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

I think they are being sarcastic giving loft boarding is easily a £1k job on even a tiny loft.

Our quotes where £3.5-£4k on a 50m2 loft.

2 years ago and No not in London so yeah maybe prices have gone up and I did get a bargain

This sounds really reasonable!

I don’t think he’s overcharging you. I need a diamond cut done. My friends company is going to do it. If they came only for this it was one price £150. They’re coming next month for other things and he said it would be cheaper if done then as it’d be done with other things. We decided to pay more as it made more sense to have it done before (it’s easier than in a months time). Whilst in your brain it might sound “easy” they only came for that so they’ve to recover the money they’re not making from another customer. If you think it’s overcharged and something easy to do … next time you can do it yourself. We are refurbishing part of the room to save costs and trust me nothing is easy …. It’s a f*ing nightmare

I think that's a pretty standard price for call out and work.

Just pay it and move on. Its a small job - probably about worth what you've paid. Don't ask him again if you're not happy, and please don't say anything to your friend about it.

Don’t forget you are paying for his worth (his years of skills & expertise) not the amount of time it took. So many people want a tradesman job at handyman prices.

Then call in a handyman! If it was that unskilled, why didn’t you do it yourself?

Sounds about right for the job, we’re u expecting a discount?

£80 sounds like a half day rate here in the north west, which is often what you have to pay for a relatively small job that stops a qualified tradesperson from earning on other, longer jobs.

Never pleasant to get an unexpected surprise though. Hope you're pleased with the end product OP x

Why didn’t you do it yourself?

No sorry, I think it’s expensive.
that makes his day rate £640 a day?

I wouldn’t say anything to the friend. But I’d just pay a handyman a day rate in future to get all the bits you want done. Either that or get a drill and some rawl plugs and do it myself.

No, it doesn't.

So many people have no idea how finances work for the self-employed!

Only if he got work he could charge for all day. Chances are he didn't.

And a day rate is not 9x hourly rate.
Some people really need to think.

I wonder will @Mottledhellibore every come back 🤔

What are you on?

He did 80 minutes for £80 thats a bargain for a qualified tradesman, most charge more than that for a quote.

He charges £1 a minute so you think he works £640 minutes a day?
So he works 10 hours and 40 minutes a day?

That doesn't include the travel time between all these jobs that apparently he shouldn't be paid for or be counted according to cheapskates.

If hes working near 11 hours a day with constant daily ongoing demand he must be exhausted but the most sought after high quality tradey in the world. Clearly hes undercharging and should put prices up massively with that level of demand for his work.

I think your plan of not saying anything but not asking again is wise.

When I needed an electrician for a very simple job, they quoted £60 as the call-out fee. So I suppose £80 is by that measure reasonable.
It's made tricky when it's a friend or relative. It's always ibest to find out the fee beforehand, but it can feel awkward when you know the person slightly or through a friend.
It's also awkward when work done by a friend or relative is not up to the standard you're expecting.
For these reasons I now prefer to employ someone I don't know.

Exactly.

They also need to cover bookkeeping, advertising, insurance, vehicle, tools, supplies, periodic skills refresher, their own sick and annual leave, pension/old age savings, tax, etc etc out of that £80, as well as living expenses , holidays and so on. It’s hardly pure profit.

Smaller jobs like this are always more expensive than jobs that take a full day. He had to travel to and from your house so the job probably took him 2 hours in reality and he would have been limited in what other work he could do for the rest of the day. He also used fuel, screws etc. We've had building work done recently and sometimes little extra bits seemed expensive but other bigger things seemed quite cheap. To be honest, getting someone to come and do the work is a huge bonus so I'd just let it go. £40/hour isn't a huge price - don't forget self employed people have to pay tax, NI, insurance etc from that rate so it's not comparable to an hourly rate for a PAYE employee.

Sounds like a good deal to me. Most trades don't want to do such small jobs as it's not worth their while.

White collar professionals have an employer paying employers NIC, employers pension, equipment, sick pay, maternity pay, potentially redundancy/notice pay, etc.

Self employed have to finance all that themselves, and do all their own admin (or pay someone to do it), often at weekends and evenings.

Completely different. You can't compare a self employed rate with an employed wage. It's apples and bananas.

Sounds pretty reasonable to me tbh.