Which consumer unit to buy?

[mikhailfaradayski]

well done dizz.

What exactly has he done well?

He totally managed to avoid mentioning the downlights he wants fitting in the lounge and kitchen

or how to cut screws....or how to cut conduit threads....

Hi Liam,

I think your assesment of the situation is a bit lacking, you didn't use the words 'dillusional' or 'psychotic' or 'disorders' or 'lack' 'friends' 'social' 'life'

Still, very entertaining


Dizz, Lets see some pics of the CU and certs....

 

[chapeau]

What has he done well?

He has found an electrician who he can work with, and no doubt who will get more of his business and will be recommended to others.

That may upset some on here but he is a very fortunate man. Why not congratulate him and move on?

 

[holmslaw]

..

 

[Goldberg]

He has found an electrician who he can work with, and no doubt who will get more of his business and will be recommended to others.

£120 for five hours work? He won't be around long enough to get more of dizz's business.

That may upset some on here but he is a very fortunate man. Why not congratulate him and move on?

Congratulate him for what? Claiming that a good job has been done? We certainly don't have evidence that it's been carried out safely and competently. And if he wants to move on then he can so anytime, but he continued to argue on this topic even after announcing completion.

 

[AlanPPP]

Oh dear oh dear....

Some feathers have been ruffled here! lol

I've got to say that to understand all what's been said you have to be a Spark and have had to put up with customers etc

We have had countless people who have 'Ordered there own parts' as most of the time these people won't take any other advise..we being two nice guys let them go ahead.Then when we have qouted them a day etc to do work and find out on the day that they have got the wrong bits they complain when we go out to buy the correct parts and add more onto the bill at the end.

I do agree though that you guys should show your 'Experience and knowledge' in a more constructive way rather than taking the bait.The same thing happend to me today with a water heater..took my 'Mates' word for it about the price (£450)..got it fitted all fine (cost..£300!) then realised i could have got it for £80 cheaper online.

A customer buying there own parts is NOT a bad thing as long as they get the right advice in the first place..like off the Spark who is doing the job then we don't have to mess around paying suppliers...(minus a bit of mark up but this is outed by the loss of petrol..time it takes to go get them etc etc)

 

[ban-all-sheds]

There are actually two separate issues being argued over here.

The first is whether or not dizz can have got a truly competent (as opposed to merely a registered, as we all know how inadequate the criteria are for that these days) electrician, and the second is whether buying your own parts is going to save you money.

The first is easy to deal with - we don't know. He may have done, or he may not have done, and the side issue of him supplying the CU is irrelevant, he could have come on here and said he'd had a quote for supply and fit of £200, and got just the same reaction of "that's too cheap". There may have been unique circumstances applying to this guy which meant that he was prepared to do the job for £130, and is truly competent, and did do a good job, we just don't know, but in the long term that is not a sustainable price, and in the long term anyone who expects to drive prices down to that level will prove the truth of the old saying that if you pay peanuts you'll get monkeys.

The second is also easy to deal with - it cannot save you money in the long term. You may get the odd one-off example of tradesmen who haven't fully thought through what happens if they lose their income from markup, and end up contributing just labour at a rate which makes the customer's total price lower, but sooner or later they will realise that that is also not sustainable.

They will find that they do not get cheaper van insurance or diesel just because they no longer make a profit on materials. They will find that they do not get a rebate on their council tax just because they no longer make a profit on materials. They will find that they are not allowed to pay less at the supermarket checkout just because they no longer make a profit on materials.

And when they do the sums, and try to balance the books, they will find that they have to increase their labour charges to compensate.

It may well be that the ease with which people can research prices and buy on the internet does mean that the days of materials markup are over, but there is no way that that is going to feed through to lower total prices, because it simply cannot, unless you think that you buying your own materials means that the professional you employ to fit them should accept a permanent drop in his living standards.

Add to that the fact that there's a risk of your ignorance leading you to buy inappropriate materials, a risk of your inexperience leading you to buy carp materials if you consider nothing but price, a risk of future hassle if something goes wrong and your tradesman says "you bought it, not me, so you take it back for a replacement", and for what? For the best case of no reduction in your total costs if you can buy as cheaply as the tradesman, and the worst case of paying more in total if you can't?

Lunacy.

 

[JonoPashley]

Hate how people think we somehow dont deserve to make a decent living and should pass on all our discounts to them.

Wylex 10 way hi integrity flexiable dual rcd board £50
RCBOs £19.75 Each
MCBs £2.00
All + Vat

Now you joe blogs off the street will get charged roughly screw fix prices wherever you go. so whats wrong with the tradesman putting a few quid on his prices? not like they dont have a wage, insurance registraction, vehicle running and numerous other costs to pay out of their labour and what little most make on materials. But most dont understand and just want a cheap job.

 

[AlanPPP]

If i had a pound for everytime a customer has tried to get the job done on the cheap or thought they will get the job done for buttons i wouldn't have to work again

 

[dizz]

BAS - you are a biot up yourself aren't you?

You choose to make a statement that the prices charged are too low in the long run.

You have ignored significant contibutiing factors which affect prices like :

1. less risk with just supplying labour?
2. whether he is married?
3. whether he is divorced with kids?
4. is he living with his mum?
5. has he paid off his mortgage?
6. is he living in central london or is sheffield?
7. what is is outgoings?

These are long run cost issues quite apart from the short run issues I have already mentioned (e.g. is his tax bill around the corner, does he need to pay his trade account, ... )

So, BAS, you are very very clever - you can make a statement saying it is not sustainable in the long run WITHOUT know any of the above - you must be god, or er, god like.

Goldberg : <Firstly, in the example of £10 being the "marginal cost", this isn't even accurate, because if the guy didn't work he would still have to eat lunch. A small point, but indicative of your biased and blinkered outlook. >

1. You are trying to argue against me, but are supporting my statement that marginal costs are small. You want to reduce his marginal cost from £10 - very bizarre. Perhaps he would have eaten left over dinner which has a cost of zero at home, but when out on jobs, he buys a sandwich and coke from a garage? But, to satifsy you, let's say his marginal cost excludes lunch - shall we call his overal marginal cost £7.50 - perhaps you'd like to re-do the maths in my example ...

BAS and Goldberg : This about this?

1. Trade 1 - always quotes 10% lower than Trade 2
2. Suppose Trade 1 wins 80% of the jobs he quotes against Trade 2, and Trade 2 wins 20%.

[Note for Goldberg - when wish to educate yourself to how firms work try looking up "cross price elasticies" and "market share elasticity" - that's what I am talking about here]

3. Suppose it takes 30 minutes to quote on a job. [10 minutes to get there, ten minutes to quote, and ten minutes to get back].

4. This implies that Trade 1 spends 37.5 minutes longer on all the jobs he wins whilse Trade 2 spends 150 minutes longer on all the jobs he wins.

[This is because Trade 1 can "share" the 150 minutes between the 4 won jobs {150/4 = 37.5 minutes} whilst Trade 2 has to carry the whole weight of the lost jobs to the 20% of jobs he wins {150/1}]

5. Now let's look at their income. Suppose Trade 1 charges £30 an hour while Trade 2 charges £33 an hour (remember I said that Trade 1 was 10% cheaper than Trade 2).

Consider that all the jobs are 5 hours. Therefore a 5 hour job would cost £150 with Trade 1 whilst it would costs £165 with Trade 2.

6. For every 5 jobs Trade 1 and Trade 2 quote against each other, Trade 1 Spends an extra 37.5 minutes on the job. So the total time Trade 1 expends is 5 hours 37.5 minutes on the jobs he wins {see 4 above}. Trade 1's average income per hour is therefore £26.66 per hour {£150/5.625 hours}. The total time Trade 2 expends on a job is 7.5 hours {see 4 above}. Trade 2 average income per hour is only £22 per hour {165/7.5 hours}

7. Conclusion

Trade 1 goes out quoting £30 per hour, but his actual income per hour is £26.66.

Trade 2 goes out quoting £33 per hour, but his actual income per hour is £22 per hour.

8. And you know what, Trade 2 keeps blurting on and on and on about how Trade 1 must be doing a crap job because it is unsustainable to do a 5 hour job for £150 when he can only afford to do it for £165.


BAS - I have taken a look at some of your posts on these boards - often you are very unhelpful indeed. I read a post by you a while ago taking issue with someone who bought a multimeter but didn't know how to use it. The poor chap wanted to test which wires in a celing rose was the switch. Now that is something I don't know how to do either, but after reading your post, I spend 20 minutes trying to find out on the internet. And now, even I could have explained to him how to do a continuiting test with the thing. You know the test where resistence is high where there is no connection, and is very low when current can flow. And by testing pair of wires in turn, and switching off, and then on the switch, the only pair of wires that would change their resistance would be the switch wires. All this can be done safely with no current flowing.

What exactly was your issue?

I think you have to review your motives for being on these boards and the way you charge your customers ...

Finally, thanks to the helpful posts - you know who you are. I won't be responding further to this thread, but I am sure the naval gazing unhelpful sparks will wish to dig deep into my analysis picking over the bones to try to prove to themsleves they are right.

Well done to Bas and Goldberg in advance for your imminent additional posts - but I won't be reading them.

 

[bernardgreen]

On a forum for design engineers there was thread about the charges that free-lance designers charged their clients.

This comment was made about one frequent contributor

" He is spending so much time whinging on the fora that he has little time for paid work so his charges per hour have to be extra high to cover the time he wastes prattliing on his keyboard "

 

[AlanPPP]

At the end of the day......

Who gives a **** about this guys life!
Who cares wether he is married!
Who cares what sandwich he buys with his £10!

At the end of the day if the job has been done and certified and you got it done for cheap then i can only say the people arguing are just bitter about someone bringing down our trade with cheap prices...which they are right to do IMO.

For all you all know he could be minted and just does this to keep him busy etc?! I know a plumber who is retired and is loaded but does little jobs just to give the cash to his grandkids!

BUT i still stand by my statement that you should have got him to get the bits and just asked for a rundown of the costs..then investigate if you think there over the top.

 

[ban-all-sheds]

<A whole bunch of stuff which clearly showed that because of negligence or laziness or incompetence he had not properly read and understood what I had written, to the extent that he wrote outright falsehoods.>

But I did enjoy the irony of seeing the theoretical examples of hourly rates and bid:win ratios given this:

BAS - why the hell are coming back with some highly theoretical materials versus labour scenario - and asking people to select which tradesman to choose. It is a bit ridiculous.

Well done to Bas and Goldberg in advance for your imminent additional posts - but I won't be reading them.

Thanks for the warning - I won't waste my time going through your post showing all the places where you got it wrong because of your negligence or laziness or incompetence.

 

[galliano2001]

Not wishing to flog this dead horse anymore than is needed, what price do you think would have been suitable for the installation BAS?

 

[Chri5]

well done dizz.

What exactly has he done well?

Done what he set out to do, without having fallen victim to a onslaught of insistence that he is wrong.

One mans poison is another man pleasure. The job is done and dusted and the OP has exercised his right to freedom of choice.

Now I'm all for individuals debating, disagreeing and having opinions, but sometimes I fear the 'ram it in' insistence of an opinion is not reasonable.

6 pages of posting when a simple CU this + RCD / MCB or RBBO would have covered the enquiry. This forum is to help isn't it ?


I think Alan's remarks and sentiment explains my thoughts on the matter very well.

 

[scousespark]

Job just finished. Circa 5 hours. PIR with various numbers and readings on it. Installation certificate issued. I seem to have two separate PIR looking forms and two separate Installation Certificate looking forms. Invoice written out. Cash paid over.

BAS - why the hell are coming back with some highly theoretical materials versus labour scenario - and asking people to select which tradesman to choose. It is a bit ridiculous.

Perhaps it suits the sparky to do the jobs where he is paid immediately in cash (no risk of bad debt), he doesn't have to worry about materials (e.g. because of his own credit limits, fears of client not paying, not correctly identifying the parts required for the job, etc, etc.). In economic terms it comes down to marginal cost. The sparky's marginal cost for pitching up and doing a job like this was the cost of his petrol, his lunch, and the cost of the NAPIT Form - lets' call it a tenner. Now if he wasn't working today - i.e. he had no other jobs, his costs for today would be a tenner less but his income would also be £130 less for not doing my job. In profit terms, he's made a profit of £120 for five hours work. But his assessment of future profit might be much greater. For example, if he identified he was doing work for a landlord, which he would have done, he might see 5 hours a month coming his way, from just pitching in at the right level to win this account. The corrollary to this, of course, is that the other guys that failed to win this business are much less likely to win future business from me, and today they are all £120 worse off.

I was watching this and this comment caught my eye.
Marginal Costs - are those costs which directly relate to the cost of producing a single item (such as fuel, raw materials, labour cost).

You are talking about variable costs, but your valuation is too simplistic.
Your electrician may have only spent £10 getting to your job, but he has not made £120 profit.

He has a number of fixed costs (e.g. the cost of a van together with depreciation insurance, road tax, tools for the job, liability insurance).
All of these costs add up and must be taken into account. He has these regardless of how much work he has done and he must apportion the total across all jobs he does.

In your case he has done 5 hours work, but it would be unlikely he could do another job on the same day. In this case his daily rate is £130. Only he knows if this covers his expenses and leaves him with enough for him to live on.

In the end, you are happy he is happy.