BobAJob

Yes, the modern bulbs have the electronic driver in them. It's the driver that's causing the flickering. Just replace the bulb with a new one.

Yes, it's sometimes the case that a customer will ask you to bid just to get the price of their preferred supplier down. In that case you may choose not to bid and the customer can deal with their cunning plan not working out.

Yeah, but that is because they are unique projects and they want to derisk certain elements before they commit to buying, otherwise what often happens is the project takes longer and costs more and sometimes needs to get scrapped as it turns out that technology isn't up to doing what is required like the Nimrod airborne early warning plane which had more than a few technical and space challenges before it was scrapped and replaced with proven US technology.

I hear what you are saying, but it isn't quite as straightforward as that. If we just whacked the costs of the bids for the lost jobs on other projects we'd price ourselves out of the winning the other work and it becomes a bit to difficult to explain why you've got a magically £200,000 added to the price. I believe they take a percentage out of the profit made on each project and put that back into bidding work. If we keep losing bids on price then clearly we're doing something wrong in our pricing method or our costs are significantly higher than our competitors so we need to cut something. Our fixed day rates cover the fixed costs and a bit of profit. We then have expenses and materials and a contingency percentage to allow for risks that may occur. We have some complicated pricing spreadsheets which we plug our numbers into and it shows us the profit margin we'll achieve and then we have to go reworking things to achieve the target profit margin or we have a conversation about agreeing a different margin or taking a loss in order to win work from a new customer or work we really want that will position us for other work from the customer or other customers. It's an investment the company makes in winning new business. It's a gamble and sometimes it pays off and other times it doesn't.

Well I did go on a course on it with the FD and that's what he said goes into the overheads as these are fixed known costs to the business. There's not a fixed bid budget set at the beginning of the year. We just ask for a budget to cover the bid costs which might be 10 people working for 2 months to produce the bid. The business reviews our request for a bid budget and decides if the business can afford to do the bid based on money available, the value of the work we'd win and our estimated chance of winning it. Depending on the time of year we may get told no, but generally it's a yes as we need to keep the work coming in, otherwise we have a lot of bums on seats not making money. I guess if you had a fixed size team that only did bids all the time then you might have the cost of that team as a fixed cost, but we don't. We might have 5 or 10 bids all happening in parallel. These bid teams are made up of normally billable staff who get drafted into a bid team for a fixed period of time and then return to billable work when the bid is finished. We have one fixed person who coordinates the variable number of bid teams.

No, overheads cover buildings, utility bills, non-billable staff like PAs and HR, etc. and as this trader doesn't have an office to pay for and he is a sole trader his overheads are low. The cost of failed bids comes out of the revenue we take from doing work. It's not factored into fixed costs as we don't know how many bids we'll do each year. We have a profit margin we'd like to make and sometimes we are able to achieve this while still winning the work and sometimes we aren't not, so we may agree to make a smaller profit if we want to win the work or we may decide not to bid if we can't make enough money out of it. We might even choose to make a loss on one piece of work for a customer if we think we could win future work from them. In order to do a bid we have to first qualify it and get a budget allocated, so we have to confirm we have the skills to do the job and it fits with the kind of work we want to do and that we have a reasonable chance of winning the business against the competitors we know have been invited to bid for it.

Well I work in IT and I work on bids for multi-million pound contracts. We do estimates based on client requirements and we add contingency into our price to cover risks. We don't price for lost jobs. Our day rate for different resources factors in holiday pay, sick, some profit, etc. We assume 18 working days a month per person. The cost of lost jobs is part of doing business and comes out of your profit, but that doesn't mean you come with wacky prices. If we overcharged like these traders do then we would never win any projects. The only way to deal with rip off merchants is to make it clear to prospective customers, so that they don't fall for their high prices. Eventually they will learn to do better or they'll stop getting work.

The risks you've mentioned can be mitigated by doing a proper quote process and doing the job right not quickly. Risk is not something you build into your price - well you could but you'll end up with a high price. Instead deal with it by saying price could change should something unforeseen be found/happen. Getting parts is a maybe twice a week task and involves collecting the parts of multiple jobs. That's part of being an electrician. I should pay 10% of that time if he is collecting the parts for 10 jobs. The electrical wholesaler is a 15 minute drive away. They order the parts online or on the phone while they are working and pick them up in one trip. I don't pay for his quoting time as he offers free quotes, so don't try and claw back time lost quoting for other jobs you didn't win). If he doesn't win the job after he quoted then maybe he should look at why? Probably the high price quoted. Change your approach to pricing and your quote to win job rate improves. You get more work. Your business grows. Provide high quotes and your quote to win job rate is low. You get less work. You get a reputation for high quotes. Your phone stops ringing. You go out of business in the long run. You rename your business and do the same thing and repeat. No a great way to do business. Sadly, I think most of the traders in my area overcharge and do poor quality work that people complain about. Their customers complain to checkatrade about them and their complaints get ignored and more customers get a badly done job. Most of the people I know now prefer to do jobs themselves instead of paying a large amount of money for a poorly done job that has to be redone. There's something fundamentally wrong with the way British trades operate. Perhaps they have gotten greedy or lazy in times of plenty? People don't seem to take time to do jobs properly. Instead, they overprice them or underestimate the amount of time needed, so rush them and do them badly hoping the customer doesn't notice until they've gone with the money. It'll be interesting to see how the coming recession affects these people. Hopefully, some of them will go to the wall when people no longer have the money to pay their high prices.

Actually these lights were removed by the electrician I gave the job to. As far as I know the cable and joint boxes were all fine as he just unscrewed the wires from the existing lights and attached them the new ones and pushed them into place. I switched the light switch on to test them and they all worked. Job done. He removed them and fitted all the new ones in 1 hr 15 minutes. He took the old ones away, so I thinking he might use them as spares or replacements. Total cost £200 which seemed a reasonable price.

I don't expect an itemisation of every cost, but a split out of parts cost from installation cost is pretty essential. Bundling them together means you can't compare and I suspect the traders know this, but try it on. I don't expect to pay 'cost' for the parts as I accept that there are other costs in getting them and it's pretty standard to expect to pay a bit more than cost for them. I like a bit of transparency in my dealings with people, then there are no surprises and everyone is happy. Personally, I prefer to leave 240V work to qualified electricians.

Because I wanted an electrician to do it. I have a degree in microelectronics, so I am comfortable with 5 volts.

You can and should always question the cost. I did and had the job done by another trader.

Perhaps. But he is ordering and collecting parts for all his jobs in one go not just collecting my parts. That's why I am happy to accept a bit of markup on the parts and a profit has to be made. Even if I allow £150 to account for the quoting, research, ordering and collecting process it still seems pretty high for installation. We all got to make a profit and I have no problem with that. He spent 10 minutes at the property measuring the hole in the ceiling and taking photos of existing lights with his phone. I gave him the spec of bulb (GU10, 120 degree, cool white, max power the fittings will take).

This person will have visited your house twice - he lives within 1 mile of me and he could pop in on way home to quote and yes, obviously he would need to drive for 5 minutes to do the job. researched and ordered materials - they are standard GU10 brushed steel lights available from any electrical wholesaler. Starlite TD-M551s which were to slot straight into existing holes in ceiling, which are the correct size. He's an electrician. He knows what products exist already. isolated the electrics - flicked clearly marked lighting switch on modern consumer unit changed the fittings (which will involve disconnecting / reconnecting the wires) - yes, that's the only way to change the lights. test - flicked light switch on and off leave the site clean and tidy - there wasn't much mess and I hoovered up after him. If a fitting fails he would replace it at no cost to you - I actually wouldn't expect that unless they failed within a short time e.g. first 12 months Ok, even it takes 1.5 hrs it still isn't good to be charging £352 for the job. Around £150 to £200 sounds more reasonable. Don't you think?

Isn't that what everyone does when they are buying anything these days? I'm more than happy paying a fair price for the job and accept a markup on the parts and some profit, but don't go trying to overcharge to this extent, otherwise the result is you get a bad reputation and less work in the long run. Obviously the trader then just changes their name and the cycle continues. It's just fundamentally wrong in my book. What happened to the days when traders treated their customers fairly and understood the benefit of getting a good reputation which in turn led to them getting more work and growing their business? Now it's an attempt to get rich quick and they get all offended when you point out you know what they are doing.