to think that a day rate for a plumber of £800 is insane?!

[Yellowingtrees]

How/when did this happen?!

And yes, skills, experience, fiddly job etc. etc. - but that's more than the day rate for a locum consultant doctor!! And I absolutely DO think that a consultant doctor should be earning more than a plumber...

This sounds like a “I don’t want the job” quote.

It's high but that's not what he'll be taking home.

He'll have to pay VAT, his own tax and NI, insurance, tools, assistants, vehicle costs, fuel, accountants, advertising, no holiday pay, no sick pay etc. He'll not earn that every day and he'll have jobs that won't pay him.

It is very high. You need more quotes.

Is that just for him or is it plumber and mate?

A doctor gets his NI contributions paid, sick pay, holiday pay and an eye-watering 75% of final salary pension scheme, funded to a huge extent by tax. A plumber has to pay all that plus buying his own tools.

Came to say this!!

around here its £96 p/h to £116p/h

Yep, this.

They clearly don’t want the job so have inflated the price to see if you are stupid enough to pay it.

South East here, I paid £90/hour last week.

He doesn't want the job.

Which is why it's utterly ridiculous when people object to paying a lot more per hour for a tradie than most employees would likely earn, as it isn't remotely like for like... but £800 for a day, though?!

If it's an 8 hour day it's steep, but for 10 hours it's not out of the way. Our plumber charges £85 to service the boiler and check all the outlets and is here about an hour.

I suppose, for a lot of tradies, it's more worth their while to do lots of little jobs, rather than one full-day job.

As long as there's not too much distance/time travelling between customers, they can then charge a decent rate per hour (or part thereof) - which usually works/is worked to their favour and doesn't sound nearly as much proportionally to any one customer. They're also likely to be more straightforward and less complex jobs, if they don't take that long.

I'm probably being dim here, but why do tradies quote ridiculously high prices if they don't want a job? Why don't they just say that they're completely booked up for the foreseeable? Or are they just thinking that, if somebody is desperate/stupid enough to pay a fortune, they'll take advantage even if the job isn't very appealing?

Good grief! I've got an electrician coming for the morning on Thursday. He's installing three downlighters, an RCD and a Hive heating control. He's only charging £100 for the labour.

I've also got a builder in finishing a large bathroom installation. He's charged me £2k for him and a mate, rubbish removal, some materials and they have done about 12 days so far (back to brick job and also some damp issues that had to be fixed).

I'm in the SE.

Your plumber definitely does not want the job @Yellowingtrees Unless the materials are £700 and included.

So £100/hr for 8 hrs = £800.
Sounds about right.

This! Then it’s a win-win, either you don’t get the job you didn’t want, or you get paid £800 in which case it’s worth doing!

The reason a plumber can charge £800 per day is because since 1997, and New Labour’s siren call to “Educashun, Edukashian, Edookayshun”, hardly anyone going through their education has been encouraged to aspire to go into a trade.

My DC went to state schools where the very idea of not staying on for A Levels and applying to University was universally looked down on and regarded (by the teachers) as a career akin to being a road sweeper. Not that there’s anything wrong with being a road sweeper, of course, but for people who have only ever existed “in” education I suppose that the teachers’ range of expertise is somewhat stunted with regards to what jobs keep the Country going!

So with the lack of numbers of good plumbers current in the market - a lot of them can charge what they like!

However, necessity being the mother of invention , I would strongly encourage you to take a look at the many many tutorials on YouTube and learn how to do it yourself - you will save yourself thousands!

Always get 3 quotes if can

But that price means they don’t want the job

More context is needed. How long is the day? Did the plumber have to travel 4 hours each way to do the job? Is that for one plumber or a mate too? Details please, because no legitimate domestic plumber is charging £800 for a basic day rate.

Doctors really don’t get all that, I promise you

Well that’s pretty much universal agreement! It was for an unbelievably easy job so there’s no way we’d go with it. We’ve used this plumber often - he was round servicing the boiler (£90, which doesn’t seem unreasonable) so I was gobsmacked by the price. I’m VERY pleased that everyone thinks it was an I-don’t-want-the-work quote as the prospect of having to pay that for stuff we do need in future is terrifying…

It depends how it’s been price
as a day rate or if they’ve quoted £820 for a job and it took them a day

That's a 'don't want your work' price!