In article ,
Owain wrote:
Andy Hall wrote:
Wales, or Aberdeenshire?
Do they have wellies in Aberdeenshire?

Why do you think it's called "furry boots toon"?

Just imagine wearing a kilt there with the wind whistling round the
Trossachs.

--
*Starfishes have no brains *

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

On 14 Apr 2007 18:00:33 GMT, Huge wrote:

On 2007-04-14, Psst wrote:


Many self employed tradesmen are very busy and have full order books.
They often run the office side of the business themselves which is why
they can sometimes be slow to react/seem disorganised.

I have my Tradesperson Rule of Halves;

- Half of those called will not return your call.
- Half of those who return the call will not come to give an estimate.
- Half of those who come to estimate, won't actually submit one.
- Half of those who submit an estimate will deliberately price themselves
out of the job.
- Half of the reasonable estimates won't turn up on the day.

So, to get a tradesman, you need to start with 32 phone calls.

IME it's a lot higher than 1/2 for small jobs, which means even more
phone calls. For larger jobs it's less.

And this is why last weekend, this weekend and the next half dozen weekends,
I'm up a ladder painting the house.

It's often quicker to do the job yourself than to make all those calls
:-)

M

On Sat, 14 Apr 2007 21:29:45 GMT, raden wrote:

In message , The
Simpsons writes

So, how does one find a good(?) tradesman these days? Eddy


Easy......Ask family, freinds and nieghbours for recommendations.

It really isn't that easy

The number of times I've come across a total ****** who was recommended
by someone, just because he happened to be less clueless than the
customer who recommended him and was impressed.

That reminds me of when we were looking for a builder for a house
extension. Some friends gave a glowing recommendation for the builder
who built theirs. One look at their extension convinced us not to
consider that builder under any circumstances.

M

On Mon, 16 Apr 2007 08:51:06 +0100, "Dave Plowman (News)"
wrote:

In article ,
Derek Geldard wrote:
In fact they had made money out of us by charging for car parking.

:-(

I'd simply tell a customer who expected me to absorb transport or parking
charges to get stuffed.

Especially when the parking revenue goes to them.

And NHS premises will have some sort of pass system available.

Some have a hardship scheme, you have to queue at the "Poverty"
window. Some you can get the boss of the dept. to phone the car park
admin but it's likely to introduce 20 -40 mins worth of delay you
can't charge for at the end of the job when you want to be getting
home. So I usually just pay the £2.50 - £3.50. Southend General wanted
me to pay £18.00 for 8 1/4 hours of parking. I had to walk right to
the back of the site to speak to the dept (having just walked the trip
once with my kit), then walk back to the car.

I don't know of any hospital that will issue an on-going pass. It
would seem to be sensible to issue an annual pass when they sign an
annual contract.

DG

On Mon, 16 Apr 2007 12:33:09 +0100, Mark
wrote:

That reminds me of when we were looking for a builder for a house
extension. Some friends gave a glowing recommendation for the builder
who built theirs. One look at their extension convinced us not to
consider that builder under any circumstances.


I.M.E. if a female was involved in assessing a tradesman's work her
highest priority is likely to be "Did he make a mess".

DG

Derek Geldard wrote:

Southend General wanted
me to pay £18.00 for 8 1/4 hours of parking. I had to walk right to
the back of the site to speak to the dept (having just walked the trip
once with my kit), then walk back to the car.

Cunningly designed building that isn't it - everything is positioned as
far away from everything else as possible!

--
Cheers,

John.

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On Mon, 16 Apr 2007 13:58:59 +0100 Derek Geldard wrote :
I.M.E. if a female was involved in assessing a tradesman's work
her highest priority is likely to be "Did he make a mess".

Not always. One of the worst jobs I ever saw in my BCO days was a
loft conversion. On one visit the front door was opened to a scene
that looked as if a bomb had dropped. The "builders" were creating
the opening for the new stairs by stamping on the lath & plaster
ceiling and letting everything fall down the stairway. In response
to my comment she smiled and said "you've got to be prepared to
put up with a bit of mess, you know".

--
Tony Bryer SDA UK 'Software to build on' http://www.sda.co.uk

On 2007-04-16 09:18:15 +0100, "Dave Plowman (News)"
said:

In article ,
Owain wrote:
Andy Hall wrote:
Wales, or Aberdeenshire?
Do they have wellies in Aberdeenshire?

Why do you think it's called "furry boots toon"?

Just imagine wearing a kilt there with the wind whistling round the
Trossachs.

As in

Q: "What's worn under the kilt?"

A: "Nothing. Everything's in perfect working order."

it's not the cost per hour i object to, it's the walking off the job
half way through to 'just do this other little job...'

once the floor is up and the radiators delivered they know they have
you over a barell and theat 2 week job just keeps on stretching...

just imagine if a surgeon did that!

wrote in message
oups.com...
it's not the cost per hour i object to, it's the walking off the job
half way through to 'just do this other little job...'

once the floor is up and the radiators delivered they know they have
you over a barell and theat 2 week job just keeps on stretching...

just imagine if a surgeon did that!


Isn't the mantra;- Surgeons bury their mistakes ....?

--

Brian