WWSTD do? Tradesman dispute

How do people actually find decent tradesmen??

What has worked for me so far – is google reviews. Not just the reviews being good but the tradesperson in question interacting with them too.

What thats yielded is folk that at good, but who communicate well too – say when they’ll come, arrive when they said they would, check in again after the job to check you’re happy and everything is working as it should.

having made a few good contacts that way sometimes I ask them for recommendations for other trades.

Well that wasn’t too bad

Good – I’m glad. When theres a leak then its very much any port in a storm so you have to make quite impulsive decisions, so while its still a bit pricy its  better to have paid a bit too much for work that was actually done than pay more for work that wasn’t!

Yeah – that’s how I am looking at it – unfortunately we didn’t have time on our side so, as you say, we had to make an impulsive decision.

Right outcome.  He didn’t necessarily bodge it but he didn’t do the job he quoted on.  He has probably been paid the price for the actual job done (OK a high price).

Yeah – he did seem to have pride in what he was doing, but he was just chancing it – a bit of coaching could make the difference for him.

After having work done on our house recently I have come to loathe tradesmen.

It’s bad enough when they say “yeah, I’ll be round tomorrow to quote ” and then don’t turn up for weeks (ignoring WhatsApp messages with blue ticks to say they have been read). But then when you do get a quote with the “I’ll be here next week for 2 days to do the work” they never turn up either.

No phone call, text, email etc to explain the lack of turning up, just basic communication failures.

I also have a leaky roof, solar panels going on in a fortnight so need it fixed. Roofer was supposed to have fixed it 3 weeks ago (after weeks of trying to get him to turn up to look at it) knowing the panels are going on soon…..no sign of him. Really pees me off and quite frankly is just really rude and ignorant. Then they have the cheek to give quotes like the OP, aye, very good, part of that quote in my eyes involves you turning up when you say you will and at the very least phoning if you can’t (usually with some excrement excuse). Then when you don’t do that and I message you asking when you’ll be coming at least have the decency to reply, even if it’s to say you can’t be arsed now so at least I know where I stand.

Cowboys.

I find electricians and gas plumbers are the best (of a bad bunch) as they know if they balls something up they can burn a house down with their shoddy work or blow it up.

The solar fitter did say he gets his roofers to fix the roofs if they find faults so I’ll be talking nicely to them, lots of bacon rolls and tea.

Yeah it is hard – I reached out to a few people (recommendations and others I’d found online) so I took a gamble. But (hopefully) I now have a watertight roof and he’s got £1,200 for a day of work – I can accept that as it needed doing urgently.

nice result

Not all customers , clients are bundle of fun to work for , most seem to think you are sitting by the phone ready to jump when they call and have unrealistic expectations at the best of times

? Not sure what you are suggesting….

Called his bluff and won, result. But if you get the chance, bum his dog, it’ll send a message to other trades in the area.

Bring me frozen sausages!