Plumber costs

I had a plumber come over to see if he could establish where I had a leak, he suspected it was underground outside my house, spent an hour looking around and chatting quite a bit. He’s decided to charge me £80 plus VAT for this, seems a lot to me compared to previous plumbers I’ve had; sound OK? Surrey area.

I’ve asked him to explain the figure but suspect I just have to pay!

hour with you half hour travelling either side?

doesn’t sound too bad, tbh.

was he chatting to you or himself?

Oh charge for travel time? Only 5 mins away though. He was very chatty and I was trying to get him to leave as I had to get on with my work, kinda feels like he was pushing into a 2nd hour maybe?

That seems pretty reasonable

Well I’m comparing to previous plumbers so they must have been cheap!

Did you not discuss how much he charged and on what basis before he came out?

£80 for an hour and no materials used? 😯

Is that the going rate for a tradesman these days?

No wonder the OPs curious/suspicious …

Right so he’s just told me £50 / hour then £30 per 1/2 hour – so he managed to talk his way into an extra £30!

Pay him for the hour.

Right so he’s just told me £50 / hour then £30 per 1/2 hour – so he managed to talk his way into an extra £30!

Pay him for the hour and explain why.

Unless the chatting was explaining the plumbing issue and advice on further action ?
If it was just irrelevant chat, then that’s not chargeable.

I was a plumber, and he’s taking the piss in my opinion.

No materials maybe, but van, diesel,insurances and things like accountants still have their costs.

Pay him for the hour.

Really? I’ve replied saying I thought he was here for just an hour – he arrived 10 mins or so late so maybe that’s slipped his mind. Don’t want to fall out so thinking of just paying him – not that I’ll use him again!

Hmmm he reckons he was with my for nearly 1hr 1/2 whereas I know at most he was with me for 65 mins – including chat. I know this as I was keen to get back to my work.

he hasn’t actually done anything?

I couldn’t charge for that in good conscience

as above,doesnt seem like he actually done anything to merit billing you? did he find/fix leak?
i work with/for a few different plumbers and i just cant work out where they get their prices from?
one of them expects to clear £500 a day or it isnt worth his while.
its grim as to get that sort of money in my trade as a ceramic tiler its a good week

It is the sort of thing that I don’t charge for, he probably earns far more than me mind you. I can understand why he charges you but I never feel happy charging unless I have rectified the problem.

what sort of looking around was he doing? did he do any actual digging, lifting of manholes? yes there’s a call out fee but £80 for doing nowt?

I am expensive but oh so worth it 😯

Really rshaul ? That £120 a day. I know a tiler who regularly does £1500 a week. Not all the time but even quiet weeks makes £800.

I know a tiler who regularly does £1500 a week.

there’s nothing easier than parting a fool from his money, question is why should you want to? working on a job last year, the plumber charged £3500 to fit a shower, new cistern and basin, all in the same place, no pipework to move, and tiled the shower. if he’d have done full days, it should have taken 3 days tops. i’d prefer to sleep at night.

He turned off the stop cock and as he could hear water decided there was a leak nearby and outside. He did smash up a brick plinth to see if that was hiding anything of interest but it wasn’t. At that point he said best bet is to put in a new pipe from the street and could be very hard to locate the leak. Happy to pay for an hour of his time but billing me 2 weeks late and overstating the time just annoys me.

@pete68,im north of edinburgh so no big city/south of england labour prices here and doesnt help that any old bob-a-job will claim to be able to tile and do it for cheaper.wont do it as well as proper tilers but it takes work off us.even one of the lads who is from london area originally charges £150 per day and is seen to be expensive

sounds fair to pay him for his hour, tell him he stood gassing for the other 30 mins, holding you up from your work. bill him for your lost time 🙂

Tell him he owes you a brick plinth! Don’t pay him more than an hours work and £50 an hour??
I’m a self imployed Bricky and struggle to get £15 an hour.
Plumbers take the pise 🙁

The thing that annoys me most is that the earliest he arrived was 8:10am and the latest he left was 9:15am so put that with a rather unhurried departure billing for more than an hour just seems wrong. Not sure what can happen if I refuse to pay the extra; I’m thinking of giving him a call to try and settle it.

worst overcharging i ve seen was a couple who are deaf paid a guy to replce a blown fuse in a plug..
£191.86.. in rochdale..

I know a tiler who regularly does £1500 a week.

Seems fairly reasonable.

Decent[/b] tillers round here charge between £25 – £35 per metre
So if he’s good and charging £35 then 40 odd metres a week would see over £1500 coming in.

It’s a fair bit in a week unless he’s mainly doing big floors though

My better half is a plumber and he wouldn’t have charged anything if he was in the area anyway, and no more than £30 if he’d been called out from half an hour’s drive away.

Decent tillers round here charge between £25 – £35 per metre

i’m putting my prices up. glorified fuzzyfelt innit. ok there’s a bit of outlay for decent tackle, but far less than me, a joiner. i reckon i carry six grands worth of tackle around, decent tiling stuff is what, two grand all in?

I used to happily pay £35 per metre for a tiler that could do the job properly and without any hassle.
I could have got it done a fair bit cheaper but it was always more hassle one way or another. And I would be backwards and forwards to the site rather than having a few days somewhere else actually earning.

Its not just about kit (as with anything else) its about experience, problem solving ability, and skills too 😉

Also loads of tilers seem to want brand new 100% flat and smooth walls to tile. Which increases costs to prep the room for them.
My guy could make a nice job of tiling a dry stone wall 🙂

turned up on time, finished on time, didn’t leave a mess, and the customers thought he was great.

He was Well worth every penny of his money.

What you can charge probably depends more on where you are, in the SE we’re still having a building frenzy and there’s more work than tradespeople, so rates have held up well (considering the recession etc).

Well this has got odd! The plumber has mailed me to say I can choose whether to pay the full amount or not pay at all. He doesn’t seem to accept my the start and end times I’ve given him. I said I was happy to pay for a fair amount – ie the time he was at my property, he doesn’t seem to want to give me that option.

Sounds almost Arabic, you have those sorts of arguments in the middle east. I remember my driver being pulled over for speeding but after insulting the Police bloke over the fine, the Police man said ‘I don’t want your money’ and walked away….

I live in a street of self builds. Any trouble with trades was almost always plumbers, my build included.
I’m not sure what it is about plumbing that seems to attract more than it’s fair share of ball cocks who expect the highest rate for the lowest quality work.

Decent tillers round here charge between £25 – £35 per metre
i’m putting my prices up. glorified fuzzyfelt innit. ok there’s a bit of outlay for decent tackle, but far less than me, a joiner. i reckon i carry six grands worth of tackle around, decent tiling stuff is what, two grand all in?

have a bit of respect for fellow tradesmen, tiling is a skill, just like good joinery, plumbing, plastering etc.

As mentioned above, it’s about how you use the kit not how much of it you buy! my tiling rate is circa £25-30m2 inc. adhesive and grout, it gets me a continuation of work around Leicester. It pays enough that I can do a good job in a reasonable time frame, much less and you would have to rush or cut corners.

I make my money by being quick from 17 years of experience, I don’t have a lavish lifestyle but make enough to be comfortable and don’t forget that the money asked in is pre Tax, Insurance, NI Contributions, Van expenses, Diesel, tool replacement, Holidays, sickness yadda yadda yadda. I reckon on seeing less than half of what I charge in the end.

We digress however, the plumber was a bandit. I’d either not charge if local or a small call out fee to cover expenses if he hadn’t really done anything.

Bedmaker, just because you’ve had a bad experience with a couple of plumbers, doesn’t mean that most if them are like that.

I live in a street of self builds. Any trouble with trades was almost always plumbers, my build included.
I’m not sure what it is about plumbing that seems to attract more than it’s fair share of ball cocks who expect the highest rate for the lowest quality work.

So more than likely, one bad plumber on the build and others coming to sort out the problems then ?

Wow, sounds like robbery or at least it would be up here in the North. I feel £25 an hour is more than enough, equates to £200 a day excluding materials. As for the OP, pay him what you think is fair and tell him you’re sending a copy of his bill and details to HMRC for consideration with his next self assessment 😉

I think it would be useful to know for us salaried types from those of you who are in a trade truthfully how many chargeable hours you might be able to get into a working week if you were to work as hard as a 9-5 office worker. An office worker normally has a commute and lunch break unpaid but the rest of the day from the moment they leave home to moment they get back is paid. A plumber might be charging £50 per hour but isn’t getting paid as they move between jobs, when doing quotes, doing the invoicing and tax return and also often when they are off getting supplies and getting rid of the debris. I just don’t think its fair to compare one rate to the other.

And that’s before you take into account paid holidays and sick leave.

Convert, it’s not often people who are salaried take such things into account when complaining about how much sell employed people “appear” to earn.

It’s not very STW to employ logic and take such things into account 😉

But congratulations anyway !! 🙂