Plumber's Charges

[bdh198]

I've just had a plumber complete a recommissioning job on my boiler and checking the plumbing in my new flat to make sure it is all working and safe. He has spent most of the day there (seven hours) and has had a colleague with him who is a gas engineer for the boiler. The work they have carried out has been very straight forward, cleaning the boiler, changing the odd pipe etc.

I'm confident they will have done a good job, but my concern is the price they have just quoted me for the work...

£60 for each half hour - £120 an hour. That's £840 just on labour!

Is this in any way reasonable or normal? I live in West London/Kingston area. A quick search online seems to suggest £60-70 an hour is what most companies/traders charge.

I know I should have asked for a fixed price in advance or a maximum daily rate, but I had to call them out in a bit of a hurry and didn't have time to do my usual searches to compare prices. Hindsight is a wonderful thing and I've learnt a very valuable lesson.

 

[lawrance]

£60 per hour for 1 engineer is reasonable. It really depends on what work they carried out in the time they were there?
2 engineers there for several hours they must of had alot of work to do.

"A quick search online seems to suggest £60-70 an hour is what most companies/traders charge." Yes but this is per engineer.

 

[Johnmelad]

Even for London you have been ripped off. Sounds like you had a one man job as well.

 

[Inky Pete]

What did their quote say before you agreed to it?

 

[doitall]

Pinlucko charge around £120 an hour per head.

I would question the need for two guys though depending on what work was involved, if it didn't need two don't pay for two.

 

[Johnmelad]

What did their quote say before you agreed to it?

You didn't read all of the OPs post did you?

 

[HERTS P&D]

Did you sign their job sheet before they started?

Name and shame them.

Andy

 

[lawrance]

Johnmelad
"Even for London you have been ripped off. Sounds like you had a one man job as well"

Well done mystic meg!!

 

[MrGassafe]

You were well ripped off!
It is well known that AGILE SERVICES would
have had you up and running for £84.00.

 

[ChrisR]

I think Mrgassafe's post is tongue in cheek. Not sure whose or which cheek..

bdh198 happens to be on my working patch, but I've stopped doing this sort of thing.
Yes you have been charged more than you would have been if you'd got a quote up front and called a couple of others. But it's consistent with Pimlico Plumbers' charges, and some others. (Especially if you live on Coombe Hill)
Many a plumber would quote a day rate for a whole day of pipework rather than hourly.
"Commissioning a boiler" can cover a multitude though, and is likely to an expensive bit of the job. If it was installed by an illegal, my flat rate was £300, plus any repairs/rework required.

 

[GodKnows]

Hi all,

Guess you must be a person who walks around waitrose and pick up your items without checking the price! Then, go to the till and complain about the total As with any trade, you are allowed to ask before they start work for a estimate or rough price

Fool you for not asking, they did stretch their price as you must of gave them no indication there was a price too work with. On a side note, you stated that you had to call them out "In a hurry," was it classed as emergency work or out of hours work?

Either way, common sense and communication is the key here. Don't complain after the fact, or on any trade, unless you have logical and just cause.....

 

[OLLIE20]

Not one person on here can tell you if you've been ripped off, because you don't realy have a good idea of what they've done

And what might seem straight forward to you , realy isn't , otherwise you'd be able to do it yourself

Remember you pay for the knowledge of us knowing how to do the job correctly, and for the piece of mind your boilers isn't going to kill you

Also you said there was 2 of them there? Then that's £30 per man, per hour

Also you should ask for a price upfront where possible

 

[HERTS P&D]

Ollie, £60 per half hour.

Andy

 

[bdh198]

Hi all,

Guess you must be a person who walks around waitrose and pick up your items without checking the price! Then, go to the till and complain about the total As with any trade, you are allowed to ask before they start work for a estimate or rough price

Fool you for not asking, they did stretch their price as you must of gave them no indication there was a price too work with. On a side note, you stated that you had to call them out "In a hurry," was it classed as emergency work or out of hours work?

Either way, common sense and communication is the key here. Don't complain after the fact, or on any trade, unless you have logical and just cause.....

That's absolutely right, I should have made sure before the work was carried exactly what the hourly charge was going to be. However, your comparison with shopping in Waitrose is slightly misleading because in Waitrose the price is clearly displayed on the shelves in front of you when choose the items you want . You then go to the tills where the price is totalled up in front of you before you buy the items and BEFORE you incur the charges! There was nothing made clear about this plumber's charges before I incurred them, something which is even more importnat when they're charging well over the average charges for the work and the area.

I certainly never thought it would be £120 per hour. That's more than my solicitor charged when I bought the place! And my solicitor has to comply with some pretty stringent professional regulations to ensure their charges are absolutely clear before they undertake any work, including getting me to sign the bottom of their five page client care letter detailing how their charges work and giving likely estimates.

I've spoken to several people in the trade (plumbers and boiler engineers) over the weekend and shown them the work as well as the itemised bill I asked them to leave. Their response has been unanimous; it's far too high an hourly price, and the work should not have taken seven hours, especially with two of them on site. One plumber who has recently done some work for me down in Portsmouth has even said that he'd be prepared to drive up to London and do the work for a daily rate of less than half what I have been charged.

I have no problem with plumbers and gas engineers charging a reasonable hourly rate, they are after all skilled in their trades, and they are trades you want carried out to high standards. My problem is when charges are not honest and open, and it's when the charges are not honest and open that a few 'rogue' trades give the vast majority of excellent and honest traders a bad name.

 

[ChrisR]

£120 per hour. That's more than my solicitor charged when I bought the place!

Yeah, that's why I jacked in the legal stuff. No proper money in it.