jon wrote:
There seems to be a glut of posts, mine included, inferring that 'most'
plumbers are chancers looking for easy money. My experiences. I have had to
contact 14 plumbers to get 4 quotes, of those 14, only 5 replied, 1 of which
was polite enough to say that he couldn't do the work as he was fully booked
up unitl late August. The rest, didn't bother getting back to me, despite me
leaving messages on their answer phones asking for a quote for a supply and
fit of new combi.

As for the 4 that quoted, well one was British Gas (enough said), but they
were polite. The second was a large local firm, trading on length of
service, they matched BG's price, however it took 2 of their engineers to
work out a quote, it seemed as if they were trying to confuse me, almost
like 'good cop, bad cop' or should that be good plumber, bad plumber.

The third quote, was reasonable, about 2 thirds the price of BG. He listened
to what I wanted, didn't try to to manipulate boiler choice, etc, and was
prepared to let me do some of the work, basically he was polite, and he also
knew what he was talking about.

The last quote was from 'dodgy geezer', cash in hand, and unless I went for
his choice of boiler he couldn't gurantee it would work porperly( his actual
words).

All plumbers contacted were from the yellow pages in the Corgi section.

You can draw your own conclusions.

Jon

I would never contact anyone in the Yellow Pages. That's not to say
they're all crooks but IME they have been. I do all my own work but I
would always advise others to get referrals from friends/family.

As for plumbers having an unfair reputation....hmm. They are making
very good money, especially down here in London. They can pick or
choose what work they want to do as they're spoilt for it. Supply and
demand at the end of the day but like Estate Agents and anyone else
creaming it I'm not going to defend them.