Plumbers

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Can I just say, to any of you who are parents, don't go on at your bairns to get themselves a profession. Tell them to get a trade, like plumbing. Licence to print money.

Thank you.

I've been robbed of Consett.

-- Anonymous, March 11, 2002

Answers

Floods??

-- Anonymous, March 11, 2002

There was a programme last week on BBC called Rogue Traders about plumbers. Unbelievable. 5O pounds per half hour they all charge. One spent a whole hour looking for a 5p washer he dropped under the bath, and guess what? he charged the poor punters 100 pounds to find it. Another one charged 250 pounds to get some bog paper round the U- bend with some things called gas pellets. A wet elbow and a couple of slosheddown buckets of water would have done it.

-- Anonymous, March 11, 2002

There was an article in Saturday's Guardian about plumbers - after 5- 10 years in the business they can expect to earn up to £70k a year!

I had a bloke around to install a new cooker and I swear Roy Keanes not on that much money for 10 minutes work. Thing that p!ssed me off is that you have to get the CORGI blokes around and they DO print their own cash.

Plumbing or the Law eh - don't know which ones got the worst reputation :-)

-- Anonymous, March 11, 2002

Can we just pipe down about this subject? It's a bit of a drain on our energies and we ought to tap into the football news from NUFC (flushed with success after Saturday) or we could shower our England lads with praise ready for the forthcoming WC.

I've got a sinking feeling that I may be coming over too heavy on this issue - I wouldn't want to faucet.

John

(That'll be £650 + VAT please. Yes I know it just took me 5 minutes to write it but there is my minimum call-out charge.)



-- Anonymous, March 11, 2002

I never knew you owned Consett, Dougal.

Emergency types are always a complete con. However, anyone in west London should call a little Indian feller I found in Hayes. He was a star. Washing machine bust, he came same day and returned the same evening with the part required. And a reasonable price for his efforts too. Details available on request

-- Anonymous, March 12, 2002



You're right bobster if you find a good plumber hang on to him. Our bog blocked once and one bloke spent 2 hours fiddling with it and got it unblocked. Charged me £195. I went out and came back four hours later to find that the whole house had flooded.

I rang our normal bloke who hadn't been available and he said oh this is one of them seventies bogs they put in to save water. Short flush for a number 1 and hold the handle down for a number two. He fixed the problem in two minutes and that bit of advice has saved me ever having to call anyone out again. Total charge a fiver.

-- Anonymous, March 12, 2002


My great grandfather was a plumber and made a nice little business starting to put inside toilets in for a lot of the houses north of Westgate road. He gave his kids an education and it was all downhill from there ;-)

-- Anonymous, March 12, 2002

My Brother-inLaw is a plumber and, to be fair to his ilk, he says it is the hardest of the trades to try and set prices for. Unlike carpentry or something, where the job is more fixed, it is difficult to know exactly how long a job will take over the phone - it can be 5 mins or all day - and you have to price it accordingly (i.e. assuming the worst). £50 for 30 mins doesn't seem that bas as he would have probably charged the same for 60 mins.

The other thing is that sometimes he says you go to a client and you can see the problem in 1 minute, but almost have to at least pretend that there is a more complicated problem otherwise the client doesn't think they're getting their monies-worth...

He hates his job, by the way, but I thought I'd pass this on.

-- Anonymous, March 12, 2002


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