I've been done but he's my friends husband

[Mottledhellibore]

My friends husband is a tradesman. I asked if he could cut and screw 3 lengths of planks to a small bedroom, cladded ceiling. I had bought the wood. He took and hour and 20 minutes to do it. I will be painting. He charged me £80. I feel this is excessive and want to ask if he had included the planks in the price
The issue is he is my friends husband and I don't want to cause any awkwardness but equally I feel hurt that I've been taken advantage of. I didn't expect it for free, just not that price. Any thoughts? Thank you

Why didn’t you ask how much it would be when asking him to do the job? I can’t imagine only asking the price after having work done.

Well obviously not, butI’m sure you know that.

£60 an hour for a skilled tradesman is very cheap I would say. However for a small job like that I would have agreed a fixed fee upfront. I assume you didn't because you wanted mates rates or a freebie. Because if you didn't then surely such a low hourly rate isn't an issue.

Private ones do, actually significantly more do you know how much a private consultation is

It doesn't require much skill but it requires going up a ladder which I wouldn't want to do even if I am completely capable of screwing some planks onto a wall or ceiling.

I'd be miffed at £80, it seems a lot, but it is about the going rate tbh. Just pricey!

That's the difference between a qualified tradesman and a laborer.
Op should have looked around for a handyman, jack of all trades rather than a skilled tradesman.

£60 per hour is a high price. It’s half that round here.

🤗

Only £80! Sounds like a bargain to me. His price was very reasonable and I'm sorry you are being very unreasonable. Whenever I have friends or family do a job for me I pay them full price as we all need to make a living these days.

I went to a rheumatologist the week before last. £225 and I was in there ten minutes.

I know they aren't getting that every ten minutes of their day but he will be working for the NHS as well as running a high turnover private practice.

He lives on Sandbanks and has a weekend pad in the Meon Valley.

Sounds fine to me

Qft

People I know that do stuff for mates deliberately overcharge so they don’t get asked again

I’d jump at the chance of a handyman for that length of time for £80

It’s overpriced but there’s a shortage of trades so what can you do. There won’t always be.

You missed my point. I don't do anything for anyone!
My point was I was reacting to the poster whose husband does her friends tasks and wouldn't dream of asking a penny for it. Her husband is not making a living from it. Unlike OPs tradesman.

But it took an hour and 20 minutes so not that easy in fact.

No and No.

It's not overpriced at all, in fact it's probably "mates rates".

And no, there WILL always be a shortage of trades due to the ever increasing population meaning constant new builds, and older housing stock needing repairs/updating (most of the 1920s peak stock has already been refurbished, and now the 50s/60s peak building stock is mostly needing substantial work to replace roofs, rewiring, replumbing, etc). Still a disastrous shortage of apprenticeships, college places, etc. The self employed tradesmen workforce is getting older and working part time towards retirement or retiring and they've not had apprentices to take over, so their repeat/regular/referral customers will struggle to find someone else. If we want to deal with the shortage of tradesmen then we, as a country, need to actually change things, i.e. encourage youngsters to go into the trades, encourage middle aged to retrain, but to do that we need to invest in colleges and apprentice schemes to create training places and incentivise tradesmen to take on apprentices. No one seems to be willing to do that and havn't been for probably 20-30 years ever since Blair and his crazy 50% to Uni aim alongside the conversion of Poly's into Unis, the conversion of adult education colleges into 16-18 year old specialisms, and the wholesale destruction of the adult education system. The 90s and 00s were a really bad time for manual trades!!

You misunderstood my posts. Mrsdyna has the husband that does all her friends tasks for free.
My dh is a tradesman who tries to make a living and has to deal with people saying well it only took you half an hour! Or while you're here could you just..

Nail on the head. There's a massive difference between someone giving up a bit of free time to help out a friend compared with someone giving up paid time to do it. Would the "friend" in question have been happy to take an unpaid afternoon off their employed work to do a favour for a friend if it cost them their wage for the afternoon? No, of course he wouldn't. Yet some posters can't see that a self employed "friend" actually loses money they could have earned by working for someone else during the normal working day, so has to charge the same to replace what is effectively their "wage".

Exactly! Thank you 😊

And if it took a professional 1h 20m, then I can guarantee it will take the average person twice as long (and me ten times!).

And fall off after a couple of weeks! It's a ceiling too, you can't be too careful.

I agree with most of what you have said, especially about the lack of college training places, apprenticeships and adult education/night school.
Certainly 50% of pupils to be university educated was totally unrealistic- other routes to the goal of being trained/educated to reach full potential have largely been dismantled.
I am no way anti-university (both my grown up children are graduates ) but it neither suits the countries needs, or meets with the needs of many individuals.
So many graduates are still paying student loans years later for degrees that do not lead to well paid careers, but are still over the repayment threashold.
We need more skilled workers, in a large variety of careers, and we need to be prepared to pay them.

Seems a perfectly reasonable price for labour to me.