‘sorry I’m busy I’ll get back to you later’ means I’ll wait. Total silence means you’re off the list.

If you think decorators have a highly inflated view of their day rates

As the saying goes ‘if you can piss you can paint’ 😆

One was more expensive and was just a price with no breakdown so we asked for a breakdown, nothing, emailed and phoned several times, nothing.

Reads to me as up to their armpits in work so can pick and choose the best jobs to work on. If you have too much work then some narrowing down will take place. The trades person will be assessing you just as much as you think you are assessing them. So possibly asking for break down to them maybe a warning flag that you are going to quibble on price so you go to the bottom of the pile. It sucks but if they are highly recommended and busy but have been messed about by customers in the past they may be using criteria to decide if they want the job the same as you have your criteria as to whether to hire them.

? This.

Can I have a breakdown?
Why not just ask ‘How much profit are you making?’

It signals to me someone who wants to beat price down, which is fine if you start high with that intention.
Personally, it’s not how I work.

Having bought a kitchen once, I appreciate that it is the norm for some though.

I used to have “real” jobs before chucking it all in for the lucrative ( 😆 ) world of hardwood flooring. Most of the jobs I did involved contact with customers (internal & external), including a few actual technical customer support type jobs – so I’ve seen it from both* sides.

* When I say “both”, I mean from both a white collar more businessy environment and a rough’n’tumble tradey sitey type side.

For me, from my experience with dealing with other trades on sites, I think a lot of frustration you guys are experiencing comes down to procrastination when it comes to delivering “bad” news. A lot of the trades will have been time-served since school, and have possibly never had any training when it comes to dealing with the more difficult side of customer service. i.e. managing customer expectations, delivering bad news and under-promising/over-delivering.

Now, personally, I always aim to keep appointments and would never not turn up for a chat about a job without letting someone know, let alone not turning up for actual work booked in. However, when I can start a job a few days or weeks early and I know the client will be delighted to hear it, I’m positively bursting to tell them; can’t get the text or email off soon enough. When I’m going to miss a start-date or appointment, I’m agonising for a while about how to tell them. You’ll get an idea at the start of a job that it’s going to run over but you hope against hope that you’ll have a “good” day where everything goes your way and it’ll all be back on track again. I think when it comes to delivering bad news, a lot of guys find it hard to make that leap. I’ve always understood that whatever the badness of the news, people would rather know in plenty of time so they can plan around the delay – and they’ll appreciate you letting them know (I always use the “if it was your job and it was running over, I wouldn’t be leaving it unfinished to start something else…” line). But I think that a lot of guys just struggle to get past the reluctance to give the bad news – and they don’t understand the frustration it causes.

Construction is really busy at the moment so there’s a world of sites crying out for subbies who don’t want the problems of dealing with Joe Public directly. Also, there are labourers on site to clean and tidy after them, a site manager to tell what needs to be done to get the job ready, no quotes/estimates to do, no long email conversations where the client is asking loads of questions and expecting answers to absolutely everything etc. etc. etc. This means that you guys, while possibly more lucrative than sub-contract work, but also needing more hand-holding and management are not getting the attention you both require and feel that you deserve.

None of this is to excuse poor customer service – but good customer service doesn’t come naturally to a lot of people, let alone those who aren’t trained. Some guys are good at it. A lot aren’t. Always get a recommendation and if that person lets you down, let the person who recommended them know how shite they’ve been.

It is very short sighted of tradespeople not to be upfront with prospective customers. They might be rushed of their feet now, but what about next year or the year after? I have several guys now off my list as if they cannot even send a quote after spending the time to come round to quote there is no point.

On the plus side, all this waiting around has meant I’ve read up on things and taught myself how to do several of the jobs that needed sorting. In the new year I will be having a crack at converting a garage and replacing a bathroom myself without have to beg someone to take my money

Sometimes, tradespeople struggle with phrasing “I thought you were a massive cock and don’t want to do the work for you.” into something more polite. 🙂

In my experience (about 15 years in and around construction) the best skilled trades often don’t make good business people, whether that be turning up when they say they will, providing quotes, invoicing in a timely manner, producing certificates, or just answering the phone.

Of course, the flip side is that the business savvy and well organised are often not the most highly skilled or desirable. I see quite a lot more average, or below average quality trades/builders ‘get on’ and make the big money than the best guys.

Of course that’s a generalisation, and there are exceptions. Maybe part of it’s just how their personalities work, the really skilled guys focus on every little detail and do a brilliant technical job on site, but can’t be arsed with office time and admin.

None of this is to excuse poor customer service – but good customer service doesn’t come naturally to a lot of people, let alone those who aren’t trained.

i agree with most of what you said but struggle with the concept of ‘training’
my parents trained me to offer a seat to older people, don’t but in, say please thank-you, general human interaction and to be aware of others outside my own little world of action man, DrWho and space 1999.

why are some tradespeople lacking in general everyday people skills? do they really need to have this stuff written down on a crib sheet FFS!

deadlydarcy – Member
Sometimes, tradespeople struggle with phrasing “I thought you were a massive cock and don’t want to do the work for you.” into something more polite.

Haha, quite!

Also translated as “you don’t look like you’re competent at working the kettle. I’ll go and do a job for Mrs Warburton who’ll be emptying out the biscuits and stewing the tea before I’ve even looked at the last one”

😀

Had someone in earlier to do some flooring. Useless twonk couldn’t even take a door of its hinges.

No chance of me making him a cup of tea, that’s for sure.

CaptainFlashheart – Member

Had someone I earlier to do some flooring. Useless twonk couldn’t even take a door of its hinges.

No chance of me making him a cup of tea, that’s for sure.

Posted 7 minutes ago # Report-Post

Could he type a coherent post into a forum, though?

Could he type a coherent post into a forum, though?

he struggles, let me tell you. 🙂

i agree with most of what you said but struggle with the concept of ‘training’

You make a very valid point, and while I’m not excusing the poor communication skills and levels of service, I’m simply offering an explanation for why us guys have a bad reputation.

I’ve noticed that among the guys I know, there are a wide variety of backgrounds…probably the majority “time-served”, but quite a few ex-teachers, ex-corporate drones, ex-squaddies…etc. You get my drift I’m sure. Invariably, it’s the ex-squaddies which are often best at communicating with customers and being easy to get hold of – I guess their background means they know how important it is to let everybody know what’s going on and what’s going to happen, so they just do it naturally. But yeah, those that have spent a bit of time away from sites and their trades generally perform better when it comes to customer service.

There is a bit of a culture of “clients eh? who needs ’em?!” and if I’m honest, I indulge in a bit of it myself when on site, but only because my alternative response which starts as “You realise you’re not really your own boss don’t you?” is only going to get me beaten up. 🙂 But, the point is, a lot of these guys get no lessons in customer service from any of their superiors, be they parents or the guy they work for – I often wonder if they’re taught anything when on their day release at college…but I don’t know. And they are utterly convinced that they are their own bosses – and that actually, that’s untrue. Your client is your “boss” as well as your customer and that, yes, some of them are cocks but at least you don’t have to sit across an office from them for the next few years. So, master of your own destiny? Yes. Your own boss? Kinda, but not really.

None of it is excusable to be honest, and it annoys me as much as the rest of you – and I’ve probably had a few experiences where I handled customers badly myself but the converse is I’ve also had experiences where the client thinks that their little job is the only thing being done in the whole world this decade, but I approach each one with the full benefit of the doubt and don’t tar them all with the same brush.