Is it cheeky to ask our carpenter friend for referral discount?

[outlanderish]

We've passed our carpenters details to quite a few people and we are the first people to really use him and spend lots of money with him (9k) since he's gone off on his own. He's a long term friend of mine... and I'm wondering if it would be cheeky to ask if we can get a referral discount if we keep recommending him to other people... he also doesn't really ever say thank you when I say I've passed his details on to other people, which annoys me.

Sounds very entitled and cheeky. I would be happy to recommend a good tradesperson.

Yes, it would be.

If he’s a skilled tradesman, he deserves to get paid fair market rate for his work.

Would you be willing to take a pay cut in your job because someone you know told someone they know that you’re very good at your job? I know how I’d feel about that.

The cheekiness of some people and how the define friendship never ceased to amaze me, especially on this site.

Bloody hell. Do you want to start charging the people who used him too - like a fee for your good recommendation?

He is meant to be your friend. It would be very grabby.

OMG ! Have you lost your mind?

Word of mouth is how most trades operate.

Please don't ask for a cut of your friends earnings unless you already have a referral agreement in place.

So grabby.

I think it's the least he could do. In fact, I think he should give you backpay on all your referrals to date, and present them to you in a musical-style production. At your tradesman entrance obviously, riff-raff shouldn't knock at your front door!

He would be nothing without you, don't let him forget that.

fgs yes it would be unreasonable expecting a referral discount.
Trades people get new business through word of mouth and always have without expectation of payment or discounts.
ridiculous idea

Good grief, what is wrong with you? That’s awful!

If I found out that someone recommending a person/business to me had received a backhander for doing so I’d think a lot less of both the person recommending and the business itself. I wouldn’t use them again, wouldn’t recommend them to anyone else and would take anything else the ‘friend’ said with a large pinch of salt and be constantly questioning their motives.

Ask him. If I recommend you to others will you give me a discount?

Oh ffs op why???

this country really needs independent skilled people in it so we should be gladly giving good recommendations to help them in their business not bloody expect some kind of discount for doing it.

small independents aren’t big corporates that can afford to do discounts etc.

it’s like expecting mates rates.

This.

I've always made sure to never pay "makes rates" for skilled services nor to ask for a discount either as I feel it can create resentment and ruin relationships.

Has he ever mentioned actually having a policy of doing referral discounts?

I mean, literally how every tradesman get a job is via word of mouth.

We chose not to proceed on some work once we had accidently learned about such a referral bonus arrangement between the carpenter and our friend who recommended him, effectively meaning we would be indirectly paying our friend the bonus as that was built into the quote! - we prefer to keep things transparent and straightforward when it comes to referrals and this seemed sly and sneeky - certainly saw her in a different light going forward .....

Yes that would be pretty CF. Really shitty.

Please don’t.

I have a trade. If my friend asked me this I'd assume they were joking. That would make for an awkward following silence once we both realised the misunderstanding!

FWIW they may already have charged you below market rate for your work. I often do this for close friends and family, although I have rarely openly made reference to it so some may not realise. I don't do it for the thanks, but to help out the people I care about. Unfortunately I can't afford to work for less than a certain amount/free, but will knock off as much as I can justify. I would feel pretty put out that the 'kindness' of referring me to others wasn't actually done as a kindness but with the expectation of even more in return.

Yes I would say it is cheeky op, I wouldn’t ask.

Round here a decent carpenter would be inundated with work. If he's not saying thank you for the referrals it's possible he thinks he's doing you a favour squeezing your friends in.

You may think you're doing him a huge favour, but it might well be that the jobs you're generating for him never actually come to anything, or they are nightmare customers.

I've had people absolutely convinced they've done me an epic favour in passing my number to their mate/boss/manager/auntie/neighbour... and 9/10, its not a favour at all its a fucking ball ache.

I get my clients (dog behaviour) through a variety of routes which all serve to filter OUT the people who will be timewasters and pains in the backsides. I only have limited working hours available to me due to my health, I do not want nor need to waste my energies on clients who are more hard work than they're worth! So as I say 9/10, the 'word of mouth' clients who have bypassed the filtering methods are exactly that, a big fat waste of time, which costs me my time, makes me unavailable to clients who would benefit and means im not helping the dogs i actually could help... and that makes me pretty depressed.

You describe him as a long term friend of yours.
I doubt VERY much if he’d describe you as a friend at all if he knew this was your attitude.

Im embarrassed for you for even thinking of doing this. Yabvu

This ^
by the way if it’s a big job it’s not unreasonable to get a lower price per unit than for a small job.