Why is there so much disdain towards tradesmen on MN?

[Enfys1982]

I’m genuinely baffled by it. Most of the men in my family are in trade. including my dad and brother. They are not lazy cowboys or crooks, my dad has worked since he started his apprenticeship when he was fifteen and has never been out of work since (he’s now semi retired) and barely had a day off sick either. He pays all his taxes and his is a registered Limited company with companies house. All are as honest as the day is long. No tax dodging or cash in hand jobs.

Please also be assured that none of them are ‘thick’ as posters are implying on one thread. You won’t see a ‘thick’ plumber or electrician as they need good GCSE grades, particularly in Maths, English and Science, to get a place at college to train. It’s very, very competitive and anything less than a B is pushing it for a place. They’re not going to let ‘thick people’ install gas boilers or rewire peoples homes ffs🙄

Rant over!

It wasn’t a list of careers, was it? Since when is being a teenager a career?

Because an awful lot of them tend to be exceptionally frustrating to deal with. They lie make lame excuses for not turning up when they said they would (which everyone can see through) and seem to think that everyone else's time and energy is completely expendable.

All it would take us being honest and saying that the job is too small/they don't have time and most people would move on without a second thought, but stringing people along with false promises of turning up/providing a quote/starting work and then letting them down with no communication does tend to piss people off somewhat

There are many brilliant tradespeople out there, and many work for wages for a larger company that mostly do commercial or industrial jobs. The sad thing is that many of us hire the small business owner, working on his own, whose qualifications we don't check.

In my family are many tradesmen; mostly electricians and millwrights, but they all work for union wages with larger companies.

@Ludo19 and most of the bankers in the city have a massive cocaine habit. I’m not quite sure what the point your making is really?

Really good tradespeople will be booked up months in advance which is why it’s sometimes hard to pin them down. I think a lot of MNetters struggle to understand that their loft conversion/extension isn’t the most important thing in the world at the specific moment and no tradesperson is going to drop everything to do the job for them when they had something else booked in first.

Because unlike you (or I) a lot of people posting don't actually know any. This means they have little to no understanding of their work, what it entails, or ability to value it accurately.
This inevitably leads to unrealistic expectations about time scale, cost and feasibility of what they want. Plus a preoccupation with the petty (they left a footprint on the carpet!!!) while overlooking the big picture (they built an extension.)
Some have dabbled in DIY lite, and think tiling a splash back is akin to fitting a kitchen.
Others feel that paying for a service equates to becoming that person's boss and gives them the right to manage them and speak down to them. When this meets with a less than enthusiastic response, the trader is 'disrespectful'.
There will be some who have had genuinely bad experiences with unreliable, rude, incompetent trades, and those who have heard about other people's bad experiences and stereotype.

Clearly you have a familial bias and won’t accept any criticisms of tradespeople so I’m not sure what the point of this thread was.

We're mid big renovation. Should have finished 4 months ago, will be lucky if it's finished in 2 months. Builder couldn't organise his way out of a paper bag and doesn't listen when we ask him to prioritise particular areas. Plumber made a mistake which flooded the kitchen. Windows manufacturers and installers have got to come back and replace what they put in as it's already broken. Decorators did a half arsed job on most of our ceilings. Scaffolders laughed at me when I asked them not to crush the flowers and blocked the back door. All men. All making me deeply unhappy in my home, which is still a building site. That is why I am down on some tradesmen.

Tbh, it's rare to find a good tradesperson who does domestic work. Anyone that's any good is most likely on a building site somewhere.

Ah yes @lazycats that's a good observation.

I didn't realise we were going off topic. I tend to stick to the vein of the thread by giving an example which in this case was of a shite tradesman.

Yes I've had a fantastic electrician who I've used over a decade, also a tiler and a carpet fitter but as I was agreeing with a pp I could count my good experiences on one hand. That was my point.

Really good tradespeople will be booked up months in advance which is why it’s sometimes hard to pin them down. I think a lot of MNetters struggle to understand that their loft conversion/extension isn’t the most important thing in the world at the specific moment and no tradesperson is going to drop everything to do the job for them when they had something else booked in first.

That doesn't give them a pass to not turn up without notice when they said that they would. That's terrible customer service in any industry.

Because the good ones, and there are some like yours, of course, are like gold dust (hard to find and to be treasured!)

I have mostly good experiences with tradies, never had one just not turn up, and they've done quality work for us. Absolutely love our electrician. However a fair number of our regulars are hooked into the conspiracy world, usually via church but not always, and seem to somehow think I want to know all about it? It makes me super uncomfortable as they can sound a bit unstable / unhinged and I'm alone in the house with them. So there are certain tradies I avoid while they're at our house, and I took down anything remotely Christian on the walls so as to not invite the "PM antichrist new world order commies are coming covid hoax gun rights Trump saviour etc" monologues. Sadly but unsurprisingly that worked a treat.

In my previous life I was a household claims manage, which you might have guessed from my last post. We tried to set up a scheme where we employed large regional builders to do repairs in given areas. Actually we tried 3 times to do it! It was worth millions to each company. Guaranteed work, easy to quote for as they were dealing in the main with our in house loss adjusters or my staff who did the bulk of customer contact.
You could not believe the number of complaints of poor workmanship, damage to property. One claim that should have cost at most £200 lead to us buying the house off of the customer as the damage caused by our contractor was that bad!
so I don't believe that the best trades necessarily work for the big companies

Same.

I've never had a good experience with a tradesman. Maybe it's just bad luck but I've had so so many negative experiences.

Saying they'll be there at a certain time then not turning up - on multiple occasions.
Then ignoring calls/messages.
Doing a terrible job.
Leaving jobs half done.
Saying a job will definitely take 3 weeks, then taking 7 months to complete it.
Quoting one amount then charging 4x as much.
Walking paint/render onto my carpet.

It's snobbery really some cannot fathom that those not in an office or middle class can command good wages. I've had some shit tradesmen some good but the MN bias is a sniffy attitude that the help earns more money than them.

We've been having issues with radiators not heating properly. Turns out the plumber who did the work on an extension used the wrong sized piping anywhere the piping wasn't visible. Also the roofer who used a thin veneer of coloured cement on roof tiles instead of fixing them properly. And the builders who charged £1400 for 6 metres of ground level pointing work that DH would have made a better job of (and did, after the pointing crumbled a few months later). The kitchen fitters who promised to turn up in March, eventually turned up in May and took twice as long as promised to finish the job.

We do now have a plumber and roofer who appear to be excellent at their work but never turn up when they're supposed to and their bills are always wrong.

@lazycats criticism when it’s justified is fine. What’s not acceptable is to tar everyone with the same brush.

I'm not arsed about what anyone earns, I couldn't care less.

I do care about people turning up on time, being trustworthy, doing a good job, not being sexist, not using foul language in front of my small children, not ripping me off, not asking if I can pay them £2k in cash tomorrow, calling if there's a problem or a delay and, crucially, not getting piss all over my toilet.

Eh? It’s nothing to do with snobbery. Or wages, even. It’s bewilderment at the sheer incompetence and lying that goes on -you lose all faith in humanity and decency.

I think a lot of MNetters struggle to understand that their loft conversion/extension isn’t the most important thing in the world at the specific moment

What nonsense. People would like a job done, are ready to pay for it, ideally would like not to have to wait forever to get it done, and want tradesmen to call back when left a message, turn up when they're supposed to, do a decent job and not damage anything . None of that sounds particularly unreasonable to me. It's got nothing to do with thinking your project is the most important thing in the world (to anyone but yourself).

@lazycats criticism when it’s justified is fine. What’s not acceptable is to tar everyone with the same brush.

It would be unreasonable to say "All tradesmen are crap". It wouldn't be unreasonable to say "Based on my experience, lots of tradesmen are crap".

We are always chasing for quotes or being told someone will come and they never do.

I've had one painter ruin my brand new one week old wood flooring. Plus loads of other things, he was atrocious despite being a friend of a friend and his actual work being good.

I had one painter ruin top of an expensive piece of wood furniture by putting down a can of paint on it.

I've had one painter wash their brushes in sink in the room they'd only finished painting previous day and getting paint splatter on the walls, when they could have used the utility room! Plus always going home early so the job took 1 week longer than it should.

An electrician make a cock up of some bits and also lied and say something wasn't possible. Got another electrician in to fix and he couldn't believe lies first one had told.

Plasterer who ruined a carpet.

I now have one decent electrician, one semi decent plumber (takes forever to book in, our amazing one sadly moved hundreds of miles away) and a semi decent decorator.

I actually have put off doing any works as can't take the stress of builders in the house and managing it all.

Who was tarring everyone with the same brush? I certainly wasn't and I'm definitely not a snob but when it comes to someone paid to do a job in my home I do expect that person not to be rolling a joint in my home, surely that's not being unreasonable or snobbish.

I will reiterate I am not saying all my experiences have been bad, this was one of the worst for obvious reasons.

There is often a complete lack of straightforwardness that is frustrating to deal with. If I phone you up ask ask if you can do a job and you can’t, then just say “sorry, I can’t do that” and if you like you can add a qualifier. “I’m too busy” or, “it’s not a big enough job to be worth my while”, or “it’s further than I’m prepared to travel.” Don’t piss about saying you need to check your diary, or will call back or will pop by one night this week if you have no intention of doing it.
They come and say they will get back to you with a quote, and then don’t. Just say you don’t want the job if you don’t want it. They tell you when they can start, then don’t come. It gets delayed a week, or two weeks, or they disappear altogether but there is no understanding that that is a ballache if you’ve arranged leave, or are going to stay at your mums, or thought it would be in the school holidays, or you have something else going on that you have arranged around those dates. It’s just so predictable. They very often don’t do as good a job as they should. They are very often patronising. They are very often cocky or chippy or both.
I’ve had plenty of good experiences but I’ve also had a tiler who tiled my bathroom so badly that it had to be stripped out and redone and the ceiling of the room underneath replaced. The man you redid it started 3 weeks after he said, tiled a wall with the wrong tiles, disappeared part way through to do another job and took 9 days longer than anticipated. I’ve had a “thick” boiler repair man who connected the wires incorrectly despite the fault not even being electrical, and kept telling me he didn’t know what sort of cowboys had put it in (it was the original builder and the boiler had been fine for 12 years) and completely broke it. The second boiler repair man was horrified by what he had done so either the first one or the second was either incompetent or lying. In a different house I was without hot water for 8 weeks because the plumber was pissing about (extension - main builder had booked him).
All I want is a bit of honesty and straightforwardness and an adequate job for the ballpark money. It’s absolutely weird that this rather basic requirement (which is the same as I’d want from a university educated professional such as a surveyor or solicitor or physiotherapist) is seen as thinking people are “lesser”. Honestly, if a chiropodist was coming to my house, I had to phone them 15 times to arrange the appointment, they came a fortnight after they’d said, played capital fm the whole time, and left to finish off someone else’s feet after only cutting 7 toenails then I’d think they were an arsehole too.