Kitchen Fitter Required

[orangetlh]

There is also a link between skills and how much demand there is for each particular one. . Plumbers and electricians recently are a pretty good example. At one stage there just wasnt enough of them to go around so the prices went sky high. Then when people started seeing pound signs and taking the trade up it was flooded wiith people and the prices have dropped. Well around our area anyway. Im sure if i told you our hourly rate for cabinet making and fitting you would assume that our company is ripping people off, when in fact as its been stated before, by the time you take the cost of running the business into account, that sum becomes quite low.
At the end of the day there is a market value for anything, goods, services, the lot. If you want to buy a can of beans for 8p then fine, but you know they arnt going to be as good as the 50p can. thats a consumer choice and its the same with anything that you pay for. it doesnt mean that the people making the more expensive ones are ripping you off, it means they have a better product and they can charge that because people wil pay it.

 

[DomValente]

Agree totally with Keith there are good and bad tradesmen and good and bad workers in every walk of life.
From an employer/tradesmans point of view I know that when I put the key in the lock of my workshop every morning, assuming I work a 5 day week( I wish)it costs me about £125.00 and that's before I've even got inside.
You do the Math.
I don't think any less of Byron though, he was venting his spleen on a risky subject, for this forum anyway.

Dom

 

[A_n_g_e_l_a]

Gary,

Unfortunately, when tarring someone with a brush, splashes do tend to get everywhere. So it may be worth recognizing this and getting a thicker coat.

:wink:

I think you miss my point entirely. The daily rate I used to get, (I'm now retired) gave me a yardstick, a sense of value that I use in assessing the worth of a quote. Because we all have our own sense of worth, unique to each of us, it means we all will react differently.

Reacting differently is what is happening here - your high sense of your own worth is causing you to bridle against a broad brush accusation of some trades people charging too much. It doesn't make Byron or me wrong or you right. We each have our own weltanshung.

Of course I'll take into account the complexity of the tools etc needed to do the job. Let us take my satellite dish replacement as an example- in the end I bought a satellite signal finder and a dish off eBay and did the job for less than £20. OK, I already had a ladder, a drill and screwdriver and didn't need to travel to the job nor employ a 'wife' to do the books. But is anyone going to argue that £150 was a 'fair' quote for the work? It certainly was the 'going' rate. But since, in the end, I did the work myself, no-one got the job. Perhaps that might go some way to explain why, when I had previously called in at an aerial wholesaler to try to buy a dish, (they refused to sell me one by the way), there were four self-employed installers standing around with nothing to do.

Are all of you that have been upset by Byron's post in agreement that all trades people, bar none, charge fair rates and do a decent job for the money they get?

Tim, as for profit, at what point does the amount become obscene? Is Bill Gates too rich as a result of Microsoft's profits?

Whatever happened to the notion of a fair day's work for a fair day's pay that used to be prevalent in this country? To my mind it is such a pity Thatcher's children appear never to have heard of that.

I think we have become a greedy society epitomised by Harry Enfield's 90's character 'loadsa money' and I, for one, don't like it.

 

[Shultzy]

Just to put my tuppence worth in - I think it costs an employer three times an employees salary when taking into account all the overheads, heating, lighting, accommodation costs etc. And I think most tradesmen/women charge what they can get away with, which may or may not be a "rip-off"

 

[Paul Chapman]

I think it costs an employer three times an employees salary when taking into account all the overheads, heating, lighting, accommodation costs etc.

I would agree, that's a pretty accurate ball-park figure, Shultzy. In one job I had during my working life, we used to use a ready reckoner that was specifically drawn up to calculate staff costs. When you factor in all the costs, the figures are quite frightening. Probably explains why so many small businesses go bust - they seldom factor in the true costs

Cheers :wink:

Paul

 

[Gary M]

Are all of you that have been upset by Byron's post in agreement that all trades people, bar none, charge fair rates and do a decent job for the money they get?

not at all
but i do !! :wink:

Whatever happened to the notion of a fair day's work for a fair day's pay that used to be prevalent in this country? To my mind it is such a pity Thatcher's children appear never to have heard of that.

I think we have become a greedy society epitomised by Harry Enfield's 90's character 'loadsa money'

perhaps thats why your employer only pays you £8.44 per hour, ever thought of that ??

 

[Gary M]

When you factor in all the costs, the figures are quite frightening. Probably explains why so many small businesses go bust - they seldom factor in the true costs

Cheers :wink:

Paul

but yet when certain people whinge about the cost of a job that they cant do themselves,
they label the struggling small business owner as being a rip off merchant!!
:roll: :roll:

 

[DomValente]

"A fair day's wages for a fair day's work?
But what is a fair day's wages, and what is a fair day's work? How are they determined by the laws under which modern society exists and develops itself?
For an answer to this we must not apply to the science of morals or of law and equity, nor to any sentimental feeling of humanity, justice, or even charity. What is morally fair, what is even fair in law, may be far from being socially fair. Social fairness or unfairness is decided by one science alone — the science which deals with the material facts of production and exchange, the science of political economy."

I didn't really want to join this discussion, because I was an 80s capitalist,
I didn't need all that money, yes Angela it probably was Greed, money begets money, but I worked an average of 100 hour weeks for 20 years , I didn't cheat anybody and now that I have had a change of life style I'm happier and can see that greed is not a pretty sight, but then again it is nice to have pretty things to make life seem better.
Oh, by the way that first paragraph is not mine it belongs to Joseph Engels.

Dom

 

[mailee]

Wow this is a hot subject isn't it? Now for my little contribution. OK so there will be so called tradesmen that will charge the earth for jobs but by and large most of them are just charging to make sure they cover their costs and make some profit. (After all that is why they are in business to make a profit) as has been mentioned. With the rising cost of everything nowadays it is hardly surprising that they charge more! Take for an example road tax and fuel costs that has risen so much over the last few years, this has an effect on the timber you buy the tools you use in fact any of the materials that are transported by road, rail or air. Not only that but the 'Tradesman' is also a normal person who is probably a home owner, breadwinner, working man who also has bills to pay and maybe even wages to pay too. At the end of the day it is all relevant to the situation. Oh and by the way I only earn £7.60 per hour in my employment so am not overpaid or indeed underpaid for my job. :wink:

 

[tim]

Tim, as for profit, at what point does the amount become obscene? Is Bill Gates too rich as a result of Microsoft's profits?

Whatever happened to the notion of a fair day's work for a fair day's pay that used to be prevalent in this country? To my mind it is such a pity Thatcher's children appear never to have heard of that.

I don't think that there is any danger that the profit I make will ever become obscene. To be fair, we aren't talking about Bill Gates or any of the few super wealthy businessmen and its a pointless red herring in this debate.

What we are talking about is in fact a fair day's pay for a fair day's work. However and this is the point that keeps being (wilfully?) misunderstood, I am talking about a fair day's pay for the business out of which I take after expenses a pretty ordinary wage and set the remainder aside. That remainder is the profit. Its there to provide a safety net, allow for expansion and frankly make it worthwhile being in business.

Using your hourly bus driver's wage as a yardstick is not a meaningful or comparable measure of worth. Your £8.44 is not the hourly cost of keeping that bus driving around doing its job ](*,)

What might make more your point more valid is to add on to that figure an hourly breakdown of the fuel costs, insurance, purchase of the bus, repair and maintenance costs, garaging, road tax, advertising etc etc. Now compare that to the average bus ticket price ( quick google shows European averages at £1.37 per journey). Assuming 50% occupancy of 36 people and assuming a churn of three loads an hour and your revenue is £147.96 per hour - out of which you are being paid £8.44.

All of those costs have to be forecast by the business - get them wrong and you go bust unless you've kept a bit of profit back......

Cheers

Tim

 

[dennyk]

just my 2 pennorth

In the years 1954 & 1955 I worked for a firm , who let you work as long as you liked, providing of course you worked a minimum of 48 hours a week, over one period of 2 weeks I worked 270 hours, I was paid after tax and national Ins, £66.00, I thought I was a very rich young man, over that 2 year period, I made enough money to pay for my wedding, the honeymoon abroad, and bought enough furniture to furnish the 2 rooms we lived in , The rent by the way was 30 shillings per week.

BTW during the period 1954 & 1955 my basic pay was 7 Pounds 15 shillings per week.

In January 1960 we bought our first house on a mortgage , the house was an 8 roomed terraced house , the price of the house was £550.00 ( approx a years basic pay before tax & national ins) and the mortgage cost worked out at six pounds ten shillings per month.

The house was a bit of a wreck and I spent the next 10 years completely refurbishing it as and the money became available, also we had 3 children in that period,

Throughout my working life I never worked less than 60 hours per week.

IF YOU CANNOT AFFORD TO PAY THE TRADESMAN WHAT HE IS WORTH or DO NOT WANT TOO, learn to do the jobs yourself

That is what I did, I learned to do plumbing , plastering bricklaying, mixing and laying concrete, also helped an electrician to do the re-wiring, and learned at the same time, my main job was a joiner

 

[Anonymous]

Throughout my working life I never worked less than 60 hours per week.

Errm, is this a good or a bad thing? I work hard now so I won't have to do any hours after 55, hopefully.

 

[Good Surname or what ?]

I've resisted posting here because I'm not a tradesman but I for one do NOT resent paying tradesmen to do work for me.

I'd love to build the cabinetry for the wallbed we'll have installed next month - apart from the fact that SWMBO wouldn't put up with my slow work rate. :lol: I recognise the value of the service and will pay accordingly.

The problem with the DIY (or DIM do-it-myself as I call it) boom is simple. If everyone does their own painting and decorating the painter has no money to pay a plumber and the plumber has no money to pay a car mechanic. The simple fact is we need to pay others to do specialist work for us in order for the economy to work. Furthermore we mustn't fall into the trap of simply using the value of our own time to determine price/value of the service we are buying.

To go back to the original point. Byron has tried to save money by doing a job himself. Thereby depriving a professional kitchen fitter of an income. He then wonders why a professional doesn't want the part job or charges him a high rate for the difficult part of the job. He's lucky we can't make our own spectacles (with apologies to Byron I mistakenly said contact lenses)

 

[tim]

I was discussing this thread with a friend of mine last night who runs an IT business. We reached the conclusion that in terms of 'rip off' there were two scenarios where this phrase gets used.

1. The generally rare but real 'rip off' scenarios where someone contracted to do work doesn't do it to the right standard having been paid

2. The more common context where people aren't actually ripped off (ie money hasn't changed hands and work hasn't been carried out) but are in fact trying to do something (that they actually can't do themselves) on the cheap. Then when faced with the real costs decide that its way above what they are prepared to pay and therefore they must be being 'ripped off'. Some people are more honest with themselves and would say its actually a fair price but more than they can/ are prepared to pay.

In this instance ie the project which started the debate, we are talking about someone wanting to replace their kitchen on a budget. The inference is that costs should be kept to a minimum and this can certainly be done by doing a lot of the work yourself. Fair enough! However, what seems all too common now is that customers expect tradesmen to fit into their cost cutting plan and lower their prices accordingly to fit in with an unrealistic budget.

One other thing:

My general feeling is I get better value from the older generation of trades-people than I do the young. I may be prejudiced but many years ago I met a builder who was probably in his late fifties – at the time this would have been around 1971. I considered him to be very bright and wondered why he had remained working as a builder after leaving school at 14. It was most likely all about expectations. His family simply did not expect to have a bright prodigy going off to university – nor I suppose, could they afford to do without his wage coming in. His case must have been typical of thousands of bright boys, (no girls then of course), ending up in the trades. (I suspect Scrit, judging by his postings, might be one of them – but I would not want to embarrass him by having the temerity to suggest that here Wink ) That process of apparent under-achievement left our post-war trades peppered with a high amount of intellect. For example Cedric Brown, once a gas fitter, became Chairman of British Gas before privatization. That process of from bottom to top probably couldn't happen today.

Would that be the same Cedric Brown who had to resign after awarding himself a 75% pay rise just after announcing redundancies and pay cuts?

Cheers

Tim

 

[Scrit]

Because we all have our own sense of worth, unique to each of us, it means we all will react differently.

Reacting differently is what is happening here - your high sense of your own worth is causing you to bridle against a broad brush accusation of some trades people charging too much. It doesn't make Byron or me wrong or you right. We each have our own weltanshung.

Are all of you that have been upset by Byron's post in agreement that all trades people, bar none, charge fair rates and do a decent job for the money they get?

There are tradespersons who can and do charge unjustifiably high rates for their services, just as there are professionals who do so (can anyone recall the rates software houses were charging in the late 1990s?), but I've never heard any sweeping condemnations in the media of "rip-off white collar workers". Possibly tradespersons are seen as a soft target by the media, but the effect of this continual negative portrayal is to encourage throw-away insults such as that from the OP. But tell me, when was the last time you saw a long-running series on "customers from hell", for example? I will state that the vast majority of trades people I know charge rates based on what is regarded by them and their peers as the "going rate", if only because most customers I come across are "savvy" to the rate for the job. Were I a joiner or kitchen fitter in the Home Counties with property prices and overheads so high I have no doubt that my charge rates would probably be 2 to 3 times what they are up here in the Pennines.

Your assertion that we have become a greedy society, as epitomised by Enfield's 'Loadsa Money', is so very true, but isn't it interesting that Enfield, with his middle class upbringing, chose to portray a plasterer rather than the even bigger rip-off merchants of the early 1990s, the city traders? That is quite telling about the values within our society, is it not?

Scrit

 

[Jake]

There are tradespersons who can and do charge unjustifiably high rates for their services, just as there are professionals who do so (can anyone recall the rates software houses were charging in the late 1990s?), but I've never heard any sweeping condemnations in the media of "rip-off white collar workers".

As a lawyer, that assertion made me laugh.

 

[ByronBlack]

Gary, you seem to have a real chip on your shoulder, so i'll retort - against my better judgement (shouldn't wrestle with chimney sweeps and all that).

First of all you said:

" they label the struggling small business owner as being a rip off merchant!! "

Where have I ever said that? I said I've based my view only on the tradesman that i've dealt with in my local area - no where at any point have I ever said this is a general concencus across the country or this forum.

Also, someone said that I said "90% of all tradesman are con-men" or something to that effect. Well, again, this is not at all what I said - go back and read my first initial posts and you'll see that I said and I paraphrase: "90% of tradesman that I have dealth with in my local area" - so again, as I keep repeating but a lot of you can't seem to understand, is based on my personal experiences!!

Also, Gary & Scrit - the reason why I said I was ducking out of this was because in these arguments where everyone is busy justifying themselves and getttin their point across the original point gets taken out of subject, and people i.e. me get misquoted.

At the end of the day I have a great respect for all tradesman - most of my family are tradespeople and I was days away from training as a plumber (which is still a reality) but at the end of the day, the prices/work I have had to deal with over the years has been high and not to a good standard, and I and my family have been proper ripped off a number of times - I can give exact details if anyone is interested, i'm not basing my opinion on media stereotypes here nor have I said at any stage that all tradesman are con men.

My original motivation for this post was to put some work someones way on the forum - at no point did I ask for it done be done on the cheap, or at mates rates or anything else - again, go look back and you'll see that and i'm really sick of the assumptions by a number of your on this thread that I've tried to get someone on the cheap - that is simply not true!

Good surname or what? You said: "
To go back to the original point. Byron has tried to save money by doing a job himself. Thereby depriving a professional kitchen fitter of an income. He then wonders why a professional doesn't want the part job or charges him a high rate for the difficult part of the job. He's lucky we can't make our own contact lenses "

Thats really quite the most rediculous thing I've read on this subject so far! So according to you, should no one attempt to do anything at all themselves regarding trade skills in fear of depriving someone an income?? Are you being serious? And where exactly in my posts have I complained about having to pay a high rate for this particular job???? DO NOT ASSUME!!! I have yet to even garner quotes because I wanted to offer the job to someone on the forum first!! and again I repeat - I did not at any stage request that someone comes and does it for me on the cheap!

And lastly - I don't deal with contact lenses, so get your information correct before you attack me.

Please people, if you are going to slag me off and attack me - atleast do it based on what i've said and with fact, not assumptions and mis quotes.

Oh, I forgot to reply to you scrit regarding the prices you qouted and to that of gary's prices at the beginning of the thread - I do NOT think these are particularly high and would be happy paying these rates (And I dont believe Gary that I ever asked for mates rates), so i'll use these prices as a yardstick when I phone for quotes - unless I decide to do it myself after-all.

 

[Scrit]

The problem is, Byron, that the way you wrote your first two posts betrayed some very negative feelings:

......but thought I'd put out the call here before contacting the local rip-off merchants/tradesman.

That quote isn't putting words in your mouth, it is what you wrote.

At the end of the day I have a great respect for all tradesman - most of my family are tradespeople......

So why not ask them for some recommendations? That's a serious suggestion. Tradesmen almost always have contacts because it is useful to have somebody who can handle jobs you can't or aren't allowed to do. The result is that I have friendly contacts with several plumbers and gas fitters, sparkies, plasterers, roofers, builders, etc and in turn I now get a percentage of my work through my contacts.

Your original motivation to offer the job to members here may well be laudable - the way you expressed yourself and the general impression given were most certainly not.

Oh, I forgot to reply to you Scrit regarding the prices you qouted to that of Gary's prices at the beginning of the thread - I do NOT think these are particularly high and would be happy paying these rates

Beware! As I said I have worked out a tarriff for tasks which allows me to quote effectively for bespoke installs, etc. But I also said I generally won't charge less than a half day (2/3 full day rate BTW) because if I need to spend an hour driving to a job, then have to unload and set-up my kit (and the obverse at the end of the job) it's time out of my working day and I rather like the idea of being paid for it. Unlike many plumbing jobs for example where the toolkit can be carried in a bass, worktops require a very considerable kit of tools which will often take me 20 or more minutes to unload and set-up (and the same to pack-up and put away), so I generally only take on a worktop joint if I'm also doing the cut-outs, end caps, sink installation, etc. That way I get to earn a half-day or days wage and the customer gets the opportunity to have the job done without any c*ck-ups! I doubt that you'll find many people in your part of the world who think differently. As I also said up here it's a lot cheaper - for starters terrace houses can still be bought for under £100k (just) - so I'd expect a home counties rate to be 2 to 3 times my charge rate up here.

Scrit

 

[ByronBlack]

Scrit - I appreciate your comments with regards to the time involved of travel/unloading etc.. and will bear that in mind.

I agree to an extent that I could have chosen my words slightly better initially - but I still think i've been harshly treated as I first apoligised and then went on to qualify what I meant by that statement. And some forum members (not yourself in this instance) went on and invented things that I supposed to have said and stirred up a hornets nest.

But back to the original point of tradesman - I did ask around my family if they knew anyone, but they didn't. Plenty of builders/sparkies/mechanics etc.. but no kitchen fitters unfortunatly.

When all is said and done, i'll probably get a cheap postform jig and practice on some offcuts before giving it a go myself if i can't find anyone local.

 

[Slim]

Also, someone said that I said "90% of all tradesman are con-men" or something to that effect. Well, again, this is not at all what I said

I have re-read this thread and I did mis-quote you Byron, for which I apologise. However, unless you have an abnormally high concentration of real rip-off tradesmen in your area, I cannot see how what you actually said is any better. "90% of all tradesman i've dealt with in my local area over the last few years are exactly as described (rip-off merchants/tradesmen)" Presumably if you moved to another area, you would think that 90% of tradesmen were rip-off mercants there aswell.

but I still think i've been harshly treated as I first apoligised and then went on to qualify what I meant by that statement.

I can't find an apology on this thread, but please continue trying to justify your comments.