Desperate!

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SpankySouthport said:
Such a man of mystery john ;)
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He may also be wrong, I am comfortable enough but 25 yrs in the same patch and luckily I have a few decent contacts, my work used to be oversubscribed 4/1 to what I was willing to take on, my rate has been moving up steadily but I need pain killers to work so, the candle is getting shorter
 
Agency called today and offered me.14 an hour plus 25p a mile for driving so the offers seem to be getting steadily better last one before was 12.50 with no mileage.allowance.
 
Few weeks back, I quoted a bathroom ceiling for £1 (these are not real prices!). It was a small ceiling, no more than 6m2. BUT, the bathroom was on the third floor, carpets all the way and had recently had a new suite refitted. The guy who fitted it had also reskimmed the ceiling.....you have never seen anything like it, it looked like he'd used a garden fork!

Next day I had a call from the customer who 'really liked me' so wanted to give me the job but another guy had quoted her 60p......'can you match his price', she said.. I explained I do not match prices, my quotes are my firm and final tender.

I couldn't believe she was beating me down on price having been fleeced by a 'handyman' a week or so earlier....some people will never learn.

Moral of storey. If you are genuinely putting in a price to win, be competitive but don't under quote and stick to your guns on cost, if you bend over your giving them the inch which quickly turns into the mile.

I got the job, at my price and she paid me 50p to paint it!
 
leebo02 said:
getting harder and harder to make a living in this game,, its hard enough anyway but what chance have u got when pricing against people who are prepared to work for this sort of money,, unfortunately i dont think things are going to get better,, there seems to be more and more people who will work for this money
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Agreed, check back through all my previous post regarding the state of our trade due to course plasterer syndrome?
I think my posts on this topic strike a raw nerve as the creator of said site is himself a "courser" !!
I couldn't give a toss if I offend course morons because they show no respect for my trade.
Only this Morning I saw a knob in the petrol station filling up his van that had "skimming" "roughing" and the old favourite "all aspects of plastering covered"! Stupid little **** was about 18yr old?
Trust me, this farce will destroy our trade until the arsewipes who teach these clowns are shut down!
BAN PLASTERING COURSES NOW!!! :mad:
 
The saying buy cheap buy twice is appearing quite common. They pay peanuts and get less than monkeys. But they never learn. Sorry to hear work is tight mate. Have you tried adverts on the likes of gumtree. I put one on last year in manchester for plastering. Cost nowt and recieved about half a dozen calls and did two jobs from it. Not massive stuff but helps get by.

Got a call last night about a price for venetian work. Told the bloke depending on what he wants it starts at X a metre. He said how much for cash. Sorry I said. How much for cash he replied. No I heard you. Im just sorry you think the payment method would give a different price. He then offerered my what he wants to pay a metre. Which was an insult so I politely said find someone else
 
RobJack said:
The saying buy cheap buy twice is appearing quite common. They pay peanuts and get less than monkeys. But they never learn. Sorry to hear work is tight mate. Have you tried adverts on the likes of gumtree. I put one on last year in manchester for plastering. Cost nowt and recieved about half a dozen calls and did two jobs from it. Not massive stuff but helps get by.

Got a call last night about a price for venetian work. Told the bloke depending on what he wants it starts at X a metre. He said how much for cash. Sorry I said. How much for cash he replied. No I heard you. Im just sorry you think the payment method would give a different price. He then offerered my what he wants to pay a metre. Which was an insult so I politely said find someone else
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I dont understand how how clients who haven't got a clue on what to do can dictate to us how much they wanna pay for our services! Disgusting and a lack of respect for us! You done right mate!
 
I think there's good and bad in both 'course' and 'time served' plasterers. I'm sure just because you did a 6 week zero to hero course, doesn't mean your a bad spread. You just need to know your limits, this is where the 'coursers' as you put it may be dragging the trade down. I certainly would not tarr every courser with the same brush, take everyone on their individual merits.
'survival of the fittest' will filter out the bad from the good.
 
MHLPlaster said:
I dont understand how how clients who haven't got a clue on what to do can dictate to us how much they wanna pay for our services! Disgusting and a lack of respect for us! You done right mate!
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And that's why I think MyBuilder etc are a joke .... people dictating what they want to pay for jobs / paying for unverified leads ... wouldn't lower myself to it personally and some of the shite ive seen on there is beyond a joke ..

I laugh cos ive sorted a few jobs out where they've got quotes off mybuilder and wondered why the walls got more rhythm than stevie wonder !!!
 
Priced up a bedroom, 4 x 13.5 m2 walls and a 8m2 ceiling for £250 as I was skimming next door, guy said I'm I joking as he knows someone who charges £100 a room!!!!!
You best give him a ring then!!
 
let people work for peanuts... its their loss in the end... they will be dead and skint where those of you who work for the right money will have a good living and better health....

Health is way more important than anything else in the world :D
 
which in an ideal world would be bang on Danny, however its that bad we cant get a job pricing properly, and I dont see a problem with talking prices occasionally, trades on its arse anyway..lol
 
I personally think pricing up jobs as day work is stupid for.day to day skim a bedroom. Should be per square metre and have intervals so if it's 10m2 it's one rate 20m2 slightly lower and so on
 
are you allowing for covering carpets etc in that m2 price ?? and not throwing **** around like on new housing ?? domestic is way different...
 
Danny said:
let people work for peanuts... its their loss in the end... they will be dead and skint where those of you who work for the right money will have a good living and better health....

Health is way more important than anything else in the world :D
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The trouble is @Danny that when one courser has had a go working for peanuts, found it doesn't pay and gives up another one is churned out to take his place by these money making courses. Because of this constant flow of chancers it doesn't give the proper guys like @cassie the chance to 'rise to the top' using the cream analogy.
Personally I'd rather pay £20 a month to come on this forum if it was only for proper tradesmen to exchange ideas and views rather than giving our hard earned experience to all the muppets both members on here and the guest viewers.
And that's the reason that every so often I get so wound up by the chancers on here that I stop coming on for a while, which is a shame as I really appreciate the knowledge and help from other spreads and enjoy the banter.
 
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Yes, that's true ANDY but telling someone something is only useful if the have the skills to carry it out, plastering is a b c but never that simple either, you can't tell someone when a second coat is ready for floating up or flattening in,they need to know by the look and feel of it, even with you tube videos people will not really know anything. There will always be chancers and unskilled people, I have had two spreads in the last two weeks and I thought neither could skim properly ,both are older than me and have loads of experience and great confidence
 
jesssop said:
why should a m2 price get lower the more you get?
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Think it was ment to be more to cover small jobs with a higher rate then when it gets to a full room it would drop down to the rate u actually want when doing a full room etc , would be hard to do so many different variables on each job , so to cover your self going to have to go in quite high and u give that price to a customer on a say plasterboarded room and its F*****g dear as , so for me to many variables for domestic for m2 'im out' haha
 
Customers will never learn, im currently picking rooms off a bungalow at week ends, because the owners have been ripped off and left in a right mess.

I've done one room for them and they're happy, was supposed to be straightening the bathroom up this weekend, she phoned me mid week and said can you just skim the ceiling for us ? as ive found someone who will board it for us he said he will also do the tiling and plumb the new bathroom in !!! I said yeah no probs as ive got the rest to do, but thinking things are going to end badly...

Turns up Saturday morning and puts the ceiling on, the guy whos doing the bathroom for them is a sparky lol the customers have been bitten twice you'd think they would learn.







 
Hicky said:
Customers will never learn, im currently picking rooms off a bungalow at week ends, because the owners have been ripped off and left in a right mess.

I've done one room for them and they're happy, was supposed to be straightening the bathroom up this weekend, she phoned me mid week and said can you just skim the ceiling for us ? as ive found someone who will board it for us he said he will also do the tiling and plumb the new bathroom in !!! I said yeah no probs as ive got the rest to do, but thinking things are going to end badly...

Turns up Saturday morning and puts the ceiling on, the guy whos doing the bathroom for them is a sparky lol the customers have been bitten twice you'd think they would learn.







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i get this sort of shiz all the time mainly from builders who think boarding is a labourers job
 
Terrible- this is what is disrespecting our trade- for gods sake if a sparky is doing that! He's a sparky for a reason- if I wanted to have sockets put in I wouldn't get a plumber! As said before some customers
will not learn!
 
seems to be plastering... shame really, used to be a proud job, know every fukers having a go .. firemen/coursers etc...
 
Unfortunately, If we wanted to do a sparks job, even in a domestic environment there're rules governing who can and who can't...... For obvious reasons. Unfortunately, if you want to be a spread on a site, you'll need to demonstrate you're a qualified spread via the cscs system but if you want to do domestic work, anyone can plaster! Maybe the trade needs proper regulation, ie a cscs type accreditation across the board???? But that is a whole different thread!
 
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