To be sick of flaky, no-showing tradesmen!?

[IsItGingerism]

I had a leaking roof for several weeks because after many phone calls to many roofers, who all said they'd come out to look and quote, only one actually turned up as promised, and thankfully fixed the problem. I now have loose plastering around the cornice and ceiling that was water damaged, needs replacing/plastering.

I'm now having the same issue trying to find a plasterer to turn up. I've phoned 5 over the last 3 weeks, all promising to come out at a specified day/time, and then just not showing up when I've had to take time off work to be in! Zero communication from any of them and won't answer further calls.

I had a similar problem last year when having issues with my electricity fuse box. As much as I wanted to use a local electrician, I had to give up and call British Gas.

I am using council recommended tradesmen and ones who seem to have good reviews/local reputations etc but that appears to mean nothing where customer service is concerned.

I am so fucking over the flakiness. I'm not sure why they can't just tell customers that they are too busy to take on anything else instead of stringing people along. Has anyone else had this with traders?

One of our "tradesmen" said they'd been to the house at the agreed time and we weren't in. DH was working from home all day that day so was in all the time, and anyway, we have a Ring camera and checked and they didn't come at all. I don't understand the need to lie.

You have to be really careful going off reviews. We picked someone that way to fix our electric shower over our bath. It had just stopped working altogether. He said there was a leak coming from the unit itself and when I went to look there was loads of water pouring out so I said it wasn't doing that before he came. He said he could fix the leak so we left him to it then I heard the shower running andn thought "hooray". I went up looking pleased and he said "the only thing is, the on/off button on the unit itself doesn't actually work so you have to turn it on and off again using the power isolator pull cord" (which is obviously away from the shower for safety reasons).

I said I wasn't happy with that as it didn't sound very safe OR practical He was harrumphing that it was perfectly safe and I said I didn't want a "repair" that meant the on off button didn't actually work!! So he said he could get a part and would be round ina few days.

Well he did come round and after a while and seemingly fixed it. And then a few weeks later DH ran the shower to warm up the room while he had a quick shave at the sink. The bloody shower unit blew up with a big bang (loud enough to wake me up!), sparks shooting out, smoke etc. Imagine if DH hadn't decided to have a shave that day and had been standing under it, his face would have been right there in front of that faulty unit! Or if the kids had been using it. 😡

Be VERY careful who you get to fix electrical things like that.

By the way, from then on we no longer trust electric showers as they never seem to last and decent ones are expensive. But we couldn't get any plumbers to fit a mixer shower, they all only wanted full bathroom refit type of jobs, so in the end DH did some research and got a special attachment which he fiited to the (non-standard) taps himself, and we have a brilliant flow now straight from the taps.

This is your problem, you think tradesmen are intellectually challenged.

They can smell it down the phone and they avoid people like you.

I think you’ve proved my point. There are so few tradesmen around now that they can afford to pick and choose which jobs they do.
Would be much more sensible for young people to go into trades rather than to university.

Needed a plumber for a not insignificant job.
Three turned up over the course of a month or so , listened to what I needed, made the right noises and promised to get back to me with quotes. A year on I’m still waiting.
one of them is always recommended on a local Facebook group and I will always add that he ghosted me completely and then add the name of the plumber that did turn up and do a fantastic job

This is true. I had a terrible experience with roofers a few years ago; one arrived obviously off his tits on cocaine and wanted money up front, the second didn't turn up, I gave the third a deposit - he was then creepy AF and tried to add £500 to his quote. He then didn't do it properly - my uncle got a traveller friend to fix it. I later found out that 2 and 3 are related and that their families recommend each other on FB and Next Door. In addition, I felt too intimidated to leave a review on Check a Trade. I don't think I'm the only woman either.