Has my sister been charged a fair price?

[Circuit]

Just had a call from my sister. Her combi boiler would not work this morning. She got some local plumber in and he diagnosed water having got in via the flue shorting out the flame sense electrode. (there was torential rain yesterday in London). He found the flue was leaning up slightly so after he had dried out the boiler and got it working he set about setting the flue to have a slight drop. I am told there was rather a mess when he had finished.

My sister wonders if she was charged fairly. The charge was £40 for same day call out, and £40 /hour with 3 hours work, total £160.

She lives in a London suburb. Is this fair price, a bargin, or a bit high?

 

[breezer]

london suburb is too vague, job is done so not much you can do about it, as we (most) dont live in london how would we know for sure?

 

[DP]

It is not a bad price considering the man has come out, done the work correctly and the boiler is now functioning correctly. He is correcting someone elses mess/ bad workmanship. Idealy it should not need sorting if the job had been done correctly to start with.

If the boiler does fail again for the same reason, be prepaired to call him out again and expect to pay nothing. Do keep his phone number handy.

 

[TexMex]

I live on the outskirts of London. Not for much longer though. We pay through the nose to finance Red Kens schemes, but never get any benefits. It's double whammy all the time. Not only do we have to pay congestion charge to get into London, we've also coughed up the setup costs of the scheme in the first place!

160 quid for 3 hours of a plumbers time around here sounds like a bargain. To put this into perspective, they generally get paid just slightly less than Solicitors and Surgeons (about 9 times the hourly rate of a qualified nurse).

 

[Circuit]

It was not so much of her complaining, as one poster said, she agreed to his fee in advance, in fact if this is reasonable then she may use that firm again for any further problems.

She lives in Harrow by the way.

I would have thought hourly rates would be similar across the country apart from inner London of course. In fact cities might be more reasonable since there is always a plumber's merchants nearby compared with the sticks.

As regulars here know, I never employ tradesmen for amy task therefore I have no idea about labour charges except those charged by my local garage which is also happens to be £40 / hour.

 

[Gas2Air]

What boiler is it?

If it's a condensing combi then the flue will have a slight upwards look to it. They are designed for it. The expense may just go up if it is.

 

[Circuit]

No, it is a Worcestor 80ic. It was installed before she had purchased the property. I don't doubt the flue had an upward slope since when I have visited her in the past, it certainly looked like it sloped upwards a bit.

There was a time when MIs stated a small downward slope for conventional fan flues, far less now since manufactures prefer their boilers to have a limited life.

 

[blahblah]

Seems very fair. You have to remember that when doing call outs he can't schedule anything else until he knows he'll be finished. He could end up with nothing else that day in which case he's on a loser!

 

[PEDANTICVINDICTIVEMAN]

Sounds a fair price to me, with all the overheads and continual hands in my pockets I charge the same and I am in the midlands, if they want to remove
some of the expense of being a gas fitter I can remove some of the expense to my customers, get onto your MP, britain is suffocating in a qaugmire of unessesary rules and regulations and punative reg fees ect. and filling too many suits and ties pockets off the backs of the working man.

 

[ChrisR]

"punative reg fees" steady on, maybe 50p/hour..

Reasonable I'd have thought.

A lot of people think £40 -50 an hour sounds OK but shout foul at say 4 hours being £180. A shop "sold" me for £80 + vat for a while. Once it took me 2 1/2 hours to plumb in a cooker. They paid up though. Parted company with shop when they insisted I charge the £94 for adjusting a thermostat on an immersion heater. Hadn't better give the shop name but it starts "Designer..."

 

[Circuit]

"Designer..."?? is his local to you only?

 

[waran]

£40/hour sounds pretty reasonable in London.
I live in a leafy London suburb and have been quoted from £40-100 an hour with a minimum hours charge for most plumbing work. Problem comes when you need to get someone out in a hurry and then they can charge whatever they want. Helps to get to know a few of the local tradespeople especially ones that do a good job. I'd keep his number!

 

[AdamW]

A good plumber is hard to find, so when you do find one who gets the job done right, done well, and done within a reasonable labour charge (there are some unscrupulous types out there who will play for time) then you should use them again.

Tradesmen like repeat business as they know the customer is reasonable, pays up and makes a good cup of tea. New customers always offer some risk.

There are many plumbers who do most of their work subcontracting, but will do small jobs "on the side". They can be a godsend as their prices are usually quite reasonable, but I doubt they would do call-outs as your sister required.

 

[Circuit]

Thanks for the feedback, I thought that she had done quite well really. And rain should no longer get into the flue like before