markup on boiler parts by plumber

[skippy]

I've just had a plumber around to fix a dead fan on my Keston c36 boiler. The plumber was great - knowledgeable, friendly, fast. He also managed to diagnose another problem that I have (pressure loss in the boiler) as a problem with the expansion vessel. I'd had another plumber around to look at that problem a month or two back and they insisted the boiler was fine, that i needed to start pulling my floors up and then spent a further hours messing around with my fan (the one that just got replaced).

In short - a very positive plumber experience and he definitely earned his tea and biscuits.

A few hours later I got a call from the office to take payment which is where i got a bit of a shock. The replacement fan was £266 and the gaskets £15 for 2. The whole lot was over 400 notes.

So I called a few places and found i could get a fan myself for about 180 quid from a number of reputable places.

So - I was just interested to know what people (both customers and plumbers alike) thought of these prices and the markup. I understand that plumbing is a business with costs, and risks etc and don't begrudge them the need to make a profit, but this seems to be more at the extreme end of the profit making spectrum to me.

Thoughts?

(I should add that the parts cost was on top of a 65 quid callout and 80 quid and hour labour rate... all numbers ex VAT)

 

[Barry98]

We're you not informed of coatings before they started

 

[Blake]

I'm not sure what area you in but I'm guessing London otherwise a £65 call out charge and £80 an hour is a lot of money. Most engineers will put a mark up on parts but that varies, did the engineer not give you a price prior to carrying out the work?

 

[mountainman]

Sure, you can get a fan yourself for £180 but if it goes wrong within warranty who do you expect to diagnose the problem, and replace it under the warranty.
Certainly the guy who originally fitted wouldn't do it for nothing.

Btw welcome to the forum.

 

[nysk2008]

unfortunately we r all paid so little we need to mark up parts :smile:

 

[skippy]

spot on Bronzino. Based in London for my sins

 

[skippy]

Bod - I was aware of their callout and labour costs - call it a London tax! - and figured the cost of the part was fairly fixed regardless of who fitted it.. thus my question about what reasonable markup is when there's obviously money being made elsewhere. the job only took 30 mins and he got tea and biscuits thrown in for free!

 

[skippy]

mountainMan - thanks for the welcome and fair point, they did say that they offered warranty, but they seem to be making plenty of money at every point in the chain. Callout? Check. Hourly rate with minimum 1 hour callout? Check. (£180 before anythings even done). Still it just seems to me that £80 over retail price is a pretty high warranty margin and they claim to have the 'largest stock of keston parts in the uk' so i assume they're not paying the same as me for the parts.

 

[nysk2008]

sounds like you got a quality engineer to me. we all mark up parts but at least you didnt get an engineer that maked up 7 different parts until the right one worked.

 

[stevetheplumber]

if the job took half an hour we must assume you live next to a spares store or he had the fan in stock which was good as you didnt pay for an hours time going to get it
im in london and next time call me for £65 an hour

 

[skippy]

if the job took half an hour we must assume you live next to a spares store or he had the fan in stock which was good as you didnt pay for an hours time going to get it
im in london and next time call me for £65 an hour

When i booked them I told them what the problem was and the error code from the boiler display so they knew what they were coming to do and brought the fan with them.

 

[gasmanrob]

just out of interest when you retrieved quotes for the fan were you quoted plus or inc vat? a lot of merchants will quote you plus vat. did the company you used charge vat on their services if so then not really a rip off.

besides you payed x amount for a plumber that came out and ripped up the floor and tinkered with a fan that broke a month later achieving nothing.
this time round you have payed for a service by your own admission you were impressed with so in reality your also paying for a quality reliable service within the m25.
some company's in london put up to 25% markup on materials like you say (the london tax)

 

[dontknowitall]

Skippy - this is another view point which is just that.

Did you not ask the price before the work started?

I don't just hand my car over to a (new) garage without asking for a rough/guideline price.

There's also the fact that you're paying for knowledge. A famous story from years ago where a surgeon charged £1,000 for a simple operation on a boy. The father was outraged and asked for a breakdown of the costs. £1 for equipment and £999 for knowing how to fix the problem.

It can be frustrating for us plumbers when we charge for something and then feel we're being too greedy - there can be much more to the job than is known to the customer - and this applies not just to plumbers but all sorts of occupations.



As a summary, I'm not saying you're wrong to feel peeved but there might be a little more to this than meets the eye.

 

[AWheating]

parts price probably includes the time and expense of fetching it from merchants etc.... a markup is common.

 

[skippy]

just out of interest when you retrieved quotes for the fan were you quoted plus or inc vat? a lot of merchants will quote you plus vat. did the company you used charge vat on their services if so then not really a rip off.

The quotes I found were ex vat. so £180 from the merchant and £266 from the company that did the work... also ex vat. So the company was charging about £86 more before VAT.

Re: Quality service, it was the engineer that was a good-un. I've used this company a couple of times for service over the years and had this engineer before. The other guys they've sent at other times - not so much. Luck of the draw I guess. Mostly just services in the past so never really noticed the parts markup.

some company's in london put up to 25% markup on materials like you say (the london tax)

25% I could live with. This is nearly 50% and that's over what I can buy it for as a retail customer. Their website says "We have one of the largest stocks of Keston Boiler spares in the UK" and so I doubt they pay retail.

If I use these guys again I'll only do so if they send that guy around - and just accept that I'm paying a premium to get him I guess. I doubt he's the guy who's deciding how much to charge for the parts he puts in.

Anyway - thanks everyone for your comments.

 

[Nostrum]

You may have been quoted a trade price over the phone, and they may have sold it to you for retail.

 

[skippy]

There's also the fact that you're paying for knowledge. A famous story from years ago where a surgeon charged £1,000 for a simple operation on a boy. The father was outraged and asked for a breakdown of the costs. £1 for equipment and £999 for knowing how to fix the problem.

I guess I'd figured that I'm paying for the knowledge in the hourly rate and the callout charge, and as I said before, that's already a fairly decent whack (£65 callout. £80/hour).

Anyway - i recognise and appreciate that the engineer did a good job. It just kinda felt like I was paying twice and was interested to know if this was normal.

 

[skippy]

You may have been quoted a trade price over the phone, and they may have sold it to you for retail.

Nope - it was definitely retail price. I checked that specifically. But even if it was a trade price - i'd assume the firm I used would've been able to buy at the same making it around 50% markup.

 

[Roger Welton]

I can get aprts cheaper over the internet than from local merchants, so they may not be making as much as you think.

 

[Nostrum]

Must admit it is more than I would add on to the price, my partscenter always say 'price to you is £200, retail is £300' but I always take that with a pinch of salt as 'retail' price on a boiler is about £2000.00.

As said before, I suppose (as I don't live in london) the money you save by them having parts in the van rather than driving off to get them, is added on to the part itself..

 

[Millsy 82]

I bet you dont go into Tesco and moan about the mark up on the milk, bread and cheese because guess what that is more like 100% mark up.

If you knew what you wanted then you should have asked for the price before hand. Also on the internet and certain merchants do sell non genuine parts so what you got a price on may not be a quality part. I know that a merchant around me has gave me a non genuine part.

Also where did they pick the part up from I know they brought it with them but they had to go and get it and I can imagine getting around London can be quite time consuming ( Never driven around London dont want to either)

 

[Barry98]

Lets remember people it was a civil question and its good to see some chival answers , remember play nice or well take the ball off you kiss kiss

 

[grahamgas]

Lucky to get an engineer that wanted to repair a Keston....most would put an axe though it lol

 

[SimonG]

Grrrrrrrr.

 

[REDSAW]

wasnt pimlico was it?

 

[skippy]

wasnt pimlico was it?

No it's not. I'll not name and shame yet as I'm considering getting them to fix the other problem that I've got with my boiler (replacement expansion vessel).

On that note, and learning from my experience this time, I've taken a number of peoples advice on this forum and asked them for a detailed breakdown / quote to fix the expansion vessel. I just recieved it and they're quoting:

Breakdown : Expansion Vessel £126.84
Safety Relief Kit £55.00
Labour £160.00
which is £341 +vat or £410 all in.

I've just looked up the cost of the expansion vessel and again there's a lot of markup there. about £50 seems the going rate from a number of suppliers and the SRV is about £35.

So all in, they're looking to take me for about £750 before vat for fitting a fan and an expansion vessel.

I appreciate the audience here is mostly in the trade and the feedback so far has been that people think this is pretty reasonable... but for a civilian this seems a lot and is pretty painful.

I'm about to ring around my local heating engineers to see what they offer for the same - will post back if people are interested.

 

[Howsie]

50% seems steep to me.

 

[paulross1961]

I had the same experience last Saturday. Gas aid charged £688 for a fan (vs £281 from a London shop) and £550 for an electronic board (vs £228) - all ex VAT. I have asked for an explanation but, no surprise, have yet to receive one. This is in addition to charging an hour to go and get the parts. No doubt we will hear all the above excuses but at the end of the day it is a plain and simple rip off taking advantage of a situation - despite web site claims that [FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]"w[/FONT]e will charge open and honest prices". Not helpful for the reputation of the industry.

 

[Rickster123]

Shop around if you don't like the quote.and who in their right mind has work done without enquiring how much it will cost?!

 

[Howsie]

Fitted a new PCB to a 80HE a couple of weeks which the customer sourced themselves as they could get it £30 cheaper on the Internet.

Got called back today, after an hour of testing everything, the PCB has gone (confirmed by Potterton). I removed the PCB and handed to the customer to get a replacement. Guess what, their Internet supplier has told them to send it back where it would be tested and if found faulty by their lab it would be replaced. Turn around time for this service... 8 weeks!!!

I handed them my invoice for the hour I spent on site.

False economy.

 

[SimonG]

Fitted a new PCB to a 80HE a couple of weeks which the customer sourced themselves as they could get it £30 cheaper on the Internet.

Got called back today, after an hour of testing everything, the PCB has gone (confirmed by Potterton). I removed the PCB and handed to the customer to get a replacement. Guess what, their Internet supplier has told them to send it back where it would be tested and if found faulty by their lab it would be replaced. Turn around time for this service... 8 weeks!!!

I handed them my invoice for the hour I spent on site.

False economy.

Love it, no heating for 8 weeks, but at least they saved £30.

 

[REDSAW]

Love it, no heating for 8 weeks, but at least they saved £30.

not just that, think of the gas savings🙂

 

[stevetheplumber]

we can all get stuff cheaper on the internet but it involves going away ordering and then a second call to fit even if we get next day delivery its going to be another day before we can return so three days so we go and get it from a bricks and mortar merchants and get the job done there and then or we may have the part in stock we still need a profit to cover the cost of carrying parts a fairer comparison would be to phone alarge heating supply company and see what they ask for the part

 

[stevetheplumber]

I bet you dont go into Tesco and moan about the mark up on the milk, bread and cheese because guess what that is more like 100% mark up.

If you knew what you wanted then you should have asked for the price before hand. Also on the internet and certain merchants do sell non genuine parts so what you got a price on may not be a quality part. I know that a merchant around me has gave me a non genuine part.

Also where did they pick the part up from I know they brought it with them but they had to go and get it and I can imagine getting around London can be quite time consuming ( Never driven around London dont want to either)

i was watching a program on tv about fish super markets work on 400% profit on fish at that rate id only want 1 keston fan a week

 

[skippy]

I had promised to post back on the expansion vessel from Post #26. The recent posts on this thread reminded me. I'm throwing all this down here in case it's useful to someone else who finds themselves in a similar situation;

Anyway taking on the advice I received earlier on in this thread, I ended up getting quotes from multiple local engineers to repair the expansion vessel that i mentioned in post #26, with options for them ordering the parts or me ordering the parts myself. In the end I got a local engineer and ordered new, original-manufacturer replacement parts myself;

What I paid was;

> Expansion Vessel £48 vs £126 quoted by originally contacted "UnNamed London Based Keston Specialist" from post #26
> Relief Valve Kit £34. vs £55 quoted by originally contacted "UnNamed London Based Keston Specialist" from post #26
(all costs ex. vat. all 'like-for-like')

It took Chris, the local engineer I went with, about an hour to fit it, have a chat about doing some more work in the new year and clean up after himself.

In the end I saved £80 on parts, some on labour and found a good local plumber (who doesn't charge callout). I'll be getting him to do all my heating work in the future.

As other posters have pointed out, I wear the risk that the parts might be duff, but - touch wood - everything's run smoothly since the work was done.