Builders and contractors: are they all like this?

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freitasm

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#17662 6-Dec-2007 09:41

After weeks my wife finally managed to get a gib stopper that actually returned he calls. Many of the calls to other guys were never returned.

And after missing a couple of the appointment, he shows up today to work in one of our walls. And he shows up one hour late and already saying from the door that he needs to go away and come back in another hour.

When I tell him in no uncertain terms we should have the baby sleeping by the time he is planning the new "start" he explodes and goes away saying he doesn't want to work for us.

Are they all stupid, ignorant and imbecile like those guys?

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#98495 6-Dec-2007 10:22

Busy season of the year, so demand > supply

the one who came to you must be a dxck, special case?

good luck on your next try. :)

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#98522 6-Dec-2007 11:54

freitasm: Are they all stupid, ignorant and imbecile like those guys?

We have employed several gib-stoppers during the renovation of our house in 2002. Usually you will find:

1) When you phone up to try and get somebody, they seldom answer the phone and will not return your calls.

2) They never turn up when they say they are going to, and never phone to tell you they are not coming

3) When they finally do arrive, there is usually some hold-up and they have to leave again to get more tools, finish some other job or just go to the pub early...

4) They try to charge you more than they quoted, in some cases -- much more

The main thing is that you should always be around to supervise. Otherwise they will dump their waste in your garden, on your concrete path, or all down the side of your house. And if you have a nice new garden hose, take it away and hide it, or it will be ruined

Take a careful note of the hours actually spent on your job. Then you can check their invoice and make sure they are not overcharging for the time spent.

Those are some of the lessons I have learned during a 6-month renovation of our house in 2002. One thing I have decided is:

NEVER try to live in the house while large-scale renovations are being done. That was a bad idea

foobar

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#98523 6-Dec-2007 11:58

Mauricio, I can feel for you. We have had the same experiences with 'those people'. It's a shame, really, because surely there are exceptions to this. But the majority (at least so it appears) behaves this way.

Showing up late, or not at all.
When finally showing up, no word of an excuse.
Or delivering lame excuses like: Had to go to my son's birthday party. Uhm... you didn't know it was your son's birthday when you made the appointment in the fist place?
Generally behaving like pricks and then feeling insulted if you point this out (or anything else you don't like).
Name dropping: Yeah, I need to work on this-or-that multi-million dollar villa in Milford, blah blah, don't know if I can squeeze you in... This is soooo pathetic!

We've had contractors brake into the house (we were gone, and they thought they needed access to under the house). So they unscrewed the hinges off the door, which we had locked for good reasons. The paint that was chipped in the process was then painted over with a non-matching paint. Sigh...

You know what would be good? A web-site where people can list contractors that don't suck. Repudiation is a problem, though.

foobar

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#98524 6-Dec-2007 12:00

Take a careful note of the hours actually spent on your job. Then you can check their invoice and make sure they are not overcharging for the time spent.

And the problem with that is: If you refuse to pay, or have an issue with anything they have done, they are not above using threatening behaviour. We have had disputes like that, which resulted in a break in into the house (at that point empty and being renovated, so definitely nothing there to steal, the wall that had been worked on was just kicked in...) Also, threatening phone calls, and so on.

Sick bastards...

mule

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#98529 6-Dec-2007 12:41

I have generally had the same expiriences with a lot of tradesmen, but not all. The biggest I hate is the way some of them make promises about when they can start when all along they know they cannot meet it because of prior committments. I had my plumber on about this and he said it was becuase (for him) he did not want to miss out on the work, which is a bit ironic becuase they would miss out on repeat work from giving poor service. I would much rather they were straight up - if I have to wait another week or two I will as long as I know it will happen when they say they will.

Thats part of the reason I like DIY, no waiting for tradesmen, but then there are other issues......

On the subject of Gib stoppers, just got someone in this week (I am in Wellington), they have been excellent so far, answered the phone when we called, arrived on time for the quote, and started when they said they would (I did call them a couple of times to double check they were still OK), they are still working on the house at the moment so I will save final judgement until the finish.

The bottom line is, if you find a good, reliable tradesmen, hold on to them, a doz beer at the end of a project seems to do wonders.

I now have a builder, plumber, electrican and hopefully a gib stopper I can trust...

Ragnor

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#98531 6-Dec-2007 12:46

There's a huge shortage of quality trademen because everyone is encouraged to goto uni and do useless arts or commerce degress for 4 years.

freitasm

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#98542 6-Dec-2007 13:49

mule: I now have a builder, plumber, electrican and hopefully a gib stopper I can trust...

Are these in Wellington? I really need agib stopper now - this one is gone and we will have to start hunting again. The bad thing is the leather lounge suite is now delivered - we didn't want it here until the guy had finished, but couldn't hold it anymore - five weeks delayed waiting for the gib stopper that when showed up was a complete reck.

If you know anyone in Wellington, please let me know... It's a small job, the other one thought it would be a couple of hours only.

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mule

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#98563 6-Dec-2007 15:14

Yes they are, I have sent you a PM with the contact details......now I had better go home and make sure they have not ripped me off!

chiefie

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#98567 6-Dec-2007 15:23

http://www.mytradesman.co.nz/
http://www.tradepages.co.nz/

The first one was mentioned last year as you can see from Scoop: Christchurch mum keeps tradesmen honest and the second one was featured on Scoop: TradePages - helping you find a trusted tradesman.

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photoman

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#98589 6-Dec-2007 16:47

This doesn't apply to gib stoppers, but tradesmen in general. We have had a catalogue of problems over the last six months.

Just a bit of background. The house is a new build and we have been in it just over a year.

1. We phone to get some landscaping done. He was given all he needed to know over the phone beforehand. He said he would come out that week and give us a quote. Three months later we're still waiting. We've now got someone else in and the job is going to cost $10,000, which by the way we consider cheap. Cheap because we spent Christmas and New Year doing the other side of the garden and it is only about one third the size, and that cost close on $5,000 by the time all the materials and hire equipment had been paid for.

2. We never close bedroom doors, but one night my daughters was closed and the light was on inside. You could see the light through the gap between the door and door frame, and I mean you could see 'the light' as in lightbulb. Now this is a sold pine door which cost us a damn site more than the typical $20 doors the builders usually put in. Anyway, the door was taken away three months ago, and was only returned yesterday. And the work they did? They planed done the side that wasn't straight and then nailed on a strip of wood to the hinge side of the door. My 6 year old son could have done a better. and faster job. Needless to say, the door is going back and WILL be done properly.

3. We ordered 6m3 of 20mm stone for the driveway and for some drainage. It was delivered on the Friday before Labour Day weekend. When we checked it out, it was absolute rubbish. I took a sample and washed the dust and dirt off it, dried it and then took out the stones that were around 20mm in size. From the sample, I reckon I got about 5% of 20mm stone. They were contacted the following Tuesday and we got the immediate statement that no one had complained before. That's fine, but we were. We've dealt with the same company before and have ordered around 5-6 previous loads from them. We were told that the boss would come out that week (sound familiar) and check it out. he still hasn't. We phoned them again two weeks ago and left a message on their answering machine, and still nothing.

Now the one thing that I haven't mentioned so far is who has been dealing with these people. It has been my wife, and all the people spoken to were men. This seems indicative of the attitude here. What does a woman know? Well, I know that my wife earns a damn site more than I do, and she is the one who will be paying for their services. But they just couldn't be bothered.

Don't these people want the work, and don't they have any pride in what they do?

There is also item number 4. We paid someone to mount two LCDs on walls for us, with them supplying the brackets. I spoke to the person beforehand for an hour and went through everything required. The end result is very poor as the brackets are too bulky, despite asking for slimline ones, and the bill is extortionate. I phoned to complain and wasn't swayed by his tactics. I told him that as far as I was concerned, he could come and take them off the wall. Instead of threatening me over non payment he is prepared to come to a compromise. That compromise has yet to be determined. The point I'm trying to make here is that trades people treat women with disdain, and don't seem to realise that they are losing work, and more importantly money.

KiwiOverseas66

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#98591 6-Dec-2007 16:49

we've always been really lucky with our contractors - but we've used referrals - never phoned up someone in the phone book. We've got a couple of builder/developer friends so tend to use their crew for any jobs around the house. Also spent a bit of time during uni days as a chippies labourer - so that helps. One tip that helped us during renovations - if you get a builder/ project manager than they take care of finding other contractors - and tend to use people they've worked with for years. If there is a problem - they'll put it right since they recommended the person in the first place.

Ragnor: There's a huge shortage of quality trademen because everyone is encouraged to goto uni and do useless arts or commerce degress for 4 years.

hmmmmmm......who's that crossing my bridge? I think you'll find any shortage is more likely to be the result of better wages on the gold coast (not too mention slightly better weather). Besides which - I somehow doubt anyone was ever dragged kicking and screaming into varsity (you only have to visit the local student pub on the first day of term to work out everyone is exactly where they want to be).

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#99418 11-Dec-2007 12:52

Wow, scary stories... I called few tradesmen to do work around my place and none ever showed up. Only one returned my call, told me he would come around, never did.

May be I should be thankful that no one showed up. I will be extra careful after reading this thread!

Robz

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#99431 11-Dec-2007 13:45

For some smaller jobs (we had a deck built over some of our back yeard and some extra power outlets/light swtiches put in) we use Grey Skills (in Wellington). They took a while to schedule, but they did returned phone calls, were courteous and tidied up after themsleves.

There was the usual "I need more materials" but the quotes were pretty close to the expenditure. And my wife dealt with them mostly....

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#99436 11-Dec-2007 14:49

Grey Skills are good as they're old tradesmen just looking for supplementary income - since they're mostly retired or upper age.

Any they know what they're doing and very skilled.

I haven't use them before but that's what others (who have used them) have said.

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AllNightNerding

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#99487 11-Dec-2007 19:55

this is a similar story. we had to get a RackMount cabinet for our new Server System at home so I called them up to save some work for dad (im 13) and had it all aranged and got them to right me emails on exactly what was going to arrive at the house. then showed the pricing and everything to dad and he looked at it and said it was great.

Then when the cabinet arrived it was the compelly the wrong thing and they would not do anything about it. So i then gave dad there phone number and email adress and isntantly it is sorted with a few emails sent and a few phone calls made.

It's so annoying when you try to do something but then it goes compeltly wrong because of what basically is discrimenation.

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