Awkward One

[REDSAW]

change your supplier, lidl are crap at replacements. dont even give you a pack of peanuts for the hastle

 

[kay-jay]

Well put it like this in the last ten days i have had 2 actuators faulty ,two outside taps ,and todays .

No markup covers that

Of course markup covers that! You apply markup to all goods supplied and even if you get a bad run like you have the end result is that you win more than ninety percent of the time. Over a year markup will make you the winner

 

[WaterTight]

Of course markup covers that! You apply markup to all goods supplied and even if you get a bad run like you have the end result is that you win more than ninety percent of the time. Over a year markup will make you the winner

Exactly. The only annoyance is phoning people to tell them you'll be late, a longer day than you had hoped, extra stress, grumbling under breath, missing lunch, whatever. But this is all in the job description. It's already handsomely compensated for in advance.

 

[Neil K]

I don't think you should have charged the customer, sometimes these things happen and that's why we charge a mark up on our materials that we supply to the customer ....for grief. Every now and then you have to suck it up unfortunately.

 

[AWheating]

i had a badly made mixer tap once, i complained to the merchant, i then complained to the brand/ name manufacturer, got no where so in the end i had to fly to china and punch Zhang Wei in the face for making such a poor product.

i wished id just put 20% mark up on the tap 🙂

 

[tomplumb83]

Had a cylinder fail on me after 5-6days last month.
Fitted hundreds of cylinders and never had a problem.

Should I be compensated for this? Caused another waterfall leak in the customers house which they weren't happy about and took me the best part of a day and a lot of trouble to sort it out.
I wont mention the manufacturer but I may do if they don't pay me for my time!
They've agreed to pay me - Whats the chances?!

 

[gassafe]

Had a cylinder fail on me after 5-6days last month.
Fitted hundreds of cylinders and never had a problem.

Should I be compensated for this? Caused another waterfall leak in the customers house which they weren't happy about and took me the best part of a day and a lot of trouble to sort it out.
I wont mention the manufacturer but I may do if they don't pay me for my time!
They've agreed to pay me - Whats the chances?!

Was it RM cylinders?

 

[tomplumb83]

Haha I said I wasnt going to tell!
No it wasn't RM. Merchants have only been using the company for afew weeks - Ive never heard of them before

 

[hammers4spanner]

Had a cylinder fail on me after 5-6days last month.
Fitted hundreds of cylinders and never had a problem.

Should I be compensated for this? Caused another waterfall leak in the customers house which they weren't happy about and took me the best part of a day and a lot of trouble to sort it out.
I wont mention the manufacturer but I may do if they don't pay me for my time!
They've agreed to pay me - Whats the chances?!

Had this on a thermal store fitted day before all good and next day it started leaking flooded flat out and one below . Manufacturer got all shirty came out when i couldn't make it and blamed me to the customer even tho prior i pointed out the actually leak on the cylinder .
Lost endless time on that

However big jobs mark up covers but small jobs making a tenner on taps it doesn't cover basic maths that is

 

[kay-jay]

However big jobs mark up covers but small jobs making a tenner on taps it doesn't cover basic maths that is

Your logic is flawed pal.
You must do well over a hundred small jobs with a tenner markup and get called back to about five of em. Tell me again how the markup doesnt cover you for call backs?

 

[hammers4spanner]

I disagree kay-jay

I do approx 3 small jobs a day so my mark up on float valves ,tap washers etc is not a lot .Taps are nearly always supplied by cust apart from odd occasion so may charge a tenner for bit of pipe so mark up over a month is prob only £150 . Deduct call back time which from my experience is about 12 hours a month (anything from an hour there sometimes travel takes extra time or on yesterdays occasion 3 hours ) you times it by hourly rate argument sake £30 then your nearly always down .

You make your real money on big jobs with the mark up i would quite often just chuck an extra 2 k on contract work because of call backs.

 

[oz-plumber]

If it's not a fault with workmanship, then surely the customer should contact the manufacturer??

She probably did...and got the usual response.

' We've never come across a problem like that with those taps, you should contact the plumber who installed them - it's obviously an installation problem'

I should add... it would not be the first time a supplier / manufacturer has gone into 'damage control' by passing the blame because the cheap product they re-branded has had some defects - that they will be liable for.

 

[AlexGas]

Had a call from a cust from 4 months ago at about 9 a.m this morning that a set of taps...

Can you tell us more about the goosed taps?

 

[Roger Welton]

I disagree kay-jay

Taps are nearly always supplied by cust

Definitely charge them for your time, if they supply the goods, then there warranty on the taps would be with whomever they brought them from.

 

[AlexGas]

Definitely charge them for your time...

... and he won’t see them again.

 

[mfgs]

I disagree kay-jay

I do approx 3 small jobs a day so my mark up on float valves ,tap washers etc is not a lot .Taps are nearly always supplied by cust apart from odd occasion so may charge a tenner for bit of pipe so mark up over a month is prob only £150 . Deduct call back time which from my experience is about 12 hours a month (anything from an hour there sometimes travel takes extra time or on yesterdays occasion 3 hours ) you times it by hourly rate argument sake £30 then your nearly always down .

You make your real money on big jobs with the mark up i would quite often just chuck an extra 2 k on contract work because of call backs.

So say throughout the year you supply 10k worth of materials, add 20% mark up as an example and you are sitting on 2k of profit. Do you really get enough call backs that cost you 2 grands worth of time throughout a year?

You are looking at it the wrong way thinking each job mark up should cover a call back which it wont. The whole year will cover them though. When something does go wrong you certainly shouldn't be asking for any money. You offer a warranty on your work so honour it. You will get more recommendations from sorting an issue or faulty part free of charge with a smile on your face than for doing the job well in the first place.

 

[hammers4spanner]

Ever worked time in motion?

Try it you'd be surprised