Is my plumber ripping me off?

Eddie M said:

kevplumb said:

jeez i'd have dug it out and repaired it and backfilled it for £50

then i woke up

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I heard you don't even bother waking up for less than a "Monkey" as we call it daaarn here.

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get knotted marra
now bacck to tho op
i wouldnt get out of bed for that
but TBF it would depennd what was in bed with me

SPOODZ said:

Parts £55 - 2 leadloc connectors, 12" of copper pipe and a piece of foam insulation. Are leadloc parts really that expensive? - fine if they are, just asking.

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No, they aren't. I reckon materials come to about £15. Overall you've been overcharged, mainly because your paying for two people when only one is required. But you really should have asked what the rates were at the outset. Offer £100 (about what I'd have charged) to settle it. They'll probably accept rather than bother with a small claim against you.

12" of copper! Have they put copper in between lead and lead? If so get them back to dig it out and replace it with mdpe- or grass them up to the Water Supplier!

SPOODZ said:

doitall - thanks for giving me a straight answer (some other people on this forum are just down right rude and arrogant when replying).

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I dont know why you said that when I had not made any comment at all !

My view is that we would have charged a LITTLE less than that, perhaps about £120, but then we are too cheap!

However, an hourly rate of about £45 still sounds totally reasonable to me for a local firm providing a prompt and professional service.

The obvious question is why did you not call your Uncle to do the job himself ???

Tony Glazier


PS I still dont know why"Fela Kuti" posts here under the name of one of the best jazz highlife musicians from Nigeria. Does anyone know of a UK based Ghana highlife band? One played at a function a couple of weekends ago but they may have been flown in!

SPOODZ said:

I'm going to dispute the first days labour on the grounds that they said they wanted to come back another day- if i'd know they'd charge me £45 for that I would have had them out there diggin in the b****y rain.

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I don't see how you could have achieved that. You have my sympathy with the unexpected large bill, SPOODZ, but it's all too easy to forget that these tradesmen were offering you a service, which is a very different thing to you employing someone and having some control over when they choose to work. A service is something whose terms you implicitly accept when you engage the service provider, so the moral of this story is to ask about rates before the job starts.

When I feel that the job needs two people, on safety or any other grounds, then I bring someone with me. And if we're both there then we're both working and therefore I charge for both. Time has to be accounted for and paid for in order for the business to keep trading.

Where these guys went wrong was in the management of your expectations. If they thought that the job was about to get expensive, relative to the apparent effort being put into it, then maybe, just maybe, they should have told you exactly that, to give you the choice over whether or not they came back.

BTW, if you don't pay the entire bill then you'll be in breach of contract, and consequently, regardless of whether or not they pursue you for the money, neither of those plumbers will be inclined to come out to your next emergency.

"BTW, if you don't pay the entire bill then you'll be in breach of contract, and consequently, regardless of whether or not they pursue you for the money, neither of those plumbers will be inclined to come out to your next emergency."

Yes I have just a few numbers that are in my phone memory so that I will warned who is calling.

I have also finally adopted the policy of only answering calls where the number is displayed, forcing people who withhold to either leave an audit trail or not get this plumber.