To feel like this about tradespeople...

[Glitterlikeawinner]

Ignoring calls and messages, saying they'll give you and quote and then don't, say they're going to come round and then don't.....so unbelievably fed up!!

I'm sure this is very common and quite normal behaviour from what I can gather from friends and family experience but why oh why do tradespeople treat people like this? In any other business this is a sure fire way of not getting custom but this apparently is quite normal?

Since we initially started our extension planning journey in Oct 2020 we have so far done, nothing. We had plans drawn and planning permission that took a whole year to complete (architect and structural engineer dragging heels and constant chasing to resolve). Builders quoting insane amounts for whole build (despite asking architect to do drawings to meet our budget) so we ask if we can do it in phases, they said sure then no one has come back with phase 1 and phase 2 prices. I suspect because they want the big job at once.

In the meantime I've tried to get quotes for plasterers to do ad hoc jobs around house, 1 showed up and never did a quote, another one said they were coming and never did. Same with a carpenter, said he was coming and didn't bother.

I've followed up with messages to see if they want to rearrange and then never hear anything. Feel like we've been on a first date and now I'm being ghosted!

Is this disorganisation, picking and choosing jobs or standard behaviour we have to accept as part of any building work and I just need to keep chasing?

Honestly it's driving me to tears! We have the money to do the work and we're just stuck here doing nothing! Never done any major building work so this is all new to us but it's getting me so down!

Appreciate there are likely good tradespeople out there who treat customers well, but I'm yet to find one I'm afraid! Sorry for the rant!!

Get a recommendation from a friend, preferably a friend who works in another trade, and then don't haggle on the price. I've never had a problem. If you are scanning for the cheapest labour you can find in an industry which is run off its arse, then you are mopping up the dregs.

I would also say, we've found it tends to work well to discuss with the tradesperson paying up-front for materials and taking delivery, so we explicitly separate material from labour cost. They don't then need to worry about the under/ over-estimate on materials cost, which is well worth us haggling and hunting for. Meanwhile we also ask for number of days, so you can see if they are normal £150-£300 per day, spending 10 days longer than another quote (discuss why, are they adding on something unseen and if so maybe you want that higher quote for a better job?) or a wildly cheeky one coming in at £1100/ day.

Not so long ago we had a guy come round to have a look at a potential job and give a quote. Didn't hear back so gave him a call a few weeks later. He completely denied he knew us or that he'd ever been round to the house.

My DH is an Architect but he is director level so most of his work is about bringing in clients and working out of the office, he is liked amongst contractors and as a result of those connections we got our extension done by a very good building company that had worked in their office. However, that was 9 months ago now so they may not have been available by the sounds of this thread.

I’ve used the neighbourhood app, got a brilliant carpenter and a dog Walker through it. There are always lots of recommendations on there.

It absolutely is in my area. Pre-Brexit there were many tradespeople, often East European, who turned up on time and just did the job. Now there are lots of English tradespeople who say they'll come and then just don't turn up on the day (having given you a six week lead time). They can generally come if it involves replacing an entire bathroom, or building an extension, but replacing a tap or changing a toilet, nah can't be bothered.

This is something I always say to people.

If you want a job done cheaply, then you’ll get a bad job done by a cowboy.

If you want a good job doing, then you need to pay for the decent tradesmen.

The cowboys are the ones who will undercut to get the job and you’ll get a shit job.

The amount of times my DP has been called by people, who originally turned down his quote to go for a cheaper one, asking him to come and fix the crappy job done by the cheap tradesman they employed over him, is crazy. To the point he won’t do it now. They made their bed.

Far too many people have unrealistic expectations when it comes to what these things cost.
Outside of the materials and the cost of the labour itself, there are also business costs to be covered; fuel, exams, office equipment (pc, printer, paper, business cards etc), website and it’s management, phone, uniform/work clothes, tools, insurance….the list goes on.

And my DP has been in the trade for 30 years. He knows when he speaks to a potential new customer if they’re someone he may struggle with payment from. If they’re already haggling or making comments about price on the first phone call, that’s a big red flag for him and he’ll turn down the job.

And if he does all the work and they try and haggle over price when it comes to paying, you can bet he won’t go back and do any further work for them.

It seems many good tradesmen get an unfair rap because of a minority of bad tradesmen.
And that many customers have no idea what the decent tradesmen have to put up with.

We don't haggle either, so that's a red herring. Nor do I choose the cheapest quote; I don't want a leaking radiator, thanks. Doesn't make any difference, they don't want the hassle of lots of small jobs but they won't actually tell you they don't want the job, so they give you a ridiculously long deadline and then don't show up. And because they never actually do the job you can't leave any feedback on Checkatrade or similar review site.

@MRex

I would also say, we've found it tends to work well to discuss with the tradesperson paying up-front for materials and taking delivery, so we explicitly separate material from labour cost.

Trouble with that is that if the parts are faulty, you end up in disputes about who's liable for the extra time removing the faulty one, re-fitting a working one, etc. At least if you get your tradesman to source the parts, any extra time they have to spend is between them and their supplier.

It's still no guarantee. We never haggle on price and never randomly pick them from facebook or leaflets etc. We always use "recommended" tradesmen, recommended by other trades, but you still end up with duff ones, unreliable ones, etc.

We've got a plumber in today, who we've used many times previously after being recommended by, I think, an electrician, a few years ago. He's fully qualified, GasSafe registered, etc. He doesn't "do" quotes, but he's never ripped us off, so we trust him, and we always pay the same day we receive his bill. But by God, he's hard work! We have to chase him constantly - he'll agree to come to look at a job or do the work, but just goes "dark" on us and doesn't appear on the agreed date/time. Just completely and utterly disorganised. Today, he's turned up, an hour later than he said, and he's just announced he forgot to get the part he's here to fit but apparently he only realised he didn't have it once he's completely removed the loo, all it's plumbing etc., and now he's just come off the phone from his supplier to say they don't have one in stock, so he has to leave and will come back "tomorrow or Friday" with the part and in the meantime, we've no loo! I'm not convinced we'll see him on Friday, so we'll probably be without a loo all weekend! He can't put it back because he's broken part of the old system! And this is a fully qualified/experienced guy we've used many times previously! I can't help thinking we won't be using him again. How can you come out purposely to fit a part (planned weeks ago) and forget to get/order the exact part you're here to fit!

That’s actually shocking!

True. We have found issues though in tradesmen ordering the wrong parts, ordering the wrong size or colour, not ordering enough and causing delay, paying top whack because that's where they get a 10% trade discount (but the price is 50% more expensive than direct from the supplier), not telling us the options for handles / underlay / switches or whatever else we'd actually like an opinion on etc etc. If a part is broken and I can deal with the supplier directly because I bought from them, it can also go better than the tradesman via their distributor back to the supplier.

Sorry to hear about your toilet, that's shitty. (And sorry for that!)

Can you call round plumbing stores for the part? I hope somewhere has one.

Please stop talking as if ALL tradesmen are like this.

They’re not. As has been stated many times on this thread

It’s not a minority of bad tradespeople. I’m finding people for multiple jobs at the moment, and just like any other time I’ve looked, most people are unprofessional, don’t get back to you, communicate poorly, don’t do what they say they will when they say they will. Bad work isn’t always apparent straight away, but I’ve also had others who have done a poor job (revealed a little further down the line when it stops working or pointed out by the next person in the case of electrics, for eg). It’s a real problem, and it seems someone professional and organised would clean up.

This morning I’m missing an inspection certificate – the guy asked if I could pay for the inspection before he would send the certificate and mentioned he had it there ready to email over. Days later, still nothing. 🤷🏻

Of course it's not ALL - but as it's such a common complaint, not just on here, but in real life too, it's clearly A LOT of tradesmen who have no respect and just do what the hell they want, because they know they can!

We got so fed up with subpar work from the so-called “professionals“ that fitted our kitchen, that we booked on a course for home decorating, and watched YouTube videos for other home improvements and then did most decorating, tiling, bathroom and loo fitting ourselves at a fraction of the cost.
E.g. tiling our conservatory floor (12’ x 14’) cost us a few days of our holiday, plus the princely sum of £267 for all the tiles, tile cement and grout (we already had the tile cutter from a previous diy job).
Since the underwhelming kitchen fitment, the only trades we’ve used have been double-glazing professionals (and they were very professional) and a lovely local plasterer recommended on Facebook who did a huge area of pristine plastering over 2 days and charged us less than every other local plasterer quoted.
I’d highly recommend doing what you can, yourself though - you might be surprised at how good you can be at something: I’m a dab hand (Ha!) at gloss painting, DH and me at wallpapering and both DH and DD have an aptitude for tiling. We are always being asked who decorated/tiled our house by visitors… and we have saved thousands over the years!

Of course it’s a minority.

Because each person is only going by their local area.

You cannot say ‘most’ tradesmen are bad because you haven’t experienced most or all tradesmen.

Well no I’m going on my own experience over many years in several cities and several areas within those cities – and it hasn’t been a minority and is a well known issue generally in the UK.

Likewise unless you’ve done comprehensive research across the whole UK you can’t really confidently assert that it’s only a minority.

In the places I’ve lived it certainly hasn’t been.

Exactly. You’re going by your own experience.

Which is still limited. Because it’s the experience of one person.

Lol, yes I’m saying that where I am, it’s not a minority giving the rest a bad name. It’s the majority of people you contact are like this.

Going by the responses on the thread, the only people who do think it’s a minority are those whose husband or relative is a tradesperson, who of course is impeccably professional and reliable at all times ;)

Maybe because we do have partners in the trade, we therefore can see the other side.

And maybe because we know how hard they work in their profession and get rather peeved that all people in that profession are being judged because of a portion of poor quality people.

I’d get pretty pissed off knowing I work my ass off in my job to provide a great service, to then hear myself being tarred with the same brush as those people who don’t provide the same level of service as I do.