Extortionate pricing

[joe90]

Just thought I would share this nugget of over pricing, I needed a bottled gas change over valve (LPG for Gas hob) connected and the connection the other end to the cooker flexible hose bit.(the pipe was buried by my builder during the build)  I got a local firm (quite large, new vans, two blokes came out to quote) to give me a quote over 4 weeks ago, I also got a local self employed Gas registered chap (recommended by my electrician) to quote and he did the job in a couple of hours, for some reason water had got into the pipe so he had to blow it out with a compressor, his quote was for £85 but he charged me £98 as he spent time blowing the water out and he apologised for the extra tenner.

 

I just got an Email from the other company ( i thought they had forgotten me) and they quoted £650. Plus VAT.

 

 

? speechless.

[Nickfromwales]

Some just price loads of work and wait 'until one bites'. 

I hope you didn't ask the other guy for the £2 change ??

[newhome]

I always thought that if trades didn’t really want the job they would sometimes come back with an OTT quote and if someone was prepared to pay then fine, happy days ?. These days they seem not to quote at all in the main. 

[Jeremy Harris]

We had a similarly odd experience when getting quotes from SEs to design our retaining wall.  The chap we used charged us something like £300 plus VAT, IIRC, but another local firm came back with a quote for something like £1500, plus VAT, plus £200 for any site visits required.  When I turned down their quote, by writing them a polite email thanking them for the quote and telling them that we had accepted a quote from another firm, they rang me practically demanding to know how much the other firm's quote was.  I told them it wouldn't be fair to tell them, and then got subjected to what can only be called a rant for having chosen to use a firm that, in their words, had to be cutting corners to beat their price.

 

This worried me a bit, until I gave the drawings and spec from the SE to our ground works contractor.  He said he knew the SE well and we'd have no problems at all with his design, as he'd worked with him on lots of jobs and if we'd asked him to include getting the SE's design in his quote he would have been the SE he'd have chosen anyway.

[newhome]

I know people always say ‘you get what you pay for’ but in my experience that’s far from the truth when it comes to trades. I’ve paid quite a lot of money for trades that using a polite term were worse than cowboys whereas some really good trades were almost too cheap and could have charged a lot more. Recommendation is always the best way to go it seems, as long as you trust the person recommending. I’ve been caught by that in the past too. 

Edited July 18, 2018 by newhome

[joe90]

3 minutes ago, newhome said:

Recommendation is always the best way to go it seem, as long as you trust the person doing recommending.

 

I wholeheartily agree with that, when I was a self employed builder all my work was by word of mouth, I never advertised and turned more work down than took. Down here in Devon I have always used local chaps recommended by others that have worked on my site and found them all to be great. Even the fitted kitchen was made locally.

[ultramods]

I got a quote this morning of £7000 just to do the steel for our cantilevered stairs.

 

I replied saying thank you.

 

Company then immediately replied asking if the price was of any use so i replied with the following:

 

Grant,

 

Yours is the first quote so far, however with speaking to a couple of people that have had similar steel fitted for a cantilevered stair it seams very expensive.

 

I had priced the steel previously, think it was around £1200-£1500 for materials, so wouldn't have expected the labour to be £5500-£5800 for 2 - 3 days of fabrication effort.

 

Regards

Stuart

 

Strangely I haven't heard back from Grant.

Edited July 18, 2018 by ultramods