To think that tradesmen take the piss with their rates?

[Pomegranatecarnage]

Just that really. I have had a few repairs needed and some DIY recently. I paid £130 to have a leaking toilet valve fixed (it took 45 mins), £75 to have a pull string light replaced (10 mins) and then £270 labour for 6 hours work putting up some shelves, a small area of tiling and replacing skirting boards. He arrived at 10, left at 12 for lunch, back at 2 then was finished by 4pm. I can’t help wondering why I spent 5 years at University to get paid far less per hour as a teacher.

You are not comparing like with like. They have to cover their own training, insurance, advertising, often a van, sick and holiday pay etc and unpaid time quoting for jobs they don’t get.

Must be the five years at university 😂

Make sure you get multiple quotes for the work. Then you can negotiate the costs before they start.

Self-employed trades people don’t get paid sick leave, holiday leave, they have to pay for their equipment, upkeep, if they have a vehicle or premises that adds costs… it’s not just as simple as being employed. So no, they are not charging too much, I’m sure you have been charged the going rate. You’re free to shop around… But a family member who was a painter and decorator found people were constantly trying to drive the price down and find cheaper labour, which in turn drove the quality of work down. It’s frustrating.

Thank you for this thoughtful post.

Agreed. Plus, he only charges for his time when he's actually working. Due to travelling between jobs or the work being ad hoc, it's not like they're actually doing 8 hours a day every day. He also won't get paid while he's on holiday or sick.

Take the £270 job. He only worked for 4 hours, but did he really do anything before getting to you at 10 or after leaving you at 4? Chances are probably not and that will have been his only money for the day.

Ultimately the rules of supply and demand apply. If the price is too high, people won't pay. He's set his rates at an amount that people will pay, so why should he charge less?

> there’s maybe not much work out there as a lot of people do their own these days.

If that were true, the price would be lower

It's because the vast majority of millennials can't (or can't be bothered to) do simple DIY jobs that means tradesmen can charge what they like (and, btw, £45/hour is not excessive for a competent trained professional)

The issue is that we have too many graduates and not enough tradespeople.

DH gets weekly trade magazines and apparently a huge number of tradesmen are likely to retire in the next 5 years.

There builders/plumbers/boiler fitters that we have used over the past couple of years have said that they cannot keep apprentices. The day starts too early and it is heavy/dirty work.

So for the remaining ones the world will be their oyster! Prices will likely go up more.

No one forced you to use a tradesman, all those things you could of done yourself, you are paying for the convenience of having it done by someone skilled and knowing it's been done right.
Nothing stopping you quitting being a teacher and training for a trade.
My husband window cleans and I'm a cleaner and we probably make more in a day then a teacher too and with very little stress, but that was our career choice and you chose yours.

You can find general handymen recommended on Spotted page for your area on facebook. E.g. spotted Luton etc.

100% agree. We’re an academic family but my kids feel degrees are a waste of time and money, given the amount of debt you end up in, though one is doing a degree (while living at home) that will lead to potentially very high earnings in construction.

I can’t stand the snobbishness to trades people and their earnings (not that I’m saying OP is). A friend of mine is a roofer, fits solar panels etc. He’s amazingly well read and well-educated (mostly self-taught). He’s sick of people (who are often dim wits) talking down to him and trying to get money knocked off or paying late, when they’d be appalled if people did that to them in their ‘professional’ jobs.

Pretty shitty to do that AFTER he's done the work
How would you feel if he said "well, in that case I have to charge you VAT, so another £65, and the same for the materials, that'll be an extra extra £20 please"

and there’s the non paid time they put it:

• driving round to see prospective clients, i.e. viewing lots of places,
• understanding the brief (some might be more detailed e.g. garden refurb)
• and compiling and sending out quotes.

but YNBU OP, the way they make money can appear effortless and i’ve seen them with plenty of notes in their wallets

OP in your particular situation it sounds like a "friend" of yours has taken advantage. Now you know in future not to use them, but to use a proper professional instead, who would provide a quote.

On a wider note, DH and I needed a lot of work doing to our house so we decided to get into DIY as we couldn't afford to keep shelling out £150 every few days, as every job seemed to cost at the time. The DIY really opened our eyes to how much skill, how many different tools and how much time planning etc is needed for these jobs. I now agree that their rates are fair and will definitely steer my DS towards a trade if he doesn't seem to be academic.

Yes totally agree with this. Knowing what tools you need for each job is a skill itself and having the knowledge too. Buying all the right tools is expensive.

You’re paying for a service…not an hourly rate.

Putting a blind up is sometimes a bugger of a job (especially if we're talking Venetian not roller) and often requires a specialised drill and bits

I did it myself ... once

Now I'm happy to pay someone to do an excellent job, with no fuss, in half the time it takes me, and they clean up afterwards!

You provided the tools….why didn’t you do it yourself ?

But OP has five years of uni education - how can you expect them to learn to do manual labour?

> You're not paying for the hour, you're paying for the years of training and experience that mean it only takes an hour.

If more people understood that, the world would be a less miserable place

Really? Venetian blinds are an easy job. I've done all mine. Including buying some secondhand and cutting the width and taking slats out so not too long

Don't forget you have an additional cost to your employer of a % salary as pension, plus employer NI contributions in you salary package - the tradesman will have to fork both pension and NI contributions from his earnings (if self employed). He also has to travel to the job, van, van insurance (never cheap) tools insurance, and business insurance including public liability of several million (needed for his work type) - my just retired DH spent about £6-8k a year on all his various insurances so insurance alone is £20/day. He'll also most likely have charged VAT and will have to pay the difference between what he's charged and what he can claim back in costs and parts to the government. And he'll likely have to pay a bookkeeper and /or accountant or his wife to keep on top of the paperwork too.

I suggest when you have a job that needs doing to google 'how to (job needs doing)' and watch a few videos on You Tube. Simple tasks like changing a cord on a bathroom light switch are definitely easy enough to do yourself. Do you still have your dad about or know any recently retired helpful DIY type chaps? Befriend them, and get them to help you/show you how. You can often find classes on basic DIY skills, I think B&Q used to run them once upon a time, but here is an example: https://www.thegoodlifecentre.co.uk/diy-workshops-london/

There are now several 'Library of Things' where you can borrow DIY equipment to complete tasks which should keep the cost down for you too.

That’s like a tradesman saying they think teachers take the piss, what with the long holidays and nice pension.

I find managing a multi-thread data migration with unmapped data fields an easy job
Most people don't, so I can charge quite a bit for it
I didn't find fitting a Venetian blind easy, so now will happily pay someone who does to do it

Nail on the head. Schools are almost forcing the more able pupils to go down the Uni route, which leaves the less able ending up in the colleges "learning a trade", but lots don't even have the ability to do that, hence why the trades suffer so many no hopers, both in terms of not being able to complete their apprenticeships, or those "dodgy" tradespersons who ply their "trade" without the proper training/experience/qualifications, aka bodge it merchants.

Historically, people with manual skills have been respected, going right back to biblical times, and certainly through the middle ages and the industrial revolution. It's a pretty recent thing that tradies have been looked down upon as lesser beings because they didn't go to Uni!

The scrapping of the Polys, and the virtual scrapping of a world leading adult education sector did untold damage, and then Blair came along with his crazy 50% target! It's all served to down-grade the trades as a decent profession and allowed the no hopers and con merchants to get a foot hold!

I remember my school days in the early 80s. We had a lad who was the stereotypical "top of the class" and it was kind of assumed he'd be one of the few (in those days it was a few who went to Uni), but he surprised everyone by leaving school with a clutch of top grades at GCE to be trained up as a plumber by his father. He got his own little van as an 18th birthday present and within a few years had taken over his father's customer base. He retired when he was 50 and lives in a million pound house in the "posh" part of our town, driving around in his Porsche. That wasn't earned ripping people off nor employing underpaid staff etc - he remained a sole trader just as his father was. He was just a hard worker, and because he was actually reliable, turned up on time, etc., he got massive repeat business and never needed to advertise. Neither his nor his father's vans were ever even sign-written. We used him once to replace our boiler and radiators when we moved into our home and we've never experienced a tradesman who was so ridiculously good - he cleaned, tidied and vacuumed at end of every day, and even painted the copper pipes he'd installed and built a lovely wooden frame and door to enclose the boiler - well and truly above and beyond and his quote was comparable with other local firms we'd asked to quote!