There are lots of well qualified people that do good work.
The problem is that there is currently a large shortage of
people due to the building boom. If you are a talented
tradesperson, who would you want to deal with...joe public
who has one job for you and is trying to chisel the price,
or jack builder who promises a stream of work that will
keep you busy for a year or more? No talented tradesperson
is going to waste money dealing with consumers and doing
little projects here and there when there is big money to
be made in finishing starter castles for large scale builders.

Except of course that a lot of the people that work for builders suck too. I
bought my house new from a MAJOR builder... K.Hov, and a lot of the work
done was horrible. Crooked walls, buldged drywall, horrible drywall work,
poor attention to detail. In fact, one electrical outlet was installed over
5" too high. I was coming to the house every week to check on the work and
would point out stuff. They fixed the majority of the stuff, but as another
poster said, for most people, getting people to work on your house is a huge
hassle. They work the same time we do. So you have to take a day off for
this crap and they end up not even showing up.

I'm going to start doing a lot of the small projects myself. That seems like
the best way.