God I am losing the will to live here! needed a plumber phoned about 100 local ones how the hell do they make a living?

half didn't call back, some turned up gave us a ballpark figure then never turned up again.
One turned up gave a quote came back did 2 things insisted on cash payment but the price was always more than the quote and he had to come back several times to do the simple jobs, flooded the house and ruined the carpets but didn't even say sorry!. so we ditched him

tried several others who wanted to charge 100 dollars for a written estimate and I am talking an e mail here.

Eventually found an honest one who didn't charge extra for anything, was polite, cleaned up after him and took his boots off when they were caked in mud!!

talk about having to kiss a hell of a lot of frogs before you find your prince

It took a while for us to find a decent plumber. Tradies are a law unto themselves sometimes....still waiting for the bill from the plasterer.

I always spend several hours cleaning up after the tradie has "cleaned".

but how do they make a living? They seem to have a sod you attitude

Everyone needs to take a dump and take a shower. Supply and demand. If I get re-incarned Iwant to be a plumber

I can fix that for you but erm (chin scratch) it's gonna cost ya. It's the whole 'you don't know what I do therefore you're stupid' tradie attitude that does me.

I'll fix it for you Ash, as long as you don't mind afew puddles around the house

DIY and get it done properly.

Our builder used a plumber who was a complete waste of airspace. He was so mean he would join half a dozen 6" bits of 15mm copper so as to avoid buying a longer bit. And so stupid he didn't realise that the joints cost more than a longer bit.

Yeah, I've done most of my plumbing in my place. I won't touch the bog though.


S

My OH tried to plumb in the kitchen sink in our first house.

FAIL.

In the end I called in a proper plumber, who nearly died laughing at the Heath Robinson pipework.

He's good at electrics though not allowed to do them here as no license. He's only electrocuted me once!!

Had a similar thing with mobile auto/caravan electricians. Filled out and sent about 5 enquiry forms on the web asking for a quote for a medium piece of work and with the suggestion that several other bits of work will follow. Not a single response.

It's annoying isn't it?

I think what the issue is with some tradies is they just aren't prepared to do the small jobs. I think a lot of them just want big jobs that will take them X amount of weeks to complete, with the promise of a big lump some at the end. It's exactly the same in the UK.
The problem being however is the time will come again when beggars can't be choosers, just like perviously when Britain went into recession. Tradies weren't being fussy then, they were fighting each other off for the most menial of jobs.

At the beginning of the recession we were half through a huge extension on our house and at the start of the house build, trying to get hold of good tradies was a mission in itself, by the time the recession had kicked in we had them knocking on our door, almost begging for some work.
Moral of the story is, they need to stop being bloody fussy about which jobs they take on and just be thankful they have one.

With the help of a good mate, I ended up doing it myself. Same with the van brakes: Who needs a scarce and often overpriced tradie?

Hopefully things are still going well for you now that you're "two months in".

Glad you got it sorted!

The joke is they make it such a closed shop ("of course you aren't allowed to do it yourself") that tradies become so obnoxious that people do it themselves anyway.

It's a textbook example of perverse outcomes to bad regulation - the more regulation, the lower the average quality. Frankly I wouldn't trust most tradies with most household jobs - do NOT look behind the walls ...

We have put in a new toilet ourselves and new storm drains simply because we couldn't wait for a plumber to decide if it was worth his while or not.

so fed up with shoddy work. The light fitting was connected by an electrician apparently, maybe that's why it was shorting and burning the cable

That might be the reason for the hot flushes haha