Funky Monkey

She say's she is not a sucker but clearly is if she pays $2000 a day to someone.
People talk and it is not hard to find out roughly how much you should be paying so wtf was she thinking. I don't know about Australia but you could take someone to court for overcharging and there is more awareness of this in the U.K now

painter in aus

well done funky............ the rest are in dreamland. its tough here as well we know it

Pollyana

Must have been your sister i remember meeting, as I certainly don't recall you looking like an "Anne"

Tooterelli

I don't understand your response painter in aus. Why are you being so defensive? If you are a good & honest painter then I would have thought you too would be mad at the cowboys who are ruining your reputation.

perksy

If you go by his postings on here you may find your answer

Funky Monkey

Yes we are annoyed at the cowboy's but also the mentality of a lot of the public. If someone said that everyone in your trade was no good you would probably defend yourself.

The average image of us tradies is not very good and the general public have a misguided view of us. They think we work 8 - 3 p.m have tea breaks all day and go home or are down the pub for 4 . For some of us there are a few hours per week quoting at night often driving quite a bit and getting materials e.t.c. O.K it is our choice of job but all I am saying is there is much more to our job and we work harder than just the hours you see us on site and all people do is moan about the price they pay. Also all said and done we are skilled and if it is that easy why don't people do it themselves.
The average employed numpty will do his / her 8 hours per day, always want their breaks and the hour for lunch and then moan about what tradies charge, they don't see the big picture.

Tooterelli

Well I must say guys that you are not doing yourselves any favours by your responses here. I don't believe anyone has ever said that all "tradies" are bad; that would be a ridiculous statement. So far though the ones responding with aggravation seem to have a heck of a chip on their shoulder!

Tooterelli

double post

Funky Monkey

You don't need a tradie do you? You know it all already

You can already do the job better yourself just like most other "hobby" tradies

La Vida loca

lets hope the good quality honest tradies stay in the game that deliver good service for the dollar and put their skills into training young apprentices.

For me especially in the suburbs of Perth, I am sick of coming across unskilled so called tradesmen, pretneding they are the bees knees... lets rid them out of he market, the faster the better.

kez81

Agreed so many of these ' Tradesmen' are working without sufficient licenses that's why you should always make sure you use a licensed tradesman.

sr71

Must be a pretty bad lawyer.

UncleKev

There does seem to be a bit of "them and us" feeling between white collar workers in Canberra and the tradies.

The problem has been that in the boom years the tradies have been able to be very arrogant in picking and choosing their work and charging what they like for very shoddy work.

A personal example. I wanted some extra window installed in a brick wall in my house last year and went out to Fyshwick to get some prices. Finally found the windows I wanted and asked for a quote for installation. I was told to forget it. The chap who usually installed their windows had a full book and had asked for his phone number not to be given out until further notice. So we just decided to forget the windows and go on a holiday instead.

My most recent experience was with getting a dog flap installed last month.

We got the local rag (Canberra Chronicle) and looked for handymen or door tradesmen. I already had bought the dog flap from Bunnings but did not want to mangle my door with my feeble home handymand efforts. So we rang several of the handymen and they refused to give us a quote or arrange a specific time to come to our house to do the work. We eventually contacted a company called the Grey Army. They are just an agency for tradesmen but would not give me a direct phone number to talk to one of their tradesmen. The lady said that someone would contact us but could not say when. Several days later we were contacted and I had to arrange for my daughter to take the entire morning off. I budgeted for about $100 for the job, which any half competent tradesman could do in about 20 minutes. Some old guy eventually turned up. According to my daughter he was quiet mad. Spent a lot of time talking to himself. Had a half arsed attempt to install the flap and then decided to take the whole door off. He used our table in the porch as a work bench. She heard some sawing noises and banging sounds and he then disappeared for half an hour and she could see him up our drive smoking and hear him talking to himself quite loudly. Eventually he finished the job and it had taken him exactly 2 and a half hours at $40 per hour which added up to $100. I would have been quite happy to give him the $100 in his hand if he had been honest and quoted that much up front.

When I got home I inspected the work and the flap was installed OK. But he had left a mess of saw dust all over our table and brick was resting on the table. I removed the brick and found a deep gash in our table!!!!!

Pretty pathetic, and not an isolated instance of how Canberrans are treated by tradesmen.

I did some computer work for a plant hire company out at Queenbeyan a few years back and had to work closely with some of the tradies to document their system. They used to refer to people from Canberra as "shiny bums", and did not seem to have much respect for the paper-shuffling, public service fat cats. I think they see them as fair game to rip off at any opportunity.

iamthecreaturefromuranus

Have you ever considered why you have that image?. Could it be because lots of us who have employed tradesmen have found that to be exactly what does happen?.

UncleKev

some classic Enfield on tradies ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86uux...eature=related