Trust & Tradies

If there is one thing I've come to hate dealing with in Australia it is tradesmen. I've had some luck with good tradies, but for the most part almost any dealing with one could easily end up being "A Current Affair" grade material. Of course these experiences get me thinking, and writing.

It seems that tradesmen in Australia are in essence victims of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Their conduct might be seen as anything from self-preservative to downright predatory. Most seem nice enough at the start, but if you let your guard down with them stuff gets slipped in unexpectedly. If you question anything that doesn't seem on the level they either get defensive or overtly deceptive. In several cases I've just had to call "Shenanigans" on them and play the bastard customer card, which I doubt is what they are trying to avoid, but by being dishonest it's what they end up with.

To begin with, I don't haggle when it comes to trades. I expect them to quote me a fair price and I choose the person that gives me the confidence that they can do the job right for a fair price. I haggle when shopping for goods from a store because a product is a product wherever I choose to buy it. However with services I know if I haggle things, my job will be the lowest priority and who knows what short-cuts they'll take.

Just now I've been on the hunt for a plumber for issues with our aging toilets. One's output valve has broken and is now leaking aside from not flushing properly. We had planned to replace all 3 toilets as the other 2 are showing their age so I found a local plumber that came in for a quote. He gave me what I thought a reasonable quote for the replacement labour, and he would supply reasonable toilets in the price range I had been pricing them out. However, he also mentioned the possibility of replacing the guts. I had tried generic parts however with the placement of these buttons the generic parts didn't fit. He thought that replacement parts might be available so I asked him to look into it. The main factor for considering fixing the existing toilet was that newer toilets have smaller cisterns than these older ones. We plan to eventually renovate the bathrooms in the next few years but with the current cisterns mounted to the walls, the replacements would leave a very unsightly damaged wall that would need to be patched and painted. So we figured to fix the broken toilet then replace the 2 remaining ones (or all 3) in a few years. Sure enough he comes back with a price for a replacement part, but at $260. (ouch! considering a replacement toilet is $270) Of course this makes me suspicious so I contact the toilet manufacturer and a reseller to confirm the part # and cost. $220. Ok, so I assumed the $260 was installed, but re-reading his e-mail it was plus installation. His earlier quote for the toilet replacements was $390 + parts. ($270x3 + consumables) When I suggested doing the repair rather than the replacements he then quoted $150 labour for the 1 toilet.. *groan*. $130 per toilet to replace the entire thing. $150 for the 15-30 minutes it'd take to swap out the one toilet's part. (I personally ripped one out to take down to Bunnings when looking at the generic replacements.) Clearly that means "It's not worth my while."  Fine, then please tell me that, just don't pad it until it is worth your while or to convince me to take the bigger job now.

Previously I had all kinds of fun with an electrician that I had to find on relatively short notice to swap out an oven when the original electrician cancelled less than a week before the cabinet guy was due to start work because he found a better job... Since the oven replacement would require unhooking the existing oven then waiting to wire in the new oven after the cabinet area was resized I planned to do a few odd jobs around the house including running a phone line, replacing some faulty switches/plugs, and removing a jury-rigged exterior light from the previous owners. The electrician quoted about 6 hours worth of work for everything but I asked if he'd agree to do it on time and materials to fit around the oven fit-out as I figured on around 3 hours worth of time. I'd skip some work if it looked like it was going to take too long. He agreed, but advised that his estimates were typically less than time and materials. In any case of course he didn't show up to do the work himself, sending one of his lackeys who ended up doing a decent job around the house. I just had him going from job to job while the cabinet guy was doing his thing. All told it took less than 3.5 hours. A few days I get an invoice for the original quoted amount, so I send a polite reminder that we had agreed on time and materials and that the job had taken 3.5 hours.  So he sends me back a breakdown of the materials with the 3.5 hours which conveniently adds up to ... You guessed it, his original quote. So I'm left digging around online wholesellers for prices on the materials he used. Fortunately he made that pretty easy by providing the part #s for what was used on the job.  Sure enough, nearly every part's price was padded by several dollars. In some cases more than double what I could have gone to Bunnings to buy the exact same part for. I could have bought a 4000m roll of wire for the price he wanted to charge for some 80m used on the day. (off a 4000+m roll) So I added up the Bunnings prices (which would have been more than he certainly paid) and sent him a payment for the adjusted amount along with an e-mail calling Shenanigans on the parts prices, what my totals came to, and that if his costs were higher to provide me with invoices or supplier details for the materials used. He never replied, but the fact is I should have never *had* to do that!

Back when I was looking to replace an exterior door (which was really just a hollow-core interior door with a knob-lock) on the garage I asked for quotes from a couple local carpenters. Both had given me reasonable hourly rates and mentioned that it would be a relatively simple job... But then each gave me quotes over $400 + parts/door. I mean I can understand that if it needed to be done as a priority that they'd want to charge me for a half-day's work, but I had been clear that since it was a small job and I worked close to home it could be done whenever was convenient between jobs. I just needed 15 minutes notice to when they wanted to stop by in order to get home. In the end I picked up the door, paint & dead-latch for $160 and did it myself with some encouragement from my boss and an offer of help if I ran into trouble. (As I've never installed a door before and didn't have much in the way of tools if the jam wasn't squared)

Now the cabinet guy on the other hand was a pleasure to work with. He did a great job, corrected a minor defect without issue, and even provided me with a few shelves from the spare material at no extra charge. (The material I had paid for, but he still took the time to cut and install them) He wasn't the cheapest quote, but was competitive with the group I got quotes for. When I do the bathrooms and kitchens I know who I can call for the cabinet work.

I don't want to be a bastard customer calling Shenanigans on tradesmen, or wasting their time when things would just be better if they'd tell the truth.