Im not too sure on melbourne but I can tell you I know of one female air conditioning tradesperson here in newcastle.

Jayro!

also used mega seal for our leaking shower in our IP.  They pritty well reseal it all up with a clear sealant. Work a treat and no dramas ever since. Obviously this is assuming the leak is just through the grout etc and not a leaking pipe etc

Jayro

I dont understand what is wrong with expecting $100 even if you are there for 15minutes. You need to included company cars as these guys come to you remember so include travel time in there which needs to be covered, loaded with tools and generally spare parts. All costs money. If you were to call my current company out to look at your air conditioner for example it will cost you $143 even if im there for one minute to reset something after a power failure for example. Thats not ripping anyone off. Thats fixing what we were called there to fix and expecting to be paid accordingly. We may be there 20minutes and have to inform the client that a major part is faulty and quote to repair. Again $143 for that service. Mind you we are a professional outfit that do turn up on time, will do same day service if requested and will do a good, reliable job. Now rememeber the trady is only getting $30-$40/hr for his wages (some as low as $24) and thats the way it is with most of the half decent mid-large companies. If you look hard you will find smaller one man bands that will do alot cheaper with no overheads etc. Some still do a great job, others too busy I guess and cant provide the service they should.

Dont get me wrong I totally agree that there are plenty of crap trademen out there as with all professions. I just dont agree with coments taking shots at "tradies" in general. Like I previously pointed out, we just had some very minor electrical work done on our sydney IP and it cost bugger all and was done very quickly. Great service. However we are currently renovating a property here on Lake macquarie NSW and have needed a couple of other trades for a few things I didnt want to do myself. This has been a nightmare. Yesterday for example I aranged for my mum to come to my house to meet a door guy who was to be here at 8am to supply and install 3 new internal doors. Long story short many calls later he finally turns up at 10am. I get a call at 12 telling me my doorways are not square and 2 of the 3 doors are ok but the 3rd is not. There boss tells me my 2 options are 1) pay him 2/3 the quoted price and he can just do the 2 doors or pay an extra $150 for a larger door to be cut down to size. I then point out option 3) which is where he can get his builder to remove the doors and get off my property and I wont pay a cent. He didnt like my option and ended up doing the 3 doors, very nicely. Then gives me no invoice and asks for his CASH. Hence I sent him on his way and said when the invoice hits my letter box the cheque will hit his. Now I then find a large dent in my front door and when I questioned the installer he said "yeh sorry mate im just in a rush, ill hit it with no more gaps in a sec" Now sorry but iv just spent near 10k getting my outside looking nice and no more gaps dont cut it. So anyway we finally get that all fixed which iv now got to repaint. Now if we were doing a job at a clients place and damaged anything we would make the client aware of it and get the correct trade out to fix it until the client was happy and obviously at our expense. So NO not all tradies are the same.

And by the way he FINALLY left my house at 6.30pm last night. How long would this clown take to build a bloody house?

Anyway I guess thats all iv got to say on this topic. How you think we are the new white collar work puzzles me but anyway if thats how some look at it then so be it I guess.

Jayro

I agree with you totally. Im only young myself (I think so anyway at 28) and my wife is 27. We upset a few family members as we only had 130-140 people at our wedding and they insisted we should be inviting atleast another 50, people I had never met before. All up our wedding was around $10-$15k. But we found it much more important to save for our 1st home. Like you say just by reducing there wedding from 30k to a more realistic figure would benefit them so much in the long run.

My sister inlaw is only 25 and is now looking at needing to return to work after her child hits the age of one. I can understand that families need the income etc but when they have just spent close to $40K on a new Honda family car it puzzles me a little. Ah well its there money I guess. Like you say, they will learn the hard way. Our family thinks we are having some problems somewhere as we have been married for 5 yrs and still dont have kids. They dont understand that we are paying off our PPOR and have an IP and are TRYING to get enough money in the bank for my wife to stay at home a little while when we do have a kid ( and enough money for me to try and convince my wife another Ip would be nice, lol) . Who knows, our way may be wrong but it seems to be going ok for us so far. Each to there own I guess.

Jayro.

Bringing in MORE overseas workers is NOT the answer. Maybe if tradies were not (in the past and still to some extent)  made to feel lower class then maybe more young kids today would head down the path of getting into a trade. I love how ACA or today tonight can run a show saying that we (tradies) are all the new big $$$ earners and its no longer the white collar guys and girls and before you know it clients think we all earn $100k plus. Reality check. Sure some good tradies who do work hard and do put in the hrs do earn well over $100k.  In my trade now If I was still working for someone else in sydney I would be earning around $35-$40/hr. Obviously ontop is super, O/T, holidays, sick leave a car etc. And if I wanted to work the 6 days a week $100k plus is on offer. I now live on NSW lake macquarie and only earn around $70k per yr give or take a little. Again plus the extras. As you can see it is FAR from being a big money earner. Dispite what some of you think, ALL trades are not too easy at all. Sure the basics may be but being good at them is totally different. Some people just think ok he is an AIr con/ fridge guy. And sure if your keeping a lady's fridge cold so her meats dont go off then you may only get to charge $50/ hr as a company. However I have and have had clients that if an air con goes down they loose upto $1million every hour. Hense the company was charging upto $150/hr. To just generalise tradies is crazy. You cant just compare DR's for example. Im sure my local GP doesnt get the same $$$ as the leading heart surgeon.

I dont do all my repairs on my IP as my time is more important than saving a few $$$. My property needed a new power point and light socket earlier this week. I asked the PM for a quote to see if I should bother going to sydney to do it myself. There sparky wanted $99 including labour, parts and gst. I found that price more than reasonable and I was more than happy to pay it.

Sure there are plenty of crap tradies but I tell you what there are plenty of crap workers in all ocupations these days. Just because you may have had a bad experience with a certain tradeperson doesnt give you the right to jump on here mouthing off about tradies. You need to get a grip buddy. Id love to see the state of our nation without tradies and to have unqualified clowns  doing things themselves. There would be buildings falling down and burning down all around us and all with blocked drains and toilets pouring crap everywhere. Ah would certainly be a sight to see. But anyway at the end of the day, like you say its soo easy anyone can do it so you just stick to that line of thought mate. Next time you need a trady you just keep doing the repairs yourself. No need to call us, no need to start this crap thread ( god knows why the admin have not canned it yet)  just fix it yourself and save your dollars.

Jayro

I did have a laugh yesterday actually. I started to think about this thread after I called my local GP. they were closed and the after hrs call out fee if I wanted him to come here was $150. I then looked at my work phone and though funny if he wanted me to go to his house today it would cost him $300. Ah well, glad im just  tradesmen

I cant get over the fact you think tradesmen are over paid. They work bloody hard and good ones are hard to find. When you do find one they are worth the dollars they ask. Like has been mentioned, there is a huge shortage of tradies. Try telling a young kid that he needs to earn bugger all for a 4 yr apprenticeship then get say $35k a yr after he is qualified. This HAS been the case in the past. However now we can get say (a good trady) $70-$100K a yr plus car plus super and hey it starts to become more appealing to the kids to get into a trade. And sorry but yes the client needs to pay for this. You would be the 1st to complain if your cheap trady was doing a crap job for $35/hr yet you still complain if a good one does a good job at say $70-80/hr.  LIke most things, you get what you pay for. You dont mind paying thousands for a lawyer ( and I have no probs with what they charge) to arrange some paperwork for you but you cant see how a FULLY QUALIFIED trady can ask to be paid reasonable money to keep your IP functioning for you.

And as for the air con costing $500 and $800 to put in well thats your fault for buying a bloody $500 a/c and thinking it will last. Like I said, you get what you pay for. A/C install including electrics will cost between (as a rule) $600-$800 now days. And im sure you think we make a fortune charging these prices but you have no idea how much copper for example has risen in price lately. And all your sparky's cables are full of copper so im sure you can work it out. Tradies have cars to run, people to pay, insurance etc, just like lawyers etc have offices to pay for and staff to pay for.

Like has been mentioned just because the guy is only there 30min he may have spent an hr or 2 picking up parts etc. Sorry but time is money. If its that easy buddy do it yourself.

Iv watched and read this site for a few yrs now and have been trying to learn all I can. I find it a great site and full of good threads etc (usually). Its a shame my 1st post had to be against this kind of negative talk against some people just trying to earn a $.

cheers Jayro