Do you barter with tradespeople?

[MsLumley]

Or just accept their quotes? We’ve never tried to haggle with builders but wondering if I’m missing a trick here? Or if they’ll just tell me to piss off and refuse to ever do business with me again? For context, I’m looking at getting some new windows and the quote has come in £600 over our budget. I just don’t know if buyers are in a strong enough position to barter over prices at the moment. WWYD?

Do you barter when you get to the till at the supermarket, or buying an appliance at an electrical shop? Material and energy costs are rising exponentially and businesses are having to pass those costs on.

Trades are quite difficult to get hold of at the moment. Costs have gone up for everyone, building materials have risen sharply in prices. I have never bartered.. The price is the price, have you had some other quotes to compare?

Always get 3 quotes.
Go with whichever you feel is best.

No!

Windows are one thing you should absolutely barter on. The bigger companies will come down to at least 50%. I used a smaller local company but was doing lots of windows and a door and negotiated 15% off

We tried to barter with our roofer, in the end it cost us £1,000 more because of the increase of prices in materials. Typical.

I know someone who, a mutual friend, told to haggle and ask how much for cash. The business stood firm and repeated the same price & friend was left very red faced.

I don't, no.
I think at the moment it's a tradespersons market (def not a 'buyers' one).
They're all much more expensive but then so are materials. I got a sheet of plywood to make a new desk for my son and the guy at the warehouse said 2 years ago it would have cost half what it does now.

Thanks all. I’ve had 2 companies come out so far and a 3rd coming this week. This latest company is one I really like, it’s a local family run business so I’d like to use them.

I was just curious to find out if I’m the only person just blindly accepting quotes (on another mumsnet thread I discovered nobody else tips their hairdresser which I’ve been doing for years!!) as I said, I’ve never bartered before.

If I were getting quotes for 'once in a lifetime' job like new windows, extension or new roof, I would get three quotes and see how close the prices are. If the person I preferred was higher I would consider asking them to match a lower quote to get the business.

On more recurring jobs e.g. painter/decorator, once I have found a good, reliable trade person, I don't haggle as consistency and known quality is more important to more than price.

You mean, negotiate!. I guess it will depend how much they want or need your business. I always get three quotes and use the lowest one to “negotiate”. Some just won’t budge on their quote but most do. We’ve had a significant amount of work done to our house and I’m getting quite practiced at it.

I think if you get quotes to compare and then the Builder that you really want to go with is not the cheapest you could talk to them about the fact that you really want to go with him but have got other quotes and is there anything that could be done on their price?

With building work though I'm not sure going cheapest is a good economy. You want someone good with good reputation.

It also depends on the complexity of the job because there may be more than one way to do it and you may be able to talk about making it cheaper by using slightly different materials or methods.

If it is changing windows there that may not be so much scope for that but Sometimes you get what you pay for, other times you are paying for a fancy brand name... bit tangential, but brand name shower screens are thousands (Mataki), but you can get a good one online or from Travis Perkins own brand for a fifth of the price... basically doing the same thing.

That's not what barter means.

As to whether I negotiate - it depends. On the current market (are craftspeople really hard to find, or plentiful?) and whether the initial quoted price feels fair. Often I accept the quote if it's in line with what I expected.

At the moment, even just getting a builder to give a quote is like hen's teeth, so no, I wouldn't negotiate right now. Where I live, they have so much work on they often don't even respond when I ask them to quote, so negotiating would be fruitless (they have far too much work to consider cutting prices).

We need our bathrooms doing, but it seems impossible to find someone!

By the way - this is the definition of "barter":

To exchange (goods or services) for other goods or services without using money.

"he oftenbartereda mealfordrawings"

@SummerSazz

Windows are one thing you should absolutely barter on. The bigger companies will come down to at least 50%. I used a smaller local company but was doing lots of windows and a door and negotiated 15% off

I would never use a company that are prepared to come down at least 50% - they are clearly doubling the price to start with.

There is a well known 'blind' company that does this - "if you sign now we can knock 50% off..."

I would never use a company that are prepared to come down at least 50% - they are clearly doubling the price to start with.

Well said! I use a small local window company, and their quotes are genuine ones.

If you want the job doing then just accept the quote. Tradesmen/women have more work than they can handle at the moment. If you don't want to pay what they quote then they'll just do a job for someone who will.

No, but I do use a brilliant plumber who has offered us cheaper rates for, variously: dashing to Toolstation to grab the bits while she did other fixes, thus halving the time of the job, and buying the excess materials off us to use; making her lunch; doing some of the heavy grunt work (tearing up the floor). She’s a gem.

Always get multiple quotes. If it’s £600 over, presumably that’s just one window – can you just say it’s too much and you want one less window doing? We did that with a local company and then saved up for the final window, but they still gave us the bulk work rate from the initial quote for fitting the final one later, even though 1 is a faff vs doing lots at once, and prices had gone up by then.

Always go with personal recommendations and local places, not Checkatrade, and chat honestly about your budget – our builder knew what needed doing and what we had to spend, and suggested changes and tweaks to the list of works. Ultimately if you don’t have the money you don’t have the money; but for the sake of £600 I’d stick it on a credit card.

Why would builders drop prices at the moment? getting a decent one is more important than getting a job done on the cheap.The longer you leave it the more probable the prices will rise again.Look at reviews before you decide who to go with.

I’m quite happy that the company is a good one, as I said, they’re local, have done work for people I know, have turned up on time and been good to deal with so far. They originally quoted for fitting 5 windows which we then decided to reduce to just 3. The quote only went down by £500, about 9% of the total cost of the bigger job, and I’d budgeted for it to go down quite a bit more than that (even allowing for economies of scale). So they’ve effectively only priced each of the windows we don’t want at £250 each, which seems low. They haven’t provided a breakdown of cost per window either.

@Octomore

By the way - this is the definition of "barter":

To exchange (goods or services) for other goods or services without using money.

"he oftenbartereda mealfordrawings"

Cam here to say that. Glad someone else noticed too! Bartering with a tradesperson would be saying something like "I'm an accountant, so if you fix my roof I'll do your tax return for you."

This thread is about haggling (i.e., negotiating a price down rather than accepting the initial quote), not bartering.

Good workmanship is always going to come at a price. I have an independent business where people come to me for a service. Some do try to knock my prices down and I'm always a bit offended because I know I offer good value for money. My DH is in trade, and costs are already tight, so again there isn't enough wiggle room.
Sometimes it's worth asking for best price for cash though.

Yes, I always have and usually successfully. Mainly trades - builders, plasterers, plumbers etc but also new cars privately or through a dealer (second hand, new to us), mechanics, one off jobs like whole house carpet cleans etc.

Clearly a very frowned upon thing to do on mumsnet though but I must have saved thousands over the years.

Not in the past 2 years though with things being so busy as haven't needed anything done...

And as a pp mentioned - my haggling usually involves asking for a discount for cash which seems the best motivator.

At the moment I'm more likely to beg and plead than negotiate. Get three quotes is good advice but I'm struggling to get a second quote for a job.