sick of greedy plumbers & electricians

5% man….If he does 5 jobs a day each at $88 bucks a pop he will take home $2200 pw, I don’t think me getting a 5% discount is going to put him in any financial trouble. It’s not like I’m taking a gold coin donation from a blind man people! 

And as for the moisture test ‘Tools’, you can grab one for cheap (or not) at bunnings but like all large renos – best seek 'professional' help.

anywho thats my last say in this post.

Hello William

I have kept away from this useless discussion until now. However, I think yours is a constructive question so I am happy to answer.

1.    3 – 5 times a year over  4 IPs (over 2 PMs)

2.    That would be useful though once I find someone I trust I use them each time unless it's a big job/quote in which case I get more quotes just to reassure myself.

3. 
fair price                                                                    A must
urgency                                                                      A must
quality work                                                               A must
answers phone                                                        Desirable
trust                                                                             A must
service guarantee                                                     A must
reliability                                                                      A must
on time                                                                        Desirable
neat & tidy                                                                    Desirable
local tradesman                                                         Preferable
keeps in touch                                                            Desirable
gives free advice                                                        Desirable
easy to remember phone number                         Not important
has a website                                                             Not important
OTHER……………………………………..

Hope this is the sort of feedback you wanted
Cheers
Elka

A couple of small points
– most people who aren't in special care have an iq of >75 (and still they can't do much)
– an apprenticeship lasts 4 years generally and covers a lot more issues than the weekend army will ever see.
– $80 incl call out fee, a bargain. Who can diagnose a problem without seeing the site conditions?
– trades (like plumbers, gas fitters, electricians & air-conditioning installers) are licensed due to the risks these items pose to your health and safety
– I actually like getting paid a fair price to do the jobs that I have been trained for & to use the skills that I have acquired. If you got a 3am cold wet sunday morning call out, would you do it for $25 per hour including supplying all of your tools?

In 2008 with the massive cost of living blowout of 07, what can we get for $80 bucks?

PEOPLE may buy some of these items.

A tank of petrol (close)

Half of your weekly groceries.

Dinner out.

Car battery NO

One Tyre – small car YES

cheap watch

pair of board shorts (brand obviously)

A good tradesman hammer (Eastwing)

Good doctor GP or specialist 15 min discussion and referral.

2 lawns mowed.

subway Bike (ha,ha)

4 male haircuts

2 – 3 cartons of beer

phone credit

For someone to drive to my home, address a maintenance issue, discuss possible scenarios and share ideas, SOLVE THE PROBLEM and be neat, smile, be courteous and respectful of my time and private home – $80 is great start.

I was a sparky offering 24/7 service.

I was often called at 2am in the morning.

I went out and fixed the problem immediately, and charged $60 callout and $60 an hour (with min of 1 hr, this was back in 2000)

you wont believe how people whined!

lets look at it from my point of view:

at 2am, my house gets a phonecall. everyone wakes up.
I spend 10 mins getting dressed, and 5 mins looking up the address in the map.
at 2.15am, I start a 30 min drive to the client (on average)
at 2.45am, I start work.
at 3.15am, I stop work and issue an invoice for $120
at 3.50am, I arrive back home, have a shower, family wakes up again
at 4.05am, Im back in bed

so thats effectively over 2 hrs work for me, plus petrol, plus the inconvenience of my family having a crappy nights sleep.

I argue $120 isnt nearly enough!!!

Yet people say things like:
"$60 an hour!? so thats like $1 a min, are you for real?"
"$120 for half an hour, your a friggin shark!"
"if I had known you were going to charge that much I would have got my regular guy who charges $45/hr"
"Ive NEVER been charged that much in my life!"

hmmmm…….does your regular guy come out at 2am? Im guessing no since you called me. Of course you have never been charged that much, since youve never called someone out at 2am before. half an hour…….yeah mate, I teleported here!
$1 a minute………yep, you just wasted $2 bitching about it
$120 for half an hour…….but that saves you taking the day off work and saves $300 of food in the fridge from going off.

so remind me again, who has the low I.Q……..the public or the tradies?

For what it's worth, I think that those charges are fair and reasonable, given the type of service.

The problem for most people is; they have to travel to work every day, and never get paid for that. It's just part of the deal of being a commuter.

This, I think, is why so many people baulk at a call-out fee. I'm not saying it isn't justified; just guessing at the mindset of the customer.

This being the case, it would be an idea to make it well known that when you are providing this service the customer knows what the costs will be when you pick up the phone at 2 am.

Then, they can say yes or no, and if they say yes, they have no cause to whinge.

Not much fun for you if they say "no" over the phone at 2 am after you've answered it though.

Fair point; you're preaching to the converted though; as an investor and business person, I don't have a problem with you guys doing that.

But the majority of your clients are probably the average sheep; 9-5, no handy-man skills etc – no appreciation.

re tools

Ive been through the GMC's, the Ozito's, even the Ryobi's and B & D's……all these powertools died within weeks / months of trade use. Use Dewalt ever since & never had an issue.
They may cost 5x more, but last 50x more and provide more power which saves time & money.

$750 for a cordless drill. and the public whines about our charges when we use it on their house.
Left a $600 Ramset drill at a customers house once, went back to get it a week later, customer says, nah no drill here mate. Not much I could do……….

What's this nonsense about being charged $120 for a 2am callout – I was charged $230 for a Saturday night callout at 7pm. The guy lived 15 minutes away, he was actually in the area doing another job and spent a grand total of 15 mins at my place fixing an electrical problem. I knew I would have to pay around this amount, so it wasn't a surprise to me.

But lets put this in perspective, he probably did say half a dozen jobs that evening x $230 per job = $1,380 for a night's work. Yes, I know he has to pay for his overheads, say 30% (which are tax deductible anyway, he'll probably get back 40%),  which leaves him about $1,000 with a large portion tax and GST free for cash jobs. That's pretty good for 6 hours work.

I don't want to hear anymore from these tradies whinging about how they are battlers, beacuse they're not. They're C.U.B.s (cashed up bogans).

By the way, I have no problem with someone, who ever it is, making good legitimate money, I applaud it and encorage it. But please, spare me the struggling working class battler bullshit, beacause it'ssimply not true.

hahahaha

I laugh at people like you, inventing synonyms like C.U.B so you can act like you are some kind of expert when anyone with an IQ over 15 can see you are just ignorant and arrogant.

Im such a “bogan” cos I managed to win awards during my apprenticeship for workmanship, and got another award for getting the highest score on any trade exam in the country. Still have the certificates.

I went on to work for the 3rd richest man in the country at his Wolsley Rd mansion.

If you were half as smart as you pretend, you would have realised that $120 was back in 2000 as stated clearly.

another point is that tradies wages were largely unchanged from 1990 to 2003. I remember as an apprentice in 1992 we were charging $45/hr, and I was still charging that in 2003. So we are just playing catchup for years of under-pay.

so please, remind me of how much I suck and you rule……