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My Mother vs The Plumbing Industry

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Karl Masks

Birds Angel Delight
Just so I can understand and be sure that she, an 79yo, hasn't been completely mugged off.

Is it normal practice to chage a call out fee regardless of the time of day (as opposed to service out of hours for example), and if so is it normal to be expected to pay that fee before the guy even shows up.

Specifically, can he charge and expect payment even if he has to then, inevitably it seems, ring up and say he can't make it (which I accept is a possibility, hwoever unfortunate).

Thanks
 
Isn't it in the nature of a minimum charge where the job is so modest that the plumber might actually lose money by attending?Not that I don't agree with your general sentiment about elders getting overcharged.My mother paid five hundred pounds to two guys who came out to rid the drain.
 
Duncan2 said:
Isn't it in the nature of a minimum charge where the job is so modest that the plumber might actually lose money by attending?Not that I don't agree with your general sentiment about elders getting overcharged.My mother paid five hundred pounds to two guys who came out to rid the drain.
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I genuinely don't know. I'm just interested in finding out how it's meant to work. Work needs doing and I don't want her getting the runaround because she chose to, quite reasonably, trust some chancer. That's the worst case scenario, you understand. I'm not suggesting Britain's plumbers are all dodgy! :D
 
Karl Masks said:
Just so I can understand and be sure that she, an 79yo, hasn't been completely mugged off.

Is it normal practice to chage a call out fee regardless of the time of day (as opposed to service out of hours for example), and if so is it normal to be expected to pay that fee before the guy even shows up.

Specifically, can he charge and expect payment even if he has to then, inevitably it seems, ring up and say he can't make it (which I accept is a possibility, hwoever unfortunate).

Thanks
Click to expand...
I would say no, no trademen has ever asked me or anyone I know for money before even showing up.
 
From checkatrade:

1695223205490.png

Most plumbers will have an hour or half hour minimum charge, sometimes paid in advance. The above averages look low to me, probably because I'm in London and they maybe nationals averages
 
yeah, as above. call out fee is normal part of any invoice nowadays but no reason to pay it before they turn up. and certainly not for small jobs.
 
Sue said:
This seems really dodgy. If not turning up is down to him, how can he expect to charge your mother for it?
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It does seem very easy to ask for payment and then not turn up. If he doesn't come tomorrow, as agreed, then she's out of pocket. It seems a very easy scam, if one were so minded
 
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I was once mugged by a pair of plumbers, no one else would come out and I think they knew that, then they charged me more to get a squirter up a pipe and I had to agree to that, I had to get the plumbing fixed before the house owners returned, it ended up costing me £400 and they were trying to get me to agree to a further charge to put a camera up my drains.

By that time I didn't trust them at all and told them to take a hike.

Felt pretty bruised by the experience and resolved not to repeat it.

:(
 
Nothing wrong with the principle of a call-out charge.

And there are lots of things that we expect to pay for in advance.

If it's a "reputable" larger firm, with a phone that gets answered, and there's some record of payment, then I'd not worry too much, but I'd feel wary of paying a call out fee in advance to an unknown, and what I'd expect to happen in that case might be that they'd take payment when they show up.
 
I vote :hmm:

Many plumbers etc have a minimum of 1 hour's charge for coming out, but don't think i've ever had one (or any other trade) that wanted money in advance before they would come round.

Do you know what plumber / firm this is? Do they seem reasonably well established and have things like a full postal address / landline number on any of their publicity / website? (and may be worth a search to see if it's genuine)

Where's she got hold of the details of these people from?

Nothing is entirely fiddle-proof, but for future reference, may be worth finding tradespersons on something like checkatrade. age uk in some areas have lists of trusted tradespeople.

How's she paid the money?
 
Duncan2 said:
Isn't it in the nature of a minimum charge where the job is so modest that the plumber might actually lose money by attending?Not that I don't agree with your general sentiment about elders getting overcharged.My mother paid five hundred pounds to two guys who came out to rid the drain.
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That's awful. As a self employed general contractor I charge 27p/h (well outside of london obvs). I've unblocked 2 drains recently, both in less than 2 hrs. The only reason I rounded up to the next hour was to cover my time spent cleaning down my tools and clothes. Also just installed a new water main for a client in less than a a day and half. That included trenching to 750mm over 8M run, the plumbing, backfilling the trench and carting 4m3 of spoil through a terraced house in buckets and dumping it in a skip on the road. Less than 300 quid plus materials. I then ended up staying with that client for 14 weeks straight.


Eta. I'd also never dream of taking money before starting the job, but im also very careful of who I work for and get references from them! :D
 
Karl Masks said:
Just so I can understand and be sure that she, an 79yo, hasn't been completely mugged off.

Is it normal practice to chage a call out fee regardless of the time of day (as opposed to service out of hours for example), and if so is it normal to be expected to pay that fee before the guy even shows up.

Specifically, can he charge and expect payment even if he has to then, inevitably it seems, ring up and say he can't make it (which I accept is a possibility, hwoever unfortunate).

Thanks
Click to expand...
I called a plumber out to fix a toilet that took an hours labour in advance by card over the phone once. Don't think it is normal practice though. You can always say no and try someone else.
 
I've never paid up front, but I've given my card details on 2 occasions when booking someone to come out - both times were with bigger companies when I couldn't find someone local/independent to do a job -1 time wasn't a plumber, it was someone needed to reattach a radiator to a wall after it had fallen of its bracket and the pipe burst and reattach it, fix the pipe, do a cleanup with an aquavac - really difficult to find someone to do that job! The 2nd time was for a small plumbing job but I couldn't get anyone local to show any interest in it and actually went through the same company as for job 1.

They didn't actually charge me up front though, they took card details when I booked the job but didn't actually charge me until work had been agreed and completed and signed off. In both cases I'd been unable to find anyone else to do the work, and I was satisfied with the jobs done. I wasn't scammed (other than it being a little more expensive than one might have expected from a local tradesperson, which I couldn't get in terms of interest in doing the job). I can see that it might be possible to be scammed, but also using a credit or debit card offers some protection.
 
well nothing from the guy yet. I suspect he takes calls and charges in advance despite being too busy to get round to visiting the customer in a time they reasonably expect. Seems off to me, but I could be wrong.

Problem is our toilet is just fucked. For some reason flushing it causes it to spill. There's a circular hole in the top right corner of the tank. Intentional I assume, and the water level is such that, when flushed, it spills out there. I've no idea what's going on, but buckets are in effect

EDIT: never mind he's on his way. Praise the dark gods
 
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Karl Masks said:
well nothing from the guy yet. I suspect he takes calls and charges in advance despite being too busy to get round to visiting the customer in a time they reasonably expect. Seems off to me, but I could be wrong.

Problem is our toilet is just fucked. For some reason flushing it causes it to spill. There's a circular hole in the top right corner of the tank. Intentional I assume, and the water level is such that, when flushed, it spills out there. I've no idea what's going on, but buckets are in effect

EDIT: never mind he's on his way. Praise the dark gods
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Post a picture, someone may have some idea. Outside and with the top off. Never seen one with a hole in it
 
Seems to have been fixed. A simple thing. Someone tried to flush a magic ring down...sorry, confused. Apparently something just needed to be clipped back on.

Here, for shits and giggles, is the bog in question: bog.jpg
 
Minimum charge notwithstanding, I've only ever been charged a call out fee when it has been an an emergency/out of hours situation. Any work actually pre-booked in normal hours with a plumber has always been charged at normal rates.

Of all the trades represented in my extended family, plumbers are not amongst them, so I've no other experience than as a customer.
 
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