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The guys with four year apprenticeships are the top of the range. Unfortunately, for most building work you don't need any formal qualification whatsoever. Any idiot with a trowel can call himself a "builder", and for becoming self-employed he only needs a van. This opens the market for all...

With shoes I see what I get. I can inspect them, I can try them on, walk around with them, and if I don't like them, I put them back on the shelf. If it was as easy as that with tradesmen, there would be no problem.

At least you can handle numbers....

At least the car dealer will have to pay tax, while for a tradesman 40 Pound an hour is his net wage. Apart from that, rip-offs exist everywhere. It's a capitalist society, and in a way tradesmen follow the same trend: Take as much as you can.

??

To build something awe inspiring requires an architect. The builders are more or less exchangeable. Which however doesn't make them less important.

If I had to, yes.

You don't need a show for that. Cowboys exist all over the place.

I had two. The other one was cheaper but the guy seemed less trustworthy.

Because building work is not a pair of shoes. What a strange comparison.

None of my tradesman would agree with you. They've always gone home happily with the money in their pockets.

No no, you're getting that wrong. It's not about resenting tradesmen. In fact, a good tradesman can be a godsent. However, there are lots of rogues and idiots out there, and if you don't want to learn the hard way by having your house messed up, you have to be watchful and sceptical.

For half a day's work, 100 Pound is a good wage. I'd be very happy to earn that much. As mentioned above. By the way, you seem to have problems with my (rather simple) name.

In this point you're right. Good tradesmen are few and far between, which leaves enough room for the competent ones to overcharge their customers. At the end of the day, and that's what comforts me, an overpriced but decent job is still better than a messed-up cowboy job. You have no idea...

I didn't have a clue how much the job would cost. But I mentioned this before. This is the point where you have to rely on the tradesman to be honest and to give you a fair quote.

Of course not. He'd done his job and I paid the 200 Pound as agreed. Nevertheless, in retrospect I realised that I'd paid a very high price for three and a half hours of work. Unfortunately, when you're dealing with tradesmen, you always have to expect to be clobbered. You can't be careful enough...

Quite simple: office employees who sit around all day and chat or surf the net, won't make it into the top position. I'm sorry but as a customer I can't subsidise a tradesman who can't secure enough jobs to feed his family. Although I understand the "logic": If a tradesman only gets a job...

I wouldn't think that the only alternative to overcharging a customer is to do the job "for free".

Those lower ranking office employees earn a fraction of the hourly rate of a tradesman.

As you will be aware, finding a tradesman is not as easy as finding a garage. It's a minefield, and it can take a lot of time, patience and effort to find someone who's reasonably competent, trustworthy AND available. If you do get several quotes and you opt for the cheapest, you still don't...