Thread: What has happened to tradesmen

Step it up a notch and try to get a plumber to run a water pipe inside a ceiling and down an interior wall for a fridge. Good luck with that.

Six failed to turn up for the quote, one asked me to measure it up for him and a dozen didn't return messages. I finally managed to get a young guy who was a friend of a friend.

You know, I couldnt ask for a better reply. The last job I did for this guy is I had a piece of copper pipe going up to a boiler in the loft which was obsolete and capped off.
We ripped that out, capped it off under my house and the pipe that I had now feeds his ice maker fridge in his house. (I can solder) Did we hire a plumber. OOPs we did the job better. Go stick another nail through your nose, who care. We had insulation fitted under the scheme, 99% OK but 1% crap and idiots complain. Save me from them.

Sadly, the pride has gone out of the industry. My observation over the last ten years is that noone wants to be kicked around for the first couple of years of an apprenticeship on crap pay if they can find anything else that has better conditions and pay. As an engineer, I actually believe the apprenticeship system is the best way to teach people how practical industry works. I would like to see better schooling options available to give prospective apprentices more pre-apprenticeship training so that when they are picked up by a company they are more productive for their employer, more efficient to teach because there is less of a gap between apprentice and leading hand and everyone wins (at least a little bit) The other issue I've noticed is that there are just not enough tradies to go round. I regularly get expensive quotes back from subcontractors who don't want the work and will price themselves out of it. Too much other easy work on to care.

Not showing up for a quote is just rude though, and it just indicates again they are not worried about repeat business or word of mouth getting around.

I'm very interested to see others' views on this too...

It seems to be very common. I cant get an electrician to come out to do quite a bit of work or anybody to install gas central heating.

There must be plenty of easy work going around somewhere.

I spoke to two plumbers who said they had too much work and were able to be choosy; I can accept that and appreciate their honesty. Not answering messages and not turning up for quotes when they promise is just very poor business (and rude).

I agree.
Which is why, when you find a tradesman who is good both at a technical level and at service, you use him and you don't quibble about price. Getting the job done right, first time by someone who tells you straight what the issue is and what it will cost is money well spent!

Ps I have a sparky and a plumber in Sydney who I will recommend, but that's no help to you guys.

Another big issue is that you have a lot of good young people choosing not to go into trades because technology jobs are more interesting to them. We had a young guy in for work experience last week and we got talking. His mother and brother are both carpenters, and he loves both wood and metalwork, but he's torn between his love of technology and that so isn't sure which direction to go. He'll probably be decent at both, so will be interesting to see which wins out. If I had my time over I know what I'd choose.

I have a job coming up and contacted a relevant specialised tradie for a quote. He said he was busy but was organising a "quote day" when he could look at three or four jobs in our area on the same day. He did ring back eventually but the kicker was $300 for the privelege of perhaps 2 hours of measuring and simple testing. Do you think he was really interested in giving a quote or just decided to give us a scare?

The best work I had done (Insurance job getting roof repaired. Some bowl blanks fell of my house last year! ) was by an old guy with the bosses son working with him as an apprentice. When the boss trusts someone to be showing his son the right way, you know you've got a good one. Sadly he was retiring in the next few months.