I have been reading through the Trade Talk section a fair bit, and have started to become drawn in by the disgruntled customers who use there trade knowledge; internet materials prices (brand not relevant) and the Building Standards.
It has continually baffled me as to how they get to the figures of a plumber charging £50p/h, or electrician for that matter, and then go onto to complain about how extortionate they are? If you are a skilled tradesmen who takes pride in your work, this is extremely insulting. It almost presumes that we are not worth being paid for what we do, which to be fair, what we do as a self employed installer is our life basically, or pays for it at least.
Our hourly rate which we all have in our head, for most of us, will contain a break down of our outgoings; business and personal, on top of which we add our money for us to pocket. We do not pocket the £50p/h which seems to be the main opinion of some of the topic starters.
If you are not charging by the hour, which is something I do not tend to do with the work I complete, we are operating to a fixed price/timescale. This is given to the customer before we would proceed. Should you dare finish a job, that turned out to be a bit easier than you presumed, in 40% of the time you quoted, blimey - you had better look out! We must be so unfair making a 60% increase in our time/money, luckily we didn't book out the whole day to do the job, oh wait, we didn't.
What the customer would fail to realise is, we charge a fixed price because our outgoings are also fixed. If we finish 60% earlier, we will not reduce our price by 60% because, I'm not sure about you guys, my bank won't reduce my mortgage payment that month by 60%, the council won't reduce my tax that month by 60% and so on.
Please, give the tradesmen a bit of slack. We train/have trained hard to get where we are, not just on paper, but in our own knowledge that is built up over time with invaluable experience that actually saves customers money in some instances!
Any feedback, from any side is welcome, but no keyboard warriors, thank you.
It has continually baffled me as to how they get to the figures of a plumber charging £50p/h, or electrician for that matter, and then go onto to complain about how extortionate they are? If you are a skilled tradesmen who takes pride in your work, this is extremely insulting. It almost presumes that we are not worth being paid for what we do, which to be fair, what we do as a self employed installer is our life basically, or pays for it at least.
Our hourly rate which we all have in our head, for most of us, will contain a break down of our outgoings; business and personal, on top of which we add our money for us to pocket. We do not pocket the £50p/h which seems to be the main opinion of some of the topic starters.
If you are not charging by the hour, which is something I do not tend to do with the work I complete, we are operating to a fixed price/timescale. This is given to the customer before we would proceed. Should you dare finish a job, that turned out to be a bit easier than you presumed, in 40% of the time you quoted, blimey - you had better look out! We must be so unfair making a 60% increase in our time/money, luckily we didn't book out the whole day to do the job, oh wait, we didn't.
What the customer would fail to realise is, we charge a fixed price because our outgoings are also fixed. If we finish 60% earlier, we will not reduce our price by 60% because, I'm not sure about you guys, my bank won't reduce my mortgage payment that month by 60%, the council won't reduce my tax that month by 60% and so on.
Please, give the tradesmen a bit of slack. We train/have trained hard to get where we are, not just on paper, but in our own knowledge that is built up over time with invaluable experience that actually saves customers money in some instances!
Any feedback, from any side is welcome, but no keyboard warriors, thank you.
