Hi All,
Is it me!??? I have had about 15 so called Heating Engineers come
out & quote for replacing my old floor standing boiler with a new
condensing one and replacing my old copper tank with a new pressurised
one.

Most have not bothered to quote even though they said they would &
others are quoting £1000+! (just labour)

At most i would say it would take a competent corgi engineer 2 days. I
would hope a reasonable labour only rate would be £20 - £25 an
hour...Or am i being silly?

Regards,

S.B




--
handypandy

On Sat, 14 Apr 2007 10:54:51 +0100, handypandy
wrote:


Hi All,
Is it me!??? I have had about 15 so called Heating Engineers come
out & quote for replacing my old floor standing boiler with a new
condensing one and replacing my old copper tank with a new pressurised
one.

Most have not bothered to quote even though they said they would &
others are quoting £1000+! (just labour)

At most i would say it would take a competent corgi engineer 2 days. I
would hope a reasonable labour only rate would be £20 - £25 an
hour...Or am i being silly?

Regards,

S.B


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. They can pick
and choose what jobs they want,especially the better (not necessarily
cheaper!) people. I suspect that your expectations for hourly rate and
way short of the mark. Dont forget all the overheads that have to come
out of that. I have been in the industry for over 25 years and I am
afraid i wouldnt work for £25 per hour as a self employed person.

On Sat, 14 Apr 2007 10:54:51 +0100, handypandy
wrote:


Hi All,
Is it me!??? I have had about 15 so called Heating Engineers come
out & quote for replacing my old floor standing boiler with a new
condensing one and replacing my old copper tank with a new pressurised
one.

Most have not bothered to quote even though they said they would &
others are quoting £1000+! (just labour)

At most i would say it would take a competent corgi engineer 2 days. I
would hope a reasonable labour only rate would be £20 - £25 an
hour...Or am i being silly?

Regards,

S.B

I had my Floor mounted Potterton Kingfisher removed and an Alpha wall
hung Condensing Combi installed at New Year and it cost £1980 .It
took just short of 2 days .
I'm in Glasgow and that was cheaper than some other quotes I got.

Why did you need to get as many quotes . What's the boiler .You still
need a copper cylinder .?

Stuart

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

Eddy


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

F

"Eddy Young" wrote in message
...

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

It helps when your neighbour is head of building control at the local
council.
If they do screw you, they aren't going to stay in business. ;-)

"handypandy" wrote in message
.. .

Hi All,
Is it me!??? I have had about 15 so called Heating Engineers come
out & quote for replacing my old floor standing boiler with a new
condensing one and replacing my old copper tank with a new pressurised
one.

Most have not bothered to quote even though they said they would &
others are quoting £1000+! (just labour)

At most i would say it would take a competent corgi engineer 2 days. I
would hope a reasonable labour only rate would be £20 - £25 an
hour...Or am i being silly?

Very silly. By specifying labour only, you are denying the tradesman the
profit made from buying at trade price and selling at list, so they will
whack it onto the labour rate instead, which won't be as low as you estimate
to begin with.

Colin Bignell

handypandy wrote:

Is it me!???

Fraid so...

I have had about 15 so called Heating Engineers come
out & quote for replacing my old floor standing boiler with a new
condensing one and replacing my old copper tank with a new pressurised
one.

Most have not bothered to quote even though they said they would &
others are quoting £1000+! (just labour)

Sounds reasonable enough...

At most i would say it would take a competent corgi engineer 2 days. I

To do the job properly I would guess more like 5 man days.

would hope a reasonable labour only rate would be £20 - £25 an
hour...Or am i being silly?

Yup, that may well expect to earn at least that. Now you just need to
add on the overheads of running a business.


--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

"Huge" wrote in message
...
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.

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

Oddly enough, P&D was the only thing that I found
didn't conform to your rule.

tim

Eddy Young wrote:


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


Word of mouth - from people that you trust - especially when you can see the
job as done, a year later.

Ask around - someone you know locally must have had a job done by the type
of tradesman you need.

HTH

Tim

On 2007-04-14 18:54:21 +0100, "dennis@home"
said:


"Eddy Young" wrote in message
...

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

It helps when your neighbour is head of building control at the local
council.
If they do screw you, they aren't going to stay in business. ;-)

I like it....

On 2007-04-14 15:37:04 +0100, Owain said:

handypandy wrote:
At most i would say it would take a competent corgi engineer 2 days. I
would hope a reasonable labour only rate would be £20 - £25 an
hour...Or am i being silly?

Yes. A self-employed CORGI is likely to be charging £40-60 ph (more in
London and SE) and for at least some of the job would need a 'mate'.

Owain

This shouldn't be a problem

Go into any trade supplier and you will find loads of them propping up
the counter and drinking machine made beverages.

They all call one another "mate" and even refer to them in the third
person, so there is no shortage.

On Sat, 14 Apr 2007 20:59:43 +0100, Andy Hall
wrote:

On 2007-04-14 15:37:04 +0100, Owain said:

handypandy wrote:
At most i would say it would take a competent corgi engineer 2 days. I
would hope a reasonable labour only rate would be £20 - £25 an
hour...Or am i being silly?

Yes. A self-employed CORGI is likely to be charging £40-60 ph (more in
London and SE) and for at least some of the job would need a 'mate'.

Owain

This shouldn't be a problem

Go into any trade supplier and you will find loads of them propping up
the counter and drinking machine made beverages.

They all call one another "mate" and even refer to them in the third
person, so there is no shortage.

Would you recommend approaching them in The Flat Hat & Fag Disguise,
so as not to alarm them?

Owain wrote:

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

I think you need to start off with very pretty daughters...

Nah, that doesn't work.

In message , handypandy
writes

Hi All,
Is it me!??? I have had about 15 so called Heating Engineers come
out & quote for replacing my old floor standing boiler with a new
condensing one and replacing my old copper tank with a new pressurised
one.

Most have not bothered to quote even though they said they would &
others are quoting £1000+! (just labour)

Stop wingeing and do it yourself


--
geoff

In message , Huge
writes
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.

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

But, the OP is posting to uk.d-i-y - that's what he should be doing ...

and at least you know how well the job's been done

There are not many CH fitters I would let into my house

--
geoff

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.

Rant

We live in a "hairdresser" culture where people choose to be ignorant
rather than make an attempt to get a basic understanding and so lay
themselves open to being ripped off

/Rant


--
geoff

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.

I've been lucky. The bloke who I found for the landlord, to re-do our shower
tiling, was a recommendation from the bloke over the road - then again, I
did see the workmanship many months later and it was still good.

That worked out well - the guy was efficient, polite, left the job tidy each
day and nothing's gone wrong yet, 8 months later...

Rant

We live in a "hairdresser" culture where people choose to be ignorant
rather than make an attempt to get a basic understanding and so lay
themselves open to being ripped off

/Rant

Spot on. 30+ channels on terrestrial digital TV, a few quite good programs -
and what do 90% of the population watch? Big Brother, that sad sad program
with Simon ******-Cowell or some other equally pointless drivel. I've seen
people in suits, who sounded articulate on their mobile, on the train
reading the Sun. What's that about?

And my wife's been complaining that emails from our accountants[1] are
turning up full of spelling mistakes. The wife's chinese, English is very
much a second language for her - and not from birth either. That pretty
much sums it up for me.

Doomed...

[1] This is the first firm that we've found that at least actually *respond*
to attempts to communicate, before anyone asks why we don't fire them... Oh
look, back on topic, as if by magic!

On Sat, 14 Apr 2007 10:54:51 +0100, handypandy
wrote:


Hi All,
Is it me!??? I have had about 15 so called Heating Engineers come
out & quote for replacing my old floor standing boiler with a new
condensing one and replacing my old copper tank with a new pressurised
one.

Most have not bothered to quote even though they said they would &
others are quoting £1000+! (just labour)

At most i would say it would take a competent corgi engineer 2 days. I
would hope a reasonable labour only rate would be £20 - £25 an
hour...Or am i being silly?

Regards,

S.B

Consider the following:

Number of 'working hours' per year 1800 (taking into account holidays
etc)
Likely max. number of 'chargeable hours' 1800x0.8= 1440h (sickness,
van maintenance, office work etc)
Rule of thumb for overheads1.8 to 2 times chargeout rate.
Expected annual income after all overheads £35,000/yr
Chargeout rate (35,000/1440)x2= say £50 per hour.

Substitute your own numbers if you dispute mine but you realistically
must expect to pay anywhere between £40 to £60 per hour when you take
into account factors like supply and demand.

Psst;940494 Wrote:
On Sat, 14 Apr 2007 10:54:51 +0100, handypandy
wrote:
-

Hi All,
Is it me!??? I have had about 15 so called Heating Engineers come
out & quote for replacing my old floor standing boiler with a new
condensing one and replacing my old copper tank with a new pressurised
one.

Most have not bothered to quote even though they said they would &
others are quoting £1000+! (just labour)

At most i would say it would take a competent corgi engineer 2 days. I
would hope a reasonable labour only rate would be £20 - £25 an
hour...Or am i being silly?

Regards,

S.B-


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. They can pick
and choose what jobs they want,especially the better (not necessarily
cheaper!) people. I suspect that your expectations for hourly rate and
way short of the mark. Dont forget all the overheads that have to come
out of that. I have been in the industry for over 25 years and I am
afraid i wouldnt work for £25 per hour as a self employed person.


What is a reasonable hourly rate then?

I'm based in the West Midlands, presume the Engineer works from home &
has a semi/unskilled mate who is paid per job.

I cannot see a great deal of overhead apart from running a van & admin
expenses.

I'm not running the profession down we all have to make a living but
I'm not going to line the pockets of unscrupulous individuals.




--
handypandy

Huge wrote:
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.

I hear similar things all the time. Having been in sales for 30 years
before becoming a handyman its second nature to me to call people back, turn
up when I say I will, give estimates on time. I even call if I'm going to
be late.

I do actually get a lot of work, at good prices simply by default.

Seems strange to me - how do you get work if you treat potential customers
like that?



--
Dave
The Medway Handyman
www.medwayhandyman.co.uk
01634 717930
07850 597257

handypandy wrote:
What is a reasonable hourly rate then?

I'm based in the West Midlands, presume the Engineer works from home &
has a semi/unskilled mate who is paid per job.

I cannot see a great deal of overhead apart from running a van & admin
expenses.

Oh lets see; van on lease at £200 a month + tax, fuel & business insurance,
public liability insurance, advertising - have you seem what yellow pages
charge - £1500 a year for a modest advert?

Accountants fees, bank charges (no free banking with a business acount),
depreciation on tools & equipment, funding stock.

And if you are CORGI or the equivilant electrical there are anual fees, cost
of training & certification etc.

And a self employed tradesman con only charge that'reasonable hourly rate'
when actually working. No pay for sitting in traffic, collecting goods,
going on holiday etc.

My cheapest rate for a handyman is £20 an hour. That only applies to a pre
booked full day. I can make that work because I operate in a very small
densely populated catchment area and charge a higher rate for smaller jobs.

You haven't ever been self employed have you?


--
Dave
The Medway Handyman
www.medwayhandyman.co.uk
01634 717930
07850 597257

On Sun, 15 Apr 2007 10:45:12 +0100, "The Medway Handyman"
mused:

Huge wrote:
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.

I hear similar things all the time. Having been in sales for 30 years
before becoming a handyman its second nature to me to call people back, turn
up when I say I will, give estimates on time. I even call if I'm going to
be late.

I do actually get a lot of work, at good prices simply by default.

Seems strange to me - how do you get work if you treat potential customers
like that?

From the other side of that coin, you price for more work than you
expect to be able to do as half the people to call are just idly
enquiring, half of those people are just gathering quotes to get the
numbers up before giving the work to someone who was already
recommended, etc...
--
Regards,
Stuart.

"handypandy" wrote in message
.. .

Psst;940494 Wrote:
On Sat, 14 Apr 2007 10:54:51 +0100, handypandy
wrote:
-

Hi All,
Is it me!??? I have had about 15 so called Heating Engineers come
out & quote for replacing my old floor standing boiler with a new
condensing one and replacing my old copper tank with a new pressurised
one.

Most have not bothered to quote even though they said they would &
others are quoting £1000+! (just labour)

At most i would say it would take a competent corgi engineer 2 days. I
would hope a reasonable labour only rate would be £20 - £25 an
hour...Or am i being silly?

Regards,

S.B-


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. They can pick
and choose what jobs they want,especially the better (not necessarily
cheaper!) people. I suspect that your expectations for hourly rate and
way short of the mark. Dont forget all the overheads that have to come
out of that. I have been in the industry for over 25 years and I am
afraid i wouldnt work for £25 per hour as a self employed person.


What is a reasonable hourly rate then?

I'm based in the West Midlands, presume the Engineer works from home &
has a semi/unskilled mate who is paid per job.

I cannot see a great deal of overhead apart from running a van & admin
expenses.

I see that Dave has given you some numbers....
but would you want an uninsured person doing work in
your house that he could seriously damage it if he made
a mistake.

Insurance for such people has gone sky high in the
last few years, I imagine that some don't see any
change from a couple of grand a year

tim

Lurch wrote:

From the other side of that coin, you price for more work than you
expect to be able to do as half the people to call are just idly
enquiring, half of those people are just gathering quotes to get the
numbers up before giving the work to someone who was already
recommended, etc...

....and the third half just want a quote for the insurance and will then do
it themselves...



--
Dave
The Medway Handyman
www.medwayhandyman.co.uk
01634 717930
07850 597257

Owain wrote:

Steve Firth wrote:
So, how does one find a good(?) tradesman these days?
I think you need to start off with very pretty daughters...
Nah, that doesn't work.

Very pretty sons who like a bit of rough?

Flock of sheep or a rather attractive hound would probably do the job.

handypandy wrote:

What is a reasonable hourly rate then?

Depends on the actual business in question and the way it is operated.

But if you start from the baseline that it is unlikely to cost less than
15K / year to run it, you have a baseline that needs to be recovered on
paying jobs to break even. Then add on what you would consider to be a
reasonable rate of return for your highly sought after and in demand
skill. Allow for the fact that you can only work for a proportion of the
days available and will get no income when not employed on billable work.

I'm based in the West Midlands, presume the Engineer works from home &
has a semi/unskilled mate who is paid per job.

Who he needs to employ, pay employers NI contributions for, fund
training, sick leave, holiday etc. So that is likely to be a minimum of
another 20K cost to the business.

I cannot see a great deal of overhead apart from running a van & admin
expenses.

In this example we are at 35K so far.

I'm not running the profession down we all have to make a living but
I'm not going to line the pockets of unscrupulous individuals.

If small business owners wanted just to "make a living" then they cold
do that by getting a job. Chances are they want to achieve more than
that. Does that make them unscrupulous?

--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

"The Medway Handyman" wrote in message
...
Lurch wrote:

From the other side of that coin, you price for more work than you
expect to be able to do as half the people to call are just idly
enquiring, half of those people are just gathering quotes to get the
numbers up before giving the work to someone who was already
recommended, etc...

...and the third half just want a quote for the insurance and will then do
it themselves...

Most insurance companies won't allow that.
I wanted to replace my bath after I broke it but I had to wait six weeks for
a plumber to do it.

On Sun, 15 Apr 2007 13:41:41 +0100, "The Medway Handyman"
mused:

Lurch wrote:

From the other side of that coin, you price for more work than you
expect to be able to do as half the people to call are just idly
enquiring, half of those people are just gathering quotes to get the
numbers up before giving the work to someone who was already
recommended, etc...

...and the third half just want a quote for the insurance and will then do
it themselves...

Most of the insurance jobs I've done the insurance co has sent a
cheque to the customer made out to me so if they want to do the work
then fine, the money is still made out to me.
--
Regards,
Stuart.

On 2007-04-15 11:14:44 +0100, Huge said:

On 2007-04-15, The Medway Handyman wrote:
Huge wrote:
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.

I hear similar things all the time. Having been in sales for 30 years
before becoming a handyman its second nature to me to call people back, turn
up when I say I will, give estimates on time. I even call if I'm going to
be late.

I do actually get a lot of work, at good prices simply by default.

Seems strange to me - how do you get work if you treat potential customers
like that?

The lack of a customer culture in the UK mystifies me. Here's another
example; a
couple of years ago, I wanted to buy a sports car. I had a budget of some
GBP22K, in cash, in the bank. My short list included the Vauxhall VX220
(& turbo
version of same). I called my local Vauxhall dealer again and again and again
and again. Each time "Wayne", the VX salesman was unavailable. Each
time, I left
a message. Each time, it was ignored (or forgotten.) So me and my 22K walked
away. And not only did Vauxhall not sell me a car, but they made an
anti-customer of me.


I think that this must be a typical GM type of thing possibly coming
from their almost automatic levels of business from the company car
market when it was more substantial than it is today.

I went into one of the dealers with a similar type of question and the
first thing that they asked was whether it was a company car. As soon
a I said that it was, they immediately switched into sloppy mode and
started saying things like "Of course the company car policy will
dictate that you have to have X" or that "the fleet manager will insist
on Y"

He couldn't have been more wrong. It was a fairly small company and
we didn't have a car policy as such, although by mutual agreement we
agreed that we would have no more than three suppliers. I was the
defacto "fleet manager" for this.

Assuming people chose evenly among them, this would have been an order
for 10 cars. When the guy had finished, I asked to see his manager
and explained that his empoyee had just lost them a fairly substantial
sale.

He didn't care. I have never bought a GM car since.

On Sun, 15 Apr 2007 08:33:47 +0100, handypandy wrote:

Psst;940494 Wrote:
On Sat, 14 Apr 2007 10:54:51 +0100, handypandy
wrote:
-

Hi All,
Is it me!??? I have had about 15 so called Heating Engineers come
out & quote for replacing my old floor standing boiler with a new
condensing one and replacing my old copper tank with a new pressurised
one.

Most have not bothered to quote even though they said they would &
others are quoting £1000+! (just labour)

At most i would say it would take a competent corgi engineer 2 days. I
would hope a reasonable labour only rate would be £20 - £25 an
hour...Or am i being silly?

Regards,

S.B-


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. They can pick
and choose what jobs they want,especially the better (not necessarily
cheaper!) people. I suspect that your expectations for hourly rate and
way short of the mark. Dont forget all the overheads that have to come
out of that. I have been in the industry for over 25 years and I am
afraid i wouldnt work for £25 per hour as a self employed person.


What is a reasonable hourly rate then?

I'm based in the West Midlands, presume the Engineer works from home &
has a semi/unskilled mate who is paid per job.

I cannot see a great deal of overhead apart from running a van & admin
expenses.


Because you can't see the overheads that does not stop them from being
there.
Have you any idea what the insurance premium for liability is just for the
mate?
CORGI are a philanthropic organisation, not.
etc. etc.



I'm not running the profession down we all have to make a living but
I'm not going to line the pockets of unscrupulous individuals.






--
Ed Sirett - Property maintainer and registered gas fitter.
The FAQ for uk.diy is at http://www.diyfaq.org.uk
Gas fitting FAQ http://www.makewrite.demon.co.uk/GasFitting.html
Sealed CH FAQ http://www.makewrite.demon.co.uk/SealedCH.html
Choosing a Boiler FAQ http://www.makewrite.demon.co.uk/BoilerChoice.html
Gas Fitting Standards Docs he http://www.makewrite.demon.co.uk/GasFittingStandards

On Sat, 14 Apr 2007 20:00:29 +0100, John Rumm wrote:

handypandy wrote:

Is it me!???

Fraid so...

I have had about 15 so called Heating Engineers come
out & quote for replacing my old floor standing boiler with a new
condensing one and replacing my old copper tank with a new pressurised
one.

Most have not bothered to quote even though they said they would &
others are quoting £1000+! (just labour)

Sounds reasonable enough...

At most i would say it would take a competent corgi engineer 2 days. I

To do the job properly I would guess more like 5 man days.

This is the heart of the matter, it is very easy to evaluate the job as
just the visible part. The little things like flushing the existing
system. Add TRVs (you wont do them in less than 15 mins each and sometimes
they can be real *******s). etc. etc.etc.




--
Ed Sirett - Property maintainer and registered gas fitter.
The FAQ for uk.diy is at http://www.diyfaq.org.uk
Gas fitting FAQ http://www.makewrite.demon.co.uk/GasFitting.html
Sealed CH FAQ http://www.makewrite.demon.co.uk/SealedCH.html
Choosing a Boiler FAQ http://www.makewrite.demon.co.uk/BoilerChoice.html
Gas Fitting Standards Docs he http://www.makewrite.demon.co.uk/GasFittingStandards

On Sun, 15 Apr 2007 13:30:41 +0100, "tim....."
wrote:


I see that Dave has given you some numbers....
but would you want an uninsured person doing work in
your house that he could seriously damage it if he made
a mistake.

Insurance for such people has gone sky high in the
last few years, I imagine that some don't see any
change from a couple of grand a year


Yeah, total.

We do work for hospitals, one customer (Rotherham DGH, ISTR) insisted
on 2 megaquids worth of public liability, nobody else anywhere in the
country did. So we just took it without looking too hard at the cost.

Turned out last year that after 8 years when the contract was
concluded and the machine came out of service we had effectively had
*zero* revenue for making 2 service visits every year for *8 years* to
this customer, it had all gone in paying for the enhanced public
liability insurance.

That's not zero profit, that's zero *revenue* (turnover minus direct
costs).

In fact they had made money out of us by charging for car parking.

:-(

DG

On 2007-04-15 20:13:20 +0100, Owain said:

Steve Firth wrote:
So, how does one find a good(?) tradesman these days?
I think you need to start off with very pretty daughters...
Nah, that doesn't work.
Very pretty sons who like a bit of rough?
Flock of sheep or a rather attractive hound would probably do the job.

Wales, or Aberdeenshire?

Owain

Do they have wellies in Aberdeenshire?

Owain wrote:

Steve Firth wrote:
So, how does one find a good(?) tradesman these days?
I think you need to start off with very pretty daughters...
Nah, that doesn't work.
Very pretty sons who like a bit of rough?
Flock of sheep or a rather attractive hound would probably do the job.

Wales, or Aberdeenshire?

Hampshire, so a hog would suffice.

Derek Geldard wrote:

Turned out last year that after 8 years when the contract was
concluded and the machine came out of service we had effectively had
*zero* revenue for making 2 service visits every year for *8 years* to
this customer, it had all gone in paying for the enhanced public
liability insurance.

Most frightening example I heard was from a friend who ran a small
groundworks business that specialised in augured piling (he had a small
pile drilling/driving machine that could be driven through a front door
of a house to do underpinning inside etc).

First couple of years of trading the insurance was about 2K. Next year
they wanted 26K, after than 134K! (managed to get that down to 96K IIRC
by shopping around). In that time they had no claims or anything - just
the insurers changed their mind about the risk profile of businesses
that dig holes! Needless to say, they folded the company the next year
since they were in effect working for the insurers.

--
Cheers,

John.

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\================================================= ================/

On Sun, 15 Apr 2007 22:02:22 +0100, John Rumm
mused:

Derek Geldard wrote:

Turned out last year that after 8 years when the contract was
concluded and the machine came out of service we had effectively had
*zero* revenue for making 2 service visits every year for *8 years* to
this customer, it had all gone in paying for the enhanced public
liability insurance.

Most frightening example I heard was from a friend who ran a small
groundworks business that specialised in augured piling (he had a small
pile drilling/driving machine that could be driven through a front door
of a house to do underpinning inside etc).

First couple of years of trading the insurance was about 2K. Next year
they wanted 26K, after than 134K! (managed to get that down to 96K IIRC
by shopping around). In that time they had no claims or anything - just
the insurers changed their mind about the risk profile of businesses
that dig holes! Needless to say, they folded the company the next year
since they were in effect working for the insurers.

How the hell do insurers manage to come up with figures like that.
That is just insane.
--
Regards,
Stuart.

Lurch wrote:

How the hell do insurers manage to come up with figures like that.
That is just insane.

It does make you wonder. When I did the software for the central control
computer for the comms system in the EH101 Merlin helicopter, our
insurance costs were something like £650/year. I have a suspicion that
doing something that allows one of them to fall out of the sky might
represent a more expensive risk than drilling through a electric cable.

--
Cheers,

John.

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\================================================= ================/

In article ,
handypandy wrote:
I'm not running the profession down we all have to make a living but
I'm not going to line the pockets of unscrupulous individuals.

At the end of the day you pay what is asked for or do without. You can't
force anyone to work for what you consider a reasonable amount.

--
*Why is it that most nudists are people you don't want to see naked?*

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

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

--
*How can I miss you if you won't go away?

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

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

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.

That's generally my view, although sometimes I can see why he customer
would be a bit miffed at paying 20-30 quid extra per day for parking
charges.

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

As we are generally workign on the security side then we get to park
pretty much anywhere as most sites (not just NHS) as most parking
rules are enforced in house, ultimately. I have a stack of passes in
the van for various car parks and sites.
--
Regards,
Stuart.