Tradespeople Driving Me Mad

[SparklySpinster]

I have recently bought my first house and its something of a fixer upper. We have found a few issues which I was not expecting but I was prepared to have to deal with some problems as I loved the house. However, I'm finding dealing with tradespeople to be an absolute nightmare. They don't turn up when they say they will, if at all; don't do what you've agreed; leave a mess etc etc. It's driving me mad and making me hate the house! I know it will all come good in the end but how do you keep your sanity when dealing with such bad customer service?? especially when you are dependent on them to either complete work or get something done urgently?

Have you challenged them if the behavior is not what you were expecting?

I've just had significant work done on a new property, found the people I've hired for each task to be professional, flexible and the finish has been as expected from each team.

hi @flipent I have challenged it when its on the larger jobs (like an electrical rewire), however the smaller jobs just seem to be so ridiculous. For example, there is a small hole in the side wall which needs bricking up, and the brickie I had booked in for Saturday, rescheduled to Today, and then turned up without a ladder tall enough! Twice I've been waiting on British Gas only for their guys to not turn up at all (got paid compensation). Handyman started out well and has now gone AWOL. It's small irritations which just start to build up. It's probably worse due to the fact we have yet to move in. So I'm in a different city to the house and if I need to be there for works I have to take time off work. So when they don't show or reschedule its extremely frustrating.

I can understand why that would be frustrating - I also do appreciate that it is far more challenging when it is not easy to be at the property.
If the handyman was good but you can't now get hold of him, there may be a genuine reason - but I know that doesn't help you now!

Just make sure you're as clear as possible (I nearly had a total disaster with one element of my project) and remember that you've hired them to do a specific job.... if they are not meeting expectations you just have to tell them.

Sadly this is my experience of many. We finally found reliable people and I don’t care that they are more expensive than others, if they’re reliable it’s totally worth it.

I've had very similar experiences with my new (battered) house and not sure how much being a single woman has to do with it. Also whether I'm being paranoid that loads of the tradespeople I've dealt with have been trying to pull a fast one.

@TeenLifeMum @flipent I've just signed up to a twelve week course at the local college for Basic Home Maintenance including bricklaying, plastering, plumbing etc. I've decided once this initial stuff is done, I'll be doing the rest myself!

I do think being a single woman doesn't help.
I was very firm the moment one of the tradesmen that I had hired spoke to my Dad (who was at the property without me). I was paying the bill, and just because he was there, I'm the one the have to speak to.

@AuntiePushpa Same! It's all new to me so I feel like they do take the mick a little as I don't have the experience to ask the right questions etc I guess so its obvious to them. Have managed to find a good reliable plumber though, so one thing done.

It good you've got a reliable plummer. I'd ask the neighbours if they know of reliable tradespeople.

Me and OH have learned to do most things ourselves due to suffering a succession of crap tradesmen since we bought our house 27 years ago. Things we never considered doing ourselves back then are normal for us to do now. OH has a garage full of power tools, a scaffolding tower, etc. Most of the time, it's just a matter of having the right tools - very little of it requires specialist knowledge - there are Youtube videos for most things but in reality the vast majority of stuff is just common sense.

He started doing more himself when we had our decking replaced on a "like for like" basis simply to replace the existing decking which was starting to rot. A so-called local specialist decking guy came to do it. He obviously didn't understand the concept of "like for like" as basically everything was different - different height of the handrail, steps in a completely different place, decking boards laid in a different direction. OH hit the roof when he came home and saw it. Managed to persuade the guy to change some of the mistakes, i.e. got him to move the steps back to where they used to be and cut down the newel posts to get the hand rail back at a sensible height. But he refused point blank to change the decking board direction. A couple of weeks later it rained, and there were pools of water all over it as he hadn't levelled it properly. OH just bought an electric angular saw, ripped it all up and relaid it properly. He did a much better job of it, so grew in confidence and started doing lots of other things too!

One of the best/worse was a decorator who came to paint the outside of the house without a ladder! Then got really stroppy when he asked to borrow ours and we told him we didn't have one long enough. Went off in a strop, apparently it was our fault he had to go back home to bring his ladders!!

@user1497207191 I will definitely be going down the DIY route. Its just too much stress being at the mercy of people who dont seem to have a clue. Feel slightly comforted that it's not just me, and this seems to just be a general issue with trades.

This may not be relevant in your case but one thing I have noted over many years is that it's best not to try to push down the quoted price. Don't ask for discount.
The way I do it is if I don't feel the quoted price is fair I move on to the next trader to quote. Sometimes that means my eyes are opened to what actually is a fair price. Sometimes I get the price I want.
Small jobs are often a problem unless you pay well. They rightly see it as less important and something to be fitted in as and when convenient to work in around better earning work. As most are SE you can understand that.

If you're on fb I've found asking local community groups on there for recommendations really helpful.

This. We’ve got a little black book of BRILLIANT people who are all reliable, communicative, flexible, efficient, work to a high standard and quickly, lovely to have around the house (they wave hello to my kids when we see them in town and make their own tea), clear up so it’s cleaner than when they arrived. Cost a bloody fortune but I’d rather pay them what they’re worth and get the result I want – they’re great at talking through the job, redoing things that aren’t right, finding a compromise if what I want doesn’t match what’s achievable – than have shoddy work from surly twats at half the price.

Keep shopping around til you find someone great, and ask them who they use on their own house – we found one great plumber and through him, our carpenter, sparky, plasterer, painter, bricky, labourer, etc. All gems.

Tradies are a nightmare in the UK. I'm a bloke and I struggle with them as much as anyone. I've started going hardline, if they say they're coming at 9 and they come at 11 with a bacon buttie, I tell them I won't be using them. I'd rather wait for the job to be done, rather than the sorts who turn up late, half arse it

They want big jobs. Smaller jobs aren't worthwhile.

For my plumbers I always save up a number of jobs to make it worth their while.

I doubt whether going for basic home maintenance will get you good enough to do plastering, tiling and bricklaying to any reasonable degree, although it may enable you to do some basic patching (but you could probably do that without the course anyway).

A lot of stuff is fairly easy and these days there are plenty of videos on youtube. But the skill is often in how to complete the job perfectly which only really comes with experience. For example in plumbing it is mostly about how to make joints in pipework so they will not leak.

But the skill is often in how to complete the job perfectly which only really comes with experience.

Trouble is that so-called "professional" tradesmen struggle to "complete the job perfectly" too!! So you often end up paying for the same quality of job you could do yourself!

i feel your pain.

The only way we got tiny jobs done was having a brilliant builder do an initial big project for us (£10,000s), proving we were good customers by paying on time and recommending him to friends and then he'd bend over backwards to get smaller things done, and we had him back for bigger things as we could afford it.

We were also flexible with the smaller jobs so he could fit them in around his bigger projects eg he'd come to us for a few hours after laying concrete elsewhere and leaving it to dry.

We're on year 4 of a doer-upper.
Doing things yourself is good- provided you do your homework and do it right. We've done a lot, and tradespeople have complimented us on it, but we do take a lot of care, and have a fair few skills between us.
As for trades- bar one, all those we've had have been of good quality. And with 2 of us WFH and one retired (except for DIY that is) we can be flexible about times, and have made that clear, as it helps them if they can put our job off if something urgent comes up elsewhere or a job overruns and other people can't reschedule as easily as us.

Plasterer- always comes when he says, only once did he not, and he got in touch to ask us beforehand if it was OK to postpone (he had render work delayed by bad weather and we'd said we were happy to wait for him to do indoor work here as we can be flexible when other clients maybe can't). A jewel, can do any kind of plastering, gypsum or lime or whatever, can join new to old without a problem, and like a mirror when he's finished no matter how 😬the wall looked when he started.

Roofer is great at the job, but I generally assume that his first rough estimate of when he'll start is at least a month earlier than it will actually happen. If there is bad weather, it can be longer. I'm happy willing to wait given that he may be fixing a leak in some poor soul's roof. Currently looking at 'I'd like to say January, but more likely February', which probably means March, for a job that was originally 'might be able to get to it in November' then 'will try to do it before Christmas'.😆But he does a thoroughly good job when he comes, with fantastic attention to detail, and if our job takes longer than expected he doesn't go off doing other things until it's done.

Plumber- like pulling teeth to get a date, but always sticks to it once given.

Groundworks/drains -sets a date, sticks to it, arrives first thing on the day, you can set your watch by his lads regardless of weather, never mind your calendar. Old school. Not cheap, but excellent work.

Others, pretty much did what they said when they said they would.

My pet hate is when people say they will come and don't, but don't phone/text to say so. You hang on all day when the sun is out and you could be out working (in my case) and then they text you in the evening to suggest another day.....😡

That’s trades for you. We had an absolute nightmare in the summer, plasterers are the worst IMHO, extremely unreliable, we have a great plumber, electrician, kitchen/bathroom fitter, I said to DH the next place we buy mustn’t need replastering 😂

I have had exact same experience. We had a plasterer almost threaten to strangle my husband for leaving a post it note on his work box saying “we will be back in ten mins” having popped to the shop. Another one tried to steal new bathroom equipment and a builder for our proposed extension took a set of our drawings and never returned them.
we moved house! They all lost a fortune in work we would have had done and the recommendations we would have made to friends. It’s hard to get good trades people now

I have pretty much given up on individual tradesmen now and just go through big companies, it's more expensive but they turn up

Trouble is that some of them just subcontract the work out to random tradespeople. We had a "big" local firm in to replace our boiler and put in a couple of new radiators. We'd used them before for a bathroom replacement and they were fine. But for the boiler, they sent a random knuckle dragging neanderthal bloke who just moaned the entire time, the standard of workmanship was dire (wonky pipes) and then buggered off leaving the boiler faulty (he hadn't done any of the paperwork nor checklists etc). We had to get the Gas network people out who condemned it. That despite the guy being GasSafe registered. We refused to let him back in the house to "repair" the faults so the big firm had to find a different engineer to send, who couldn't believe how bad it had been fitted and spent a whole day re-fitting it! (I havn't even started on mentioning the two water leaks from the new radiator pipework that brought the kitchen ceiling down a few days later!!).

Same here. Its an absolute nightmare