On 19/05/2021 00:34, Fredxx wrote:
On 18/05/2021 21:39, wrote:
I've been talking to a rural plumbing firm about a small job that I
could do, but didn't fancy doing, and had agreed their published rate of
£90 for the first hour followed by £50/hour thereafter. I guessed the
job would take between 1 and 2 hours. Today I found out they were going
to charge more than £150 for parts that I could easily buy for £50 at
retail prices. When they wouldn't justify the mark-up I cancelled and
will do the work myself when the warmer weather arrives. I was prepared
to pay the (OTT) labour rate but they blew it by putting such a huge
mark-up on the parts. Because of greed they lost the job.
I feel sorry for people who don't have the option to do things
themselves, or who don't know anything about the time jobs take and the
cost of materials.


One technique is to get the parts yourself, but if they are faulty you
should expect to pay for their labour to replace the part.

If you run a business you expect 1,000 working hours from an employee.
Simply divide salary + NI, plus overheads van etc and divide by 1,000.
That gets you a break even hourly rate.

Another crude way of costing out a job is 3 x hourly cost of employment.

If you add VAT you can see why tradesmen cost so much.

Many years ago when we had a new boiler fitted the gas service engineer
we'd used for years said that it would be better if we ordered the
boiler direct. That way it didn't appear on his bill and so he kept
below the VAT threshold based on turnover.

--

Jeff