but it sounds a bit like when cab drivers or builders or whatever the world over say un-PC things, in this case probably based on his experience of cash-in-hand traders. Pick him up on it by all means, good on you, but you seem a bit unworldly to not have heard that sort of thing and half expect it. Would be OTT and a bit daft to name and shame.

I work for a plumbing company. We are a middle sized company specialising in commercial work.

If someone calls me up asking for a simple service (1 hour work) we quote for at least 2 hours as it takes time to travel from a different job & prevents us taking on another all day job. If the job was out of the area we would be adding travel time onto that do about 3-4 hours minimum.

I often tell people to call a local 'one man band' for little jobs as they'd be paying the price of someone qualified to install a heating system in a hospital to service a gas fire.

£20 an hour is about right where I am. No way in hell would I pay £185!!!!

Try age concern. Even if you're not their demographic they may be will as you're disabled. My gran paid £15ph.

You haven't really done your research OP. Obviously this is not an odd job man but a high end gardening service who probably do landscaping etc and not pruning someone's bushes (ahem).

It would be fairly irritating when he's probably got a lot of qualifications and experience to get people phoning up and whinging when he won't come around and mow their lawn for a pittance.

And yes he is right. It probably was a Romanian as most manual labour in London is now. And he's also right that sort of job is notorious for being a cash in hand one done by people on benefits.

I think he was just trying to point out to you that he is a skilled professional and not the sort of fly by night trader you want. I think really you need to research a bit better and not insult people by suggesting their work is of low value when you don't even know what it is exactly!

You were wrong op and I would strongly suggest you don't name them at all because they are likely to pursue you for malicious damage to their business if you do.

Put it this way. You might be able to get a personal injury lawyer to work on a no win no fee basis without handing over a penny. But if you go to a QCs office and demand they represent you for free because the personal injury lawyer didn't charge you they'd laugh in your face.

Just because they're both lawyers doesn't mean they're the same. Ditto gardeners. A one man band of an odd job man doing a bit of tidying up is very different from a corporate landscaping firm.

I pay £25 for my lawn each week , takes my gardener about 20-30 mins , he uses all his own tools and takes away the cuttings , wouldn't know he's been except that it's left immaculate

I think he was just trying to point out to you that he is a skilled professional and not the sort of fly by night trader you want. I think really you need to research a bit better and not insult people by suggesting their work is of low value when you don't even know what it is exactly!

I think you shouldn't insult gardeners, handymen, etc who do gardening for many people as "fly by night traders."

Nearly all gardeners dislike one off jobs. People vastly underestimate the work involved. There is waste to be disposed of and tools to be provided. If your garden hasn't been tended for a long time due to your disability it's pretty much impossible to think that one hour will be enough.

I have a regular gardener who keeps the place looking lovely, cutting the grass, doing the edges and general cutting back when needed. Its still not enough without me doing bit, too. My garden isn't at all large. Two men stay approx 20-30 minutes a week. Monthly cost £75-100.

Find a student or a retiree for what you are looking for. You will probably need to supply the tools and get rid of the waste.

However, he was a little uncouth, I will grant you that.

I agree with posting on local facebook groups. You will hopefully get some reccs and some odd-job men posting themselves, you can figure out who will be useful. They are more likely to be interested in maintenance (tidying the garden every fortnight in summer, or once a month in winter) than a small one-off though.

I think you shouldn't insult gardeners, handymen, etc who do gardening for many people as "fly by night traders."

I think you probably don't actually know many people who do these sort of jobs in the SE. The salaries are almost impossible to live on if you operate as a proper small business so most of them are some sort of moonlighting/not quite kosher/temporary operation if they are doing the low wage work.

When you put the cost of transport, fuel, machinery, insurance, an accountant, NI etc, etc, etc together £20 an hour is fuck all.

They're certainly not going to have the marketing budget to advertise online. They're probably not going to have qualifications or be insured or be CRB checked. If you want to pay £20 per hour you are going to get someone who's fly by night to some extent. Not all who do gardening are. But if you're paying £20 overwhelmingly they're going to be.

It does make me laugh the amount of people in the SE who think they can pay peanuts and get fully qualified, insured and checked staff.

My dog is Romanian. She'll come and dig your garden over for free, the little bugger she is.
Maybe a bowl of water and a scratch on the belly.

Have you tried Task Rabbit?

If you want to pay £20 an hour you need to look for a local bloke who works alone.

You've been quoted for a full professional job, one which also include tidy and waste disposal.

There's a big difference between the two!

He probably shouldn't have said what he did but you would've offended him with your comment!

They either didn’t want the work and were quoting a ridiculous price or they heard the word disabled and were trying it on.

Going rate round here is less than £20 an hour.

For a one off £185 doesn't sound that bad, really. People saying 'oh I get my lawns mowed for £30' are paying a regular, so of course the price is lower. I pay my cleaner £30 a week for 2 hours, but if I wanted to book a one off clean with a new company I'd be looking at £150+ easy.

DD is doing horticulture at agriculture college. They have been advised to start charging £15 an hour increasing to £20 as they gain more experience. They'll have 2 years training under their belts and won't be remotely 'fly by night'.
We're in Hampshire.
Can you put a wanted ad on a FB selling site or the newsagents and ask for references.

£185 per hour is ridiculous.

Try posting on a local FB jobs site or a Nextdoor site for your town.

It was £185 for an hour.

crodhet .

I dont do facebook/twitter etc,

found local paper and have phoned someone listed as doing garden work of all sorts.

£ 2o.oo an hour.

thanks for replies.

Perhaps you told him what you want done, thinking it only take an hour, and he's thought "she wants X, H and Z done - that's a good mornings work for 3 of my staff, plus the overheads of equipment and transport and disposal costs - makes the job worth £185."