Sick of people being ripped off by dodgy tradespeople

[Scousefab]

Hi all

if like me your fed up of trades people and builders ripping people off and not doing what they are paid to do!

please sign the below and help!

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/636359

There should also be a data base listing customers who don't pay.

^ that made me laugh! I'm a builder, I've never advertised, never needed to. After 30 or so years I have a customer base I've worked for before and don't really have time for any new ones but I'd be extremely wary anyway after being ripped off in the past more times than I care to recall.

There is a problem though, a huge shortage of skilled trades and the cowboys are fleecing the desperate.

My husband is a tradesman and has a waiting list and a lot of repeat business so is very lucky. At the moment it seems whenever he takes on a new client there is always an issue when it comes to the final payment. Their money is in a 60 day access account or they don't want to pay for any extras. It's making him hate his job,

So am I and I still get a lot of recommendations for my decorating and landscaping in Kingston & Wimbledon after all these years. I tend to put photos of my work on NextDoor to let people know I’m still around from time to time. There used to be a local services part on Mumsnet and I got a lot of good jobs and customers from that. I still have photos of most of my jobs over many years.
As for extras I always get them agreed in writing in an email or text before I start them to ensure full final payment and that is always on completion. I always get a 1/3 deposit up front to offset materials as well. Depending on the job I’ll get weekly stage payments for wages with the final balance payable upon completion.
All of this is on my detailed estimates. I’ll always try to help people out and go the extra mile but I won’t let people take the piss because my work feeds and clothes my family.

Hear hear.

Well yep agreed there probably are some clients that don’t pay! A tighter reign on things is needed! Too many articles and too many people getting ripped by enormous amounts of money! Appreciate it works both ways and no protection for either side!

Scousefab Thank you.
Theses cowboys ripping people off is escalating, something needs to be done.

This ^

My ndn is known for making big complaints and wanting any money back for anything he gets done on his house, he can draw it out for years. He’s an entitled prick !

Absolutely! It's disgusting that someone can fuck off with £50K and no-one does anything about it. If they nicked £50K from the bank, they'd be hunted down and prosecuted! It's disgusting that these cowboys get away with it, often not just once, but repeatedly!

Absolutely needed. Trades need tighter regulations.

Had some truly awful experiences over the years and I dread having to get things done by them.

your ndn may not be getting the jobs done correctly have you seen the standard of work he’s supposedly not paying for? Some people stand up for themselves and why shouldn’t they have money off if the job is not done correctly. People if they don’t pay can be sued directly however ltd companies close or rename and open up and start the whole ripping off process all over again! The lawyers get rich and the client gets nothing back. I really hope you personally don’t experience anything like this it is soul destroying.

Or maybe the ndn is like the men that often feature on MN that leave their wives only for the wife to discover he'd taken out numerous loans in her name.

Some people seem to dispute the final payment on principle

the thing is, like licences for dogs, only good, responsible tradespeople / dog owners will register. Pointless.

And who’s going to police it?

people always want to pay peanuts. My local community page is always full of people asking “need a tiler / builder / plumber. Must be top quality but I don’t want to pay top prices”. They might as well say “I want to travel to nyc on the QE2 but only pay for a Ryanair flight to Malaga”.

I wonder if something like the deposit protection scheme might work, i.e. when the quote is accepted the householder puts money into the scheme which is then released to the trader once the work is completed to their satisfaction, with independent arbitration in the event of any dispute. That would seem to protect both sides.

Maybe a deposit scheme.can work

there needs to be a place to flag both but especially those horrible trades people who say one thing and do the opposite. I am sick of paying and not getting the job done agreed upon. But thankfully there are reviews to be given and I hope people read them. Of course now the trades have a way to only post impostor reviews of five stars for themselves. Yelp is a blessing.

It's difficult. If you make trades licenced then all it will do it make the shortage worse.

My proposals :

i) Train up more people for the trades.

ii) Licence people after training, so say only people training after 202x need to be licenced.

iii) Make all traders sign up with a dispute resolution service, which has a special court to resolve issues. Licence existing traders on this basis, not on training/ability to do the job.

iv) Give the dispute resolution service the ability to ban persistent offenders.

v) Have a national escrow service for job payment.

Having lost a 6-figure sum myself, in spite of having a contract in place and using a highly recommended building firm, I signed the petition linked to by the OP. I got a standard update recently saying that the government had no intention of doing anything, and that the current consumer protections were sufficient in their view. I beg to differ.

I'm a tradie, tomorrow I'm an travelling further than I have ever needed to work because a friends daughter has been shafted by a bathroom fitting company and multiple leaks are damaging their home which will need further work after the problems have been resolved.

Its not work I want or need, I will make less money because they are desperate, not wealthy and I will swallow the 2 hours travel time from an 9-10 hour working day.

I dont know what the solution is. Maybe legalities need to be tightened or perhaps as a society we need to value skilled manual trades more but a word of warning...in 30 years I have never needed to advertise for work, in today's climate I am continually turning down work I haven't got the time to do. I could probably be rich if I cared more about money than people and whether I can sleep at night.

I dont care about how many stars or rave reviews anyone has on the internet if anyone needs that to get work they can't do the job!

People aspire to get desk jobs because they generally pay twice the wage in early years.

It needs to start with well paid apprenticeships.