How do you deal with really rude builder?
Discussion
s1962a said:
croissant said:
bmwmike said:
Everyone needs to know that checkatrade are a scam and utterly useless for verifying the integrity of builders.
Always go with your gut IMO. Easier said than done I know.
I agree, I used cheatrade once, found a roofer that was meant to be great and turned out he was a complete cowboy con man. When I tried to leave a negative review I wasn't allowed unless I went through a hugely convoluted resolution process. I was a disgruntled customer and unable to share my true experiences on this so called impartial website.Always go with your gut IMO. Easier said than done I know.
Checkatrade is a scam and totally sides with the builders. I'll never use it again and warn people of it often.
For good honest referrals I find the local facebook groups are good.
Checkatrade should be shut down as it is hugely misleading and does not act in the interests of customers.
You can't beat a first hand referral and the best I've had are from local facebook groups where other locals have good experiences with good local tradesmen.
croissant said:
s1962a said:
croissant said:
bmwmike said:
Everyone needs to know that checkatrade are a scam and utterly useless for verifying the integrity of builders.
Always go with your gut IMO. Easier said than done I know.
I agree, I used cheatrade once, found a roofer that was meant to be great and turned out he was a complete cowboy con man. When I tried to leave a negative review I wasn't allowed unless I went through a hugely convoluted resolution process. I was a disgruntled customer and unable to share my true experiences on this so called impartial website.Always go with your gut IMO. Easier said than done I know.
Checkatrade is a scam and totally sides with the builders. I'll never use it again and warn people of it often.
For good honest referrals I find the local facebook groups are good.
Checkatrade should be shut down as it is hugely misleading and does not act in the interests of customers.
You can't beat a first hand referral and the best I've had are from local facebook groups where other locals have good experiences with good local tradesmen.
croissant said:
s1962a said:
croissant said:
bmwmike said:
Everyone needs to know that checkatrade are a scam and utterly useless for verifying the integrity of builders.
Always go with your gut IMO. Easier said than done I know.
I agree, I used cheatrade once, found a roofer that was meant to be great and turned out he was a complete cowboy con man. When I tried to leave a negative review I wasn't allowed unless I went through a hugely convoluted resolution process. I was a disgruntled customer and unable to share my true experiences on this so called impartial website.Always go with your gut IMO. Easier said than done I know.
Checkatrade is a scam and totally sides with the builders. I'll never use it again and warn people of it often.
For good honest referrals I find the local facebook groups are good.
Checkatrade should be shut down as it is hugely misleading and does not act in the interests of customers.
You can't beat a first hand referral and the best I've had are from local facebook groups where other locals have good experiences with good local tradesmen.
227bhp said:
croissant said:
s1962a said:
croissant said:
bmwmike said:
Everyone needs to know that checkatrade are a scam and utterly useless for verifying the integrity of builders.
Always go with your gut IMO. Easier said than done I know.
I agree, I used cheatrade once, found a roofer that was meant to be great and turned out he was a complete cowboy con man. When I tried to leave a negative review I wasn't allowed unless I went through a hugely convoluted resolution process. I was a disgruntled customer and unable to share my true experiences on this so called impartial website.Always go with your gut IMO. Easier said than done I know.
Checkatrade is a scam and totally sides with the builders. I'll never use it again and warn people of it often.
For good honest referrals I find the local facebook groups are good.
Checkatrade should be shut down as it is hugely misleading and does not act in the interests of customers.
You can't beat a first hand referral and the best I've had are from local facebook groups where other locals have good experiences with good local tradesmen.
There are specific websites where you can hire sub humans for less than the price of a sandwich to say whatever you like in a review. And these aren’t the typical 20th century scumbag with their terrible language and clearly backward lifestyles but the new 21st century scrote who is a white collar worker with an education who will willingly lie for a bag of grapes such is the distortion of their moral compass.
This is facilitated obviously by the medium needing to be commercially viable and so the entity that is paying that revenue is the entity that gets to say what it wants.
You could try and create a system where someone’s work is peer reviewed and after x number of jobs being reviewed they get a published grade but it would be too hard to monetise.
And long before the issue of tradesmen is addressed the problem of IT staff is far more important. In nonother industry are 100% of the staff self professed geniuses and everyone else around them is rubbish when the reality is that most are too damn deranagedbor stupid to ever realise their total inability. For that industry we probably just need to start a cull as it is endemic and they make the tooth suckers of the motor and building trade look like kings.
DonkeyApple said:
227bhp said:
croissant said:
s1962a said:
croissant said:
bmwmike said:
Everyone needs to know that checkatrade are a scam and utterly useless for verifying the integrity of builders.
Always go with your gut IMO. Easier said than done I know.
I agree, I used cheatrade once, found a roofer that was meant to be great and turned out he was a complete cowboy con man. When I tried to leave a negative review I wasn't allowed unless I went through a hugely convoluted resolution process. I was a disgruntled customer and unable to share my true experiences on this so called impartial website.Always go with your gut IMO. Easier said than done I know.
Checkatrade is a scam and totally sides with the builders. I'll never use it again and warn people of it often.
For good honest referrals I find the local facebook groups are good.
Checkatrade should be shut down as it is hugely misleading and does not act in the interests of customers.
You can't beat a first hand referral and the best I've had are from local facebook groups where other locals have good experiences with good local tradesmen.
There are specific websites where you can hire sub humans for less than the price of a sandwich to say whatever you like in a review. And these aren’t the typical 20th century scumbag with their terrible language and clearly backward lifestyles but the new 21st century scrote who is a white collar worker with an education who will willingly lie for a bag of grapes such is the distortion of their moral compass.
This is facilitated obviously by the medium needing to be commercially viable and so the entity that is paying that revenue is the entity that gets to say what it wants.
You could try and create a system where someone’s work is peer reviewed and after x number of jobs being reviewed they get a published grade but it would be too hard to monetise.
And long before the issue of tradesmen is addressed the problem of IT staff is far more important. In nonother industry are 100% of the staff self professed geniuses and everyone else around them is rubbish when the reality is that most are too damn deranagedbor stupid to ever realise their total inability. For that industry we probably just need to start a cull as it is endemic and they make the tooth suckers of the motor and building trade look like kings.
LABC should then go hourly rate for plan checking and inspections.
I do my applications and get barely more than 2/3 queries. The local competition with fancy names and funny handshakes have pages of queries, and they then charge the client again to deal with those queries.
LABC charging hourly would soon filter the s
t designers out. Same for Contractors. If LABC feel the need to be onsite every other day then so be it. Its normal - I found about 75% are like this.
I try to keep professional only with them now. A lot clearly have issues with working for somebody else and need to feel superior in some way. Whilst having quite a big job done on my house I noticed a trend of guys telling me (without any prompting whatsoever or relevance)
- I used to box and and pretty handy
- I used to have a Subaru / Mitsubishi with 500bhp, used to wheelspin in every gear
- Nobody else can do what I do
- I know a mate whos into organised crime can make people dissapear.
- Lets have a go in your car
This was brought up time and time again, with me passing them on the driveway, for some it got so bad I used to walk off when they were talking to me. The most common was the boxing, and trying to tell me how hard they were. I presume this is to say "If you dont pay me I can deck you?"
Funniest was teh plasterer who was just a disgusting type of person, crack out all the time, BO, missing teeth, couging like a mad man, probably just crapped his pants for entertainment woudl stand there and stare at my car, once I walked past he said "Lets have a go!"
Had to break it to him that it wasnt ever going to happen.
I try to keep professional only with them now. A lot clearly have issues with working for somebody else and need to feel superior in some way. Whilst having quite a big job done on my house I noticed a trend of guys telling me (without any prompting whatsoever or relevance)
- I used to box and and pretty handy
- I used to have a Subaru / Mitsubishi with 500bhp, used to wheelspin in every gear
- Nobody else can do what I do
- I know a mate whos into organised crime can make people dissapear.
- Lets have a go in your car
This was brought up time and time again, with me passing them on the driveway, for some it got so bad I used to walk off when they were talking to me. The most common was the boxing, and trying to tell me how hard they were. I presume this is to say "If you dont pay me I can deck you?"
Funniest was teh plasterer who was just a disgusting type of person, crack out all the time, BO, missing teeth, couging like a mad man, probably just crapped his pants for entertainment woudl stand there and stare at my car, once I walked past he said "Lets have a go!"
Had to break it to him that it wasnt ever going to happen.
A lot of my work is in the hotel and care home industry. Everything, absolutely every single element of every project whether it's a Saudi owned 5 star London money laundering enterprise or a Travelodge in Blackpool is driven by cost. The result 99% of the time is that team A appear to start job using random subbies, over run, disappear when they start getting hit by penalty charges and are replaced by team B, C and possibly D until the job is completed to a reasonable (hiding the bodges) standard. There are firms that exist purely to fix the fk ups that happen on site after the first bunch of gypos have disappeared and all they do is hire another firm and pocket a shed load of cash because the client is absolutely desperate for ANY kind of resolution.The end cost is 3 x what it would have been if team D had been hired in the first place.
Everybody monas about the race to the bottom culture in the trade but nobody wants to actually pay a higher price for better work so it will never change. Good ones are out there but they are simply more expensive and usually busier because they are few and far between. If you roofer can be there in the next 5 minutes he's probably got no other work because he's st!
What I've learned is when you get your "three quotes" for anything just bin the cheap one straight off. He'll be a, steal all the copper in your house, will do a st job then vanish into thin air but the problem with the industry is EVERYONE - domestic or otherwise - wants everything for 50p and they end up with a lobotomised monkey trying to wire a socket with a spanner.
k ups that happen on site after the first bunch of gypos have disappeared and all they do is hire another firm and pocket a shed load of cash because the client is absolutely desperate for ANY kind of resolution.The end cost is 3 x what it would have been if team D had been hired in the first place. Everybody monas about the race to the bottom culture in the trade but nobody wants to actually pay a higher price for better work so it will never change. Good ones are out there but they are simply more expensive and usually busier because they are few and far between. If you roofer can be there in the next 5 minutes he's probably got no other work because he's s
t! What I've learned is when you get your "three quotes" for anything just bin the cheap one straight off. He'll be a
, steal all the copper in your house, will do a st job then vanish into thin air but the problem with the industry is EVERYONE - domestic or otherwise - wants everything for 50p and they end up with a lobotomised monkey trying to wire a socket with a spanner. Edited by StoatInACoat on Wednesday 18th December 09:39
Edited by StoatInACoat on Wednesday 18th December 09:45
A friend of mine makes his living as a project manager by taking over commercial redevelopments that have gone off the rails. His view is that often the only time the client is actually willing to pay the right price for the right people is after they’ve gone through the process you derail above and are cr4pping themselves about losing their fund management job.
I've often wondered how trades get on with doing jobs for retired or elderly tradesmen. My dad, who is in his 80s, worked in the building trade for decades. He still does some of his own work but most of it he can't manage, so he gets people in to do it. He's probably a nightmare to work for as he knows how he'd go about doing a job.
StoatInACoat said:
Everybody monas about the race to the bottom culture in the trade but nobody wants to actually pay a higher price for better work so it will never change. Good ones are out there but they are simply more expensive and usually busier because they are few and far between. If you roofer can be there in the next 5 minutes he's probably got no other work because he's st!
t! Edited by StoatInACoat on Wednesday 18th December 09:39
Edited by StoatInACoat on Wednesday 18th December 09:45
Exactly this.
It is a race to the bottom because most clients have little idea about quality until the work is done - and even then some don't appreciate it - so the only thing they focus on is price. If somebody quotes the job they want at £3k then why'd they choose the guy who wants £4k for it?
The only thing the £4k guy can do if he wants to feed his kids and pay the mortgage is either convince clients he's worth the extra grand and only if he can do that then he has the chance to prove it by taking his time and doing it well with quality materials or cut corners on time and materials to get his price down to compete.
A friend of the family had a house construction company, but they only ever did a house or 3 at a time. They were well known in Southport as builders of very high-quality homes and those houses attracted a premium - probably still do. His issue was always the “trades”, and the “interview” was say for a joiner “you’re a joiner – fit that door frame properly”. He didn’t care what they said they had done previously. He would keep turning up and check on progress and If they weren’t doing it right, they were straight off site.
The lads who were regularly working for him admitted that being good enough to work on one of his home builds was a guarantee of further work elsewhere. They were his first line of defence as most said “don’t employ that bloke - he’s an idiot…”
I must admit, I’ve never had this issue, as I do ask around to confirm who the muppets are.
The lads who were regularly working for him admitted that being good enough to work on one of his home builds was a guarantee of further work elsewhere. They were his first line of defence as most said “don’t employ that bloke - he’s an idiot…”
I must admit, I’ve never had this issue, as I do ask around to confirm who the muppets are.
RTB said:
I've often wondered how trades get on with doing jobs for retired or elderly tradesmen. My dad, who is in his 80s, worked in the building trade for decades. He still does some of his own work but most of it he can't manage, so he gets people in to do it. He's probably a nightmare to work for as he knows how he'd go about doing a job.
They’re one of the best sorts to work for. Know what they’re talking about, and understand the process. Also realise the importance of tea. It’s always nice to chat to the ‘old boys’ as it is in many walks of life.
227bhp said:
Most online reviews which are open to the public are utter drivel.
Amen to that. Checkatrade, carehome.co.uk, goodgaragescheme...... all complete and utter cons. You'll find every trader/carehome/garage scores 4/5 or 9/10 minimum, as if not, the companies would stop paying these middlemen. It fking stinks.Aluminati said:
They’re one of the best sorts to work for. Know what they’re talking about, and understand the process.
Also realise the importance of tea. It’s always nice to chat to the ‘old boys’ as it is in many walks of life.
I just wondered if it was like Doctors who hate treating other Doctors Also realise the importance of tea. It’s always nice to chat to the ‘old boys’ as it is in many walks of life.
The last lot of builders my dad had in to do a garage extension all took tea with milk and 1 sugar whether they wanted it or not. Apparently the guy that ran the company had it as a condition of employment that you had tea with milk and 1 sugar to stop complicated brew orders complicating tea breaks
Toyoda said:
227bhp said:
Most online reviews which are open to the public are utter drivel.
Amen to that. Checkatrade, carehome.co.uk, goodgaragescheme...... all complete and utter cons. You'll find every trader/carehome/garage scores 4/5 or 9/10 minimum, as if not, the companies would stop paying these middlemen. It fking stinks.Four Litre said:
- I used to box and and pretty handy
- I used to have a Subaru / Mitsubishi with 500bhp, used to wheelspin in every gear
- Nobody else can do what I do
- I know a mate whos into organised crime can make people dissapear.
- Lets have a go in your car
.
Is it just me but I've never had conversations like this.- I used to have a Subaru / Mitsubishi with 500bhp, used to wheelspin in every gear
- Nobody else can do what I do
- I know a mate whos into organised crime can make people dissapear.
- Lets have a go in your car
.
It's pretty restricted to dogs, tea, the job, other trades, weather, the job, cars (normal stuff though), holidays, Christmas, kids, the job, local pubs, knocking off time, the job, sport, builders merchants, tea, the job, other jobs, tea, knocking off time.
Never have we discussed fighting, borrowing cars, organised crime. Most I'd be happy to socialise with.
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