A rip off me thinks

[Chris Green90]

As some of you may know I have made some quite major mods to my handbrake system recently. My cable needed to be shortened and terminated so I grabbed some crimp on terminators from screwfix to see if they would do the job. They probably would have but I don't have a press big enough to crimp them enough.

took the cable to a local wire rope place today and asked them to crimp on a stop on 6mm cable. The stops must cost them 10p at the most and I was there a total of about 3 mins and the guy had the cheek to turn round and say in an off the hand manner, "lets just call it a tenner"

Is it just me or is that daylight robbery.

 

[Chas]

Inflation?

 

[Chris]

Ahh but it was a quid for the parts, a quid for his time and £8 for knowing just how to do it.

Chris

 

[Chris Green90]

I agree with you to some extent Chris. People often look at me stupid when I price a CCTV System and 2k of fix a leaking tap for 60 quid or charge 50 an hour for a disco. But we are not talking about a little one man band here. The made all the cable for the Humber bridge. I can go into BAPP's and come out with handfulls of nuts and bolts for a couple of quid and TBH this is what I was expecting from them. Maybe my naivety but most big places like that usually do me a favour for nothing or next to it.

 

[Chris]

Oh trust me I know what you're saying. But you wanted a favour and they thought you said "I'd like to enter into a business transaction with you please"

One way to crimp without the tools is to split a nut with a hacksaw, put it around the seal, cleat or whatever and then put it in the vice and crush it. Does quite a good job even on big crimp lugs.

That's a fiver, by the way

C

 

[Chris Green90]

will sort you out on the national Star Wars day

 

[yogi]

Ahh but it was a quid for the parts, a quid for his time and £8 for knowing just how to do it.

Chris

Very true, happens to me every now and again when i do something and people go how much???????//

Reality is you juat can't do stuff for free or cost or everyone expects it.

I had a lad troop ointo my yard a couple weeks ago, 4pm on a sunday, with a terrier with a cut on its leg, got cut out hunting that day. I trimmed the edge off it and gave it an antibiotic shot. Asked him fo £20 and he nearly fell over. Now anyone that owns a dog knows if he had gone to the big fancy small animal vet in town on a Sunday evening he would have (1) had to ring up and make an appointment, (2) fork out at least 4 times that amount.
Now i know if i hadnt charged him on the basis that he is a mate of a mate of a mate i'd spend every sunday and evening looking at that sort of crap but he still wasn't happy.

 

[Chris Green90]

Oh trust me I know what you're saying. But you wanted a favour and they thought you said "I'd like to enter into a business transaction with you please"

Just FYI. No receipt offered and a blank refusal to guarantee its integrity.

We used to have a caravan accessory shop and stuff like that i would always do for nothing. Wiring trailer plugs was one of the most common. I was Pssed at haveing to spend 7 quid at Mr.T the day before for a bolt and this was kinda the icing on the cake.

 

[Shayne]

He knew it was a one-off and he was never likely to see you again , probably thought to himself he may as well get a packet of fags out of you before your gone for good .

 

[froggy Steve]

You have to wiegh up the cost of having the kit to do the job. People ask me for an hourly rate - (I dont give it any more) for grass cutting - local pretenders, 15€ / hr take 6 hrs to do a cut - me, charge 75€ get it done in 2 hrs = cheaper than the cheap bloke = more profit for me
Steve

 

[Crispin]

If you knew him, then that is a bit steep. If you did not know him, then I think it is fair. At what point does he stop doing favours and start charging for people he does not know and will never see again? After the 5th? 10th? He's £50 or £100 out of pocket by that stage. The 6th or 11th person will no doubt jump onto a forum a have a go about it.

Being in IT, I get similar requests. Oh, could you quickly do this or quickly do that. Never have a problem helping a friend or even an acquaintance but when it's friends of friends or someone else I don't know - sorry, it's my time.

It is his ability, his tools, his equipment which he has invested in and allow him to provide a service for a fee. It's what the economy is built on.
Fair spoils if he pockets it

and a blank refusal to guarantee its integrity.

Of course he would guarantee it - if you paid the full price which goes towards paying his insurance premiums, sent him a valid invoice etc. You really wanted it for free and a guarantee? Sorry, I would have laughed.

We used to have a caravan accessory shop and stuff like that i would always do for nothing. Wiring trailer plugs was one of the most common. I was Pssed at haveing to spend 7 quid at Mr.T the day before for a bolt and this was kinda the icing on the cake.

That is called good customer service and is very commendable. That is what gets your customers coming back to you or spreading word of mouth about the good service. If you had pitched up with a van and sign writing "Suspension Bridge Builders R Us" then he probably would have been more interested in keeping you happy

 

[tackb]

any fool can work for nothing!

 

[frank rabbets]

A tenner soon goes when I start drinking.

Frank

 

[Chris Green90]

Paid full price? Do you really think the job should have cost more than a tenner.

Well guys I stand corrected. I didn't want it doing for nothing by any means but figured it would be a few quid, fiver at most. Even to me £300 an hour seemed abit steep and I am a plumber that charges the best part of £50. I use the company for all my lifting equipment, shackles, slings, Straps and when ever I have to hire anything bigger. They have got some good prices for synth rope at the moment, can't recall exactly what sort of money but definitely cheaper than any I say at Donnington.

 

[Shayne]

Not so long ago a complete stranger would be happy to give you a lift to the pub for a couple of quid . Then it became a fiver and only for a freind of a freind maybe . Now it's a tenner and you owe me a favour too coz i've only known you 40 years . It's sad , theres no community anymore . Takes something like heavy snow and villages cut off with no power etc to band people together . Its a damn shame because its during those times when everythings tits up and everyone is helping everyone else that you see smiling faces on every corner .

 

[Crispin]

Do you think the distinction lies in that fact that someone is "using" you to get something for free / being a tight-arse / lazy?
I don't think people will not help if someone is in need of help. As you say, when it snows, there are lots of people helping stuck people. Total strangers helping out other strangers.

If a mate called me an asked me to give him a lift to the pub, I would tell him to call a taxi. Simple. Sorry, that is being lazy. If the same mate called and asked me to take him to an interview 20 miles away 'cause he needs the job and has no money for train / bus etc, I would take him. The latter is help, the first option is him trying to save £5 on taxi fair and not f-ing inviting me!

 

[Shayne]

valid point Crispin , i was thinking more of tit-for-tat , what goes around comes around . When i moved to Wales 12 years ago people thought i was wierd because if i had a bit of cement left over i'd go and fix a nieghbours wall or something despite the fact i didn't know them from adam . I grew up in a small village and thats just what you did . A few similar events led to my coming home one day to find a nieghbour had cut my lawn , and so it goes on . I still hardly know anyones name but the postman never has to take a parcel back to the depot any more coz all doors will see it get to the right one .

 

[clivehorridge]

Chris, I'm with you on the face of it. But if you sit and think about it for a while and do the maths as if it was you doing the job, don't you think the time that you stated was a little underestimated?

3 minutes you said and you calculated his hourly rate on that basis. In reality, by the time he stopped what he was doing, turned to you and listened to what you wanted, then did the crimp, then took your money and turned back to what he was doing before you came in, recapping how far he'd got and continuing with his job, he probably spent 10 to 12 minutes instead of three.

By my mathematics, his hourly rate would come down from 300 to between 50 and 60, strangely coincident with yours.

If you as a skilled plumber was under someone's sink repairing a pipe or trying to find out what was leaking, and someone disturbed you asking for a a 1/2 inch olive to put on a piece of pipe he's holding in his hand, by the time you got back into your job, you'd probably have lost 10 minutes.

He might be equally upset when you charged him a tender for a poxy olive, but you would have been quite right to charge that lost time away from your paying job.

Just a thought...

 

[clivehorridge]

Not so long ago a complete stranger would be happy to give you a lift to the pub for a couple of quid . Then it became a fiver and only for a freind of a freind maybe . Now it's a tenner and you owe me a favour too coz i've only known you 40 years . It's sad , theres no community anymore . Takes something like heavy snow and villages cut off with no power etc to band people together . Its a damn shame because its during those times when everythings tits up and everyone is helping everyone else that you see smiling faces on every corner .

I'm with you on the "community" comment Shayne. I lived in West Wales for 10 years, and for an Englishman to be living in a tiny village, miles from anywhere sensible, it takes a lot to "integrate" and become accepted by the locals. It was like living abroad, different language (Welsh speaking area) and a different way of life in Hermon, y Glogue, Dyfed.

But, in all those 10 years I never had a crossed word, never had anything stolen, I never bothered to lock the car and never locked the back door. When it rained I'd come home from work to find my washing in the basket in the kitchen all neatly folded!

People laugh when I tell them that, but it's absolutely true.

There was always someone to help, and always someone needing help. It was a lovely way to live, sadly missing from the more modern way of life that's crept in while we weren't looking.




Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[frank rabbets]

Glad you are backing Wales Clive. My mother was born and bred in Amanford. I visit friends in Wales and it is still like that in the rural parts.

Margaret Thatcher started the someting for something more attitude. When I worked on my projects in 60's and even early 80's I often needed weird things making and if you went round the back of a factory the lads would make it for a round or two. The bosses knew but it was a perk for the lads. It was a well known and widely practised thing. When I needed bigger and more complicated stuff doing I was helped by the MD of a huge factory in West Brom. He was a stranger but I just knocked on his door. He welcomed me and we used to go through the drawings and he would say it will be good for the apprentices. He only charged a nominal sum. Unfortunately all that is gone. The days of the one off characters and unusual behaviour are over. We are all being shaped as in supermarket carrots.

Frank