Do you feel sorry for ripped-off customer?

[ebee]

A long time ago two well established business's suggested that I was charging "very expensive prices" on a couple of my jobs.

Case 1 - a plumbing heating firm combined with gen building services therefore could do a whole host of jobs either inhouse or supplying additional trades as well on a subcontact basis. Any job large or small from conception to completion.

Asked about my charging rates 9I almost never gave these out as I just provided an estimate for a job completely and almost universally that would be the price of the final invoice..
So far so good, but on this occasion I I was asked to break it down a little, so I obliged A/ materials cost to me plus a small %age mark up and labour rate at XYZ per hour.
He objected. If he was purely selling something to a customer to be installed by A N OTHER he would charge a mark up .
On the other hand, if he supplied and installed the whole job then the materials were at cost then he added a labour rate.
He complained that when I supply and install I was "having two bites of the cherry!" .
Yes so what! was my answer.
My two bites plus labour was far less in total than his materials at cost then a massive labour rate on top, therefore the end price of his jobs was by far greater than any job done by me.
He could not see that!

Case 2 - similar set up but a smaller operation run by a joinery firm.

(I am an Electrician by the way).
He asked me my labour rate and when I told him he informed me that his regular man who had worked for him for many years was far cheaper than me.
I asked him a simple question - how much total would his regular subcontractor charge for a bog standard local authority grant aided rewire of a certain type of house - two up two down plus kitchen plus bathroom.
He told me and then I told him to turn over the piece I had put down in front of a few minutes earler and I stated "That is my price! Who is cheaper?"
I was.
Turns out that his regular electrician did indeed have a stated labour rate less than mine but he was charging for materials the official "trade price" .
Many wholesalers back the worked on offical trade prices or manufacturer`s RRP then gave a discount , on cables that was commonly a whopping 85% discount on other things still a sizeable discount but not as much as the cables discount.
All I worked on was the price of materials charged to me then I added my mark up.

I had never set out to be either the cheapest nor the dearest but rather what I considered tobe a fair price for a decent job.

I slept soundly at nights.

I would never engage in a race to the bottom on pricing in order to get a job.

Once I`d given an estimate I would stick to it unless there was something genuinely unseen (as a trade pro I am expected to reasonably forsee almost all possibilities of possible extra work that might be required and either price it in or explain those possiblities at the outset.
The number of jobs that have totally unforseen extraworks required should be very small, near zero.

One thing I would do with every job I had previously estimated would be to work out the cost purely on time and materials and mark up and confirm to myselfthat they did actually tally within plus or minus 10% , actually the really big majority of jobs did do so within better than plus or minus 5%.

And to my mind, that is how it should be.

Bad business sense I know, I never got rich but I was always busy and I never worked for nothing either.
I worked purely by recommendation.

 

[CountryFan]

Surely people haven't gone through life without learning a thing or 2. For example, TV programmes such as Watchdog et al tell you to obtain more than 1 quote. I feel sorry for people who have committed to expenditure upfront and then trade has done a runner or whatever. People are entitled to a 2nd opinion.

 

[JohnD]

Many people can't easily decipher this though. Last I read, about half of over 70s are still not online. Also, the average reading age for elderly people is about aged 9,

That's interesting. Where did you get this information?

 

[ericmark]

Yes, I feel sorry for ripped off customers, most it seems connected to government grants in some way. Be it solar panels, heat pumps, loft insulation, cavity wall insulation, the list goes on, and it seems to attract the substandard tradesman as people getting something for nothing or very cheap, rarely complain about bad workmanship.

Both my late father and father-in-law were caught out, poor central heating installs, solar panels to heat DHW, the list goes on and on, but a lot of the blame needs to be aimed at government, they were after all the clients, and they did not check the installations were done correctly.

Central heating must be one of the largest culprits, but it has gone on for decades, so a poor install or gas fired CH replaced by poor install or heat pump type, and the householder simply does not realise how bad the installation is. If same or better than the last installation, then they are happy.

At 74, I can look back before central heating was the norm, and I know any room in the house, even with single glazed windows, and no cavity wall insulation, or loft insulation could be kept warm with a 3 kW electric fire. In fact, we would turn off some bars, so room likely maintained with 1 kW or fewer. Plus a 3 kW immersion heater, so a 3-bedroom house was heated with electric using a 60 amp fuse (Old Wylex fuse box rated 60 amps) so 13.8 kW was total coming into the home, and the home could be heated using less than 10 kW total, so with double glazing, etc, now the requirement must be a lot less, so it is clear my dad did not need a 35 kW boiler for the central heating.

This house is a lot bigger, 5 bedrooms, and the 20 kW boiler has not failed to heat the house and produce lashes of hot water, and old house had a dedicated boiler (Main 7) I think 18 kW so DHW only needs 18 kW and the central heating can stop while DHW is being drawn, so even with a combi-boiler 20 kW is ample for most homes.

So why are so many 35 kW boilers installed? It is so clearly poor design, and workmanship, and has been going on for decades.

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

So why are so many 35 kW boilers installed? It is so clearly poor design, and workmanship, and has been going on for decades.

I agree with all that you say above, but the reason for 35Kw, would seem to be one of instant hot water, and combi-boilers.

 

[ericmark]

I agree with all that you say above, but the reason for 35Kw, would seem to be one of instant hot water, and combi-boilers.

So I have heard it said many times, but my 18 kW boiler was too big for many shower heads, and I struggled to find one big enough.

It is the lowest output which matters, my living room needs less than 3 kW, most other rooms a lot less, just enough to stop anything freezing, so the whole house likely needs 5 kW or less, and the more times the boiler has to turn on/off the larger the hysteresis is.

The boiler should extract the latent heat from the flue gases, but if oversized, this is unlikely to happen, and if an on/off thermostat is used this will also stop it getting the latent heat, so the boiler is rated at say 85% efficient but due to sizing errors and installation errors, it is actually down to around 70% efficient. Plus the set-up is asking for unused rooms to be heated, so the gas bill is twice what it needs to be.

 

[ebee]

Speaking about grants , yes they seem to attract the low end bodge it and scarper ltd types quite often too.

I was part way thru a house rewire first fix and a "Warm Front" team came and I had to lay off for a couple of days,
they "butchered the joists" - put notches over the areas where I had put holes (as per building regs zones) because it was a flooring of chipboard sheets over the joists they did not carefully remove and then use the correct areas for the notches but lifted back up the boards I had carefully removed .

Those joists were severley weakend - the one saving grace was the lengths of span ere not great so it was not in imment danger of moving next week/next month/next year but in a few years time problems could well be envisaged.
A did use a picture of one such typical example as my members profile picture on this forum for quite a while, not just one joist, neraly all of them!
The local building inspector did his nut about it but eventually the owners settled for a "Guarantee Letter" from the company that the floor was sound (The Building inspector was insisting on calculations to be provided by the firm but it never happenend - shher force and bending moment calculations etc).

A right dogs breakfast of poor workmanship but the firm didn`t give a Castlemaine Four X about it. In my humble opinion.

Thinkg is with grants, in my experience, you tend to get some very good teams/individuals and some not so good in local authority districts but nationwide or sometimes County Wide seems to be far more of the very poor ones and often none/few of the decent ones.

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

The boiler should extract the latent heat from the flue gases, but if oversized, this is unlikely to happen, and if an on/off thermostat is used this will also stop it getting the latent heat, so the boiler is rated at say 85% efficient but due to sizing errors and installation errors, it is actually down to around 70% efficient. Plus the set-up is asking for unused rooms to be heated, so the gas bill is twice what it needs to be.

I agree, a lot could be done, to improve the efficiency of the systems we install. I specced my own boiler, and that, much of the time is far to big, at 18Kw. Only on those rare occasions, when it is heating from cold, does it come close to needing that capacity. The rest of the time, it trickles along on minimum output.

I wasn't happy with the on/off run flat out, until it hit temperature, so I swapped out the controls to a much more sophisticated version, offering full proportional control of the boiler. TRV's, I understood, were a requirement, so I fitted them, setting the unfrequented rooms, to 1, just to keep the chill off, and the more used rooms to a bit higher.

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

A right dogs breakfast of poor workmanship but the firm didn`t give a Castlemaine Four X about it. In my humble opinion.

Thinkg is with grants, in my experience, you tend to get some very good teams/individuals and some not so good in local authority districts but nationwide or sometimes County Wide seems to be far more of the very poor ones and often none/few of the decent ones.

There lies the crux of it, IMHO - the teams are shipped in from afar, with limited time on site, to actually do the work, so it has to be rushed, and corners cut. If, the work was handed to small local, responsible companies, it would do some worthwhile good.

 

[ericmark]

TRV's, I understood, were a requirement, so I fitted them, setting the unfrequented rooms, to 1, just to keep the chill off, and the more used rooms to a bit higher.

The flat rarely used in winter still has mechanical TRV heads, all fed from a motorised valve, so can turn the whole flat off. The main house has 10 programmable TRV heads, so every room has its own sequence, even with a 14 room house, the 20 kW boiler is twice the size required.

 

[ebee]

I have not done the actual calculations themselves but I would imagine that both Eric & Harry are pretty much on the right path.
Unless there are other considerations to be aware of I would imagine the aim might be to size a boiler somewhere within the region of capable of running "all of the averages" with an absolute minimum of 10% spare capacity onboard and a minimum capability of running up to a minimum of 95% of the maximum requirement ever envisaged thoughout a whole 12 months whilst taking at least 5 previous known annual figures into account.

Just guess guess really though. There might be known unknowns attached to that guess.

 

[johnny2007]

When I moved to this area I advertised on local hardware shops and I got lots of people asking for quotes which I gave, no problem.
My quotes where comprehensive with everything listed, including final cleaning.
After getting established, with people recommending my work, I was getting new customers trying to make me drop the price to match local bodgers.
No, was my answer.
If you prefer a cheap job, go with the bodgers.
Fitting kitchens was particularly bad because my overall price would be at least 1/3 more than the cheapest bodgers who could bang a kitchen in within 2 days, all included (electric, plumbing, etc.)
I ended up getting lots of job repairing or totally re-doing the bodgers work.
My customers eventually wouldn't care about my price, they liked piece of mind that the job was done right.
I also had this obsession with showing the customers everything I was doing, so they knew I wasn't cutting corners.
Nowadays I see jobs done by big companies which are a total disaster.
A couple of years ago a standard rear extension was so bad that I suggested to the neighbour who had asked me to have a look, to contact the council BC even at a cost, because I knew the private BCO employed by the builder was just passing everything.
Council BC condemned 90% of the work; builder walked away, upset that his bodging operation had been questioned.
This cost the neighbour in the range of £40k.
The only thing they could save was the main structure, although they had to repaint the lot and install a suitable RSJ.
Plumbing was found to be leaking in several points, electric was a maze of hidden cables, some joined with tape and kitchen cabinets had been butchered for no reason.
I felt sorry for this neighbour and helped him find a good builder and a kitchen fitter.
Lots of stress for the sake of a few grand difference in price.

 

[FiremanT]

That's interesting. Where did you get this information?

I immediately scoffed at the literacy suggestion - so, as is my wont, I did a quick Google, and although figures varied, it is quite shocking. One source suggest that the average UK reading level is year 6.
Oddly enough, my Grand daughter, just turned 8 is a voracious reader, and is way ahead at year 6 level . There is always a suspicion that reading the words is one thing, abd comprehending is another, but it was explained to me that (and I assume this is UK Universal) she is allowed to select school reading books from a range according to a grading system, one having completed the system books. Having read the book, the kids are tested for comprehension onna computer system, which evaluated their level of understanding and generated the next range of allowed material. This was all new too me, but sounds like good management.

There was a McDonalds promotion, just a couple of years ago - that gave away free books - and the ads suggested a large figure of children not exposed to reading at home, which is extraordinarily sad, and I suspected the claims were exaggerated- I must now revise that mindset.

When one reads responses to internet memes, it does become clear that intelligence and critical reasoning levels are desperately low

With regard to internet access, Online stats suggest otherwise to JD’s statement

Excerpt from: https://www.ageuk.org.uk/siteassets...unities/internet-use-statistics-june-2024.pdf

 

[Odds]

I immediately scoffed at the literacy suggestion - so, as is my wont, I did a quick Google, and although figures varied, it is quite shocking. One source suggest that the average UK reading level is year 6....

Considering the levels of comprehension exhibited on this site, i'm surprised it's as high as six years.

 

[ebee]

When I moved to this area I advertised on local hardware shops and I got lots of people asking for quotes which I gave, no problem.
My quotes where comprehensive with everything listed, including final cleaning.
After getting established, with people recommending my work, I was getting new customers trying to make me drop the price to match local bodgers.
No, was my answer.
If you prefer a cheap job, go with the bodgers.
Fitting kitchens was particularly bad because my overall price would be at least 1/3 more than the cheapest bodgers who could bang a kitchen in within 2 days, all included (electric, plumbing, etc.)
I ended up getting lots of job repairing or totally re-doing the bodgers work.
My customers eventually wouldn't care about my price, they liked piece of mind that the job was done right.
I also had this obsession with showing the customers everything I was doing, so they knew I wasn't cutting corners.
Nowadays I see jobs done by big companies which are a total disaster.
A couple of years ago a standard rear extension was so bad that I suggested to the neighbour who had asked me to have a look, to contact the council BC even at a cost, because I knew the private BCO employed by the builder was just passing everything.
Council BC condemned 90% of the work; builder walked away, upset that his bodging operation had been questioned.
This cost the neighbour in the range of £40k.
The only thing they could save was the main structure, although they had to repaint the lot and install a suitable RSJ.
Plumbing was found to be leaking in several points, electric was a maze of hidden cables, some joined with tape and kitchen cabinets had been butchered for no reason.
I felt sorry for this neighbour and helped him find a good builder and a kitchen fitter.
Lots of stress for the sake of a few grand difference in price.

Sounds we have some (but not all ) similar methods.
I did my estimates with a decent yet small amout of detail but not too much as this would take too much time up.
Example :- Lounge - two twin sockets, two way switched lighting etc etc

One fellow even asked me to provide a price list for materials for one of my own estimates (stupid twit, he did not realise he was asking the same electrician that had given him an estimate during the week to give him the price for materials so he could do the job himself -I was a contractor during the week but on Saturdays I stood in for the owner of a small private wholesaler for a couple of years.) I had noted that when I gave him the estimate and he exclaimed "You have not stated how much cable and how many switches, pendants etc !".
My answer was "It`s not nessacary, I know how much or how many of what I will use on the job!"
I thought he was a right pratt and he ws a right pratt, all he was after was a list of materials, it was so obvious.

Not just with my spec, but with most specs, a statement of what will be provided by two different firms can be very different unless particular brands/colours/finish are quoted, so that one element can vary any price comparison between two competitors before you even think about clean and tidy, removing all rubbish etc etc.
And yes, some folk would always try and get the price down, my answer was "NO" , I sometimes mentioned that a different estimate with less sockets/switches etc would reduce the price a bit if they wanted but they never did.
I did (eventually) learn that most of those that did not get back to me never had the job done at all and just a few got Bodgit and Scarper to do the job instead, even then some of them would later contact me to correct something and when I asked them why they had not ontacted the firm that did it instead of me the answers were "I cant get hold of them! They will not answer me! I do not have much faith in them!"

For a very few of them I did sort it out but only if I was not too busy and I gave them a very premium price before starting, I usually got "We wish that we had got you to do this in the first place".

One teader I knew used to answer when asked "When can you do it?" used to answer "My lead time at the moment is about 2 weeks!", one day the day before the two weeks was up, he got a call from a customer "Right you can do that job tomorrow!" he replied "No I said about to weeks, the the moment its about three and a half weeks, eould you like me to book this job in as a firm order?"
LOL - you can not make this up.

I remember on time specifically "Mr Ebee, we would like you to do our rewire as per your estimate (three weeks ago)" then I said "OK I will book it in" then I got "When can you start it?" then I replied " I`ts not bad at the moment it looks about 4 or 5 weeks time" then a pause, the "Ho".
A couple of hours later I got exactly the same call off the husband (funny I thought) then when asked about a start I gave the same answer I had given too his Wife. Then a got a slightly indignant "Well we have taken out a loan for you to do this work!" . Thinking hat difference would that make, said "Yes" he replied "Well we ARE PAYING INTREST NOW!" . I replied "oh, could you not had taken the load out after you had got a start date from me?" .
"No, we got a special low interest rate if we took it out now rather than wait!"
"Oh OK, but but you would still be paying interest for the loan taken out , even if I could not get to you for a month or two, , my prices will not go up for at least 3 months, probably longer so it will not cost you any more".
He still was not happy that he might be paying some of the interest before the job started.
Anyway I explained that my normal lead time was around 4 to 6 weeks but at busy times can double that and at one particular point in time I was contstanntly running at about 13 weeks for about half of the year (all of which was true by the way).

Some folk seem to think that you are hung up on a clothespeg waiting for them to ring you.

I have advise a few folk over the years that if they can ring up and get a tradesman round next week to do a job for them then they really should be asking "Why, how come they can drop on it so quickly?"