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A warning to others...


enandess

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As a new arrival to the world of canals I have quickly found out that BOAT means an empty wallet but was shocked at how much fitting a washing machine cost us recently! We had a second hand Candy machine that cost us £40 but didn't have any tools on the boat to install it. As we were near Rose Narrowboats we asked them if they could do the job for us. It was going in a space next to the kitchen sink so a fairly straightforward job we thought and so did they, suggesting 2 hours labour - £90 - would see the work completed. 2 weeks later and after some phone calls from us chasing things up when Rose Narrowboats said that it was going to be a bigger job than they thought, we were presented with a bill for £518! Ouch!

 

The moral of the story is to get a proper quote in writing before work starts rather than rely on a verbal exchange. We were (are) wet around the ears so thought maybe the bill might double... Rose Narrowboats never suggested that we were looking at over £500 because if they had we would have said forget it. The aim was to save the hassle and expense of launderette visits but as it stands for the cost of the install we could have a couple of years worth of service washes with round trip taxi fares included!

 

Needless to say they will not be getting any other work from us... feel free to pm me if you want more info.

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13 minutes ago, enandess said:

As a new arrival to the world of canals I have quickly found out that BOAT means an empty wallet but was shocked at how much fitting a washing machine cost us recently! We had a second hand Candy machine that cost us £40 but didn't have any tools on the boat to install it. As we were near Rose Narrowboats we asked them if they could do the job for us. It was going in a space next to the kitchen sink so a fairly straightforward job we thought and so did they, suggesting 2 hours labour - £90 - would see the work completed. 2 weeks later and after some phone calls from us chasing things up when Rose Narrowboats said that it was going to be a bigger job than they thought, we were presented with a bill for £518! Ouch!

 

The moral of the story is to get a proper quote in writing before work starts rather than rely on a verbal exchange. We were (are) wet around the ears so thought maybe the bill might double... Rose Narrowboats never suggested that we were looking at over £500 because if they had we would have said forget it. The aim was to save the hassle and expense of launderette visits but as it stands for the cost of the install we could have a couple of years worth of service washes with round trip taxi fares included!

 

Needless to say they will not be getting any other work from us... feel free to pm me if you want more info.

I don't know about Rose narrowboats but beware of many marinas and boat yards that don't actually have an engineer to install such things, or a marine engineer of any sort on site, for engine and mechanical work ect ect. They just call in some mobile bloke who bills them and then the marina whacks on a healthy lump % on top ect.  And they bill you.

Edited by bizzard
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Welcome to the forum, enandess. That was a startling experience for you - but I would add that Rose are a long-established firm who do NOT have a reputation as rip-off merchants, so I'm sure that their price was appropraite for the work which they did.

Their boss is a member here, if he sees this thread perhaps he will comment.

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I don't know Rose but pretty well every time I've ventured close to a marina I can smell the rip off from a distance. Whether it's gas or coal that's more expensive than the coal boats, who must surely have higher costs, or a foot of chain when you can buy a metre for half the price off ebay, overpriced pump outs, the list is endless. I had the misfortune of breaking down last year, engine out job. I removed the engine and presented it to the marina, they charged me 11 hours labour to install new piston rings. 5 or 6 hours maybe, but 11 is an absolute and total rip off. But what can you do? I'd now undergo a hell of a lot of hardship and inconvenience before I resort to buying anything off a marina, and would recommend as many boaters as possible do the same.     

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33 minutes ago, enandess said:

  Rose Narrowboats said that it was going to be a bigger job than they thought.

Presumably this is the point at which you should have asked, "How may hours' work will this take?"  If the job was going to take, say, an extra day, you should have realised that the cost was going to be way beyond the value of the washing machine.  You might then have decided to do the job yourself.

 

I have only ever dealt with Rose Narrowboats once when they sorted out our broken hydraulics recently.  I have to say I found the service exemplary, the cost reasonsable and the workmanship first class.  I'd definitely go back to them.

 

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24 minutes ago, Athy said:

I would add that Rose are a long-established firm who do NOT have a reputation as rip-off merchants, 

I am not suggesting that they are a rip off merchant but I do think that they lack some communication skills. After estimating £90 then being presented with a bill for over £500 you would have thought someone would think to phone us to check we still want to go ahead. It seems a bit illogical to have a £40 machine costing over £500 to install and if I was the fitter/boss alarm bells would be going off as to the sense of carrying on. 

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36 minutes ago, Sea Dog said:

Clearly they had to do something rather more complex than plumbing in a washer in your average shoreside kitchen/utility room. What did the job actually entail?

Although we have renovated houses we are not boat experts but approaching it from our house experience we thought it was a case of feeding off the supply to the kitchen taps and using the existing sink waste for the machine waste. I will try to add a photo to explain. When we picked the boat up they explained that the kitchen cupboard had to be dismantled to access the pipes and a new skin fitting added which is why it took longer. 

IMG_20180713_170606.jpg

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9 minutes ago, enandess said:

we thought it was a case of feeding off the supply to the kitchen taps and using the existing sink waste for the machine waste.

Presumably Rose thought it was not quite as simple.

When you asked for the quote did you suggest that it could be done 'your way' , and given them the opportunity to explain why it couldn't ?

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12 minutes ago, Halsey said:

Knowing Rose and their reputation I'm guessing communication (or the lack of it) was the real issue here not a rip off as you intimate - they are not in that arena

As I mentioned above I am not suggesting rip off just a lack of communication on both sides. We are novice boaters and had trusted Rose Narrowboats (it could equally have been 'insert boatyard of choice') to do the job... when we rang them they merely said the job was bigger than they thought. In hindsight this is when we should have asked for more explanation and Rose should have flagged up their revised estimate. 

 

The reason I have posted is as a warning to others to be careful if they want work undertaken so that they don't end up with a surprise like we did. 

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6 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:

Presumably Rose thought it was not quite as simple.

When you asked for the quote did you suggest that it could be done 'your way' , and given them the opportunity to explain why it couldn't ?

No we didn't... when we dropped the boat off a Rose employee came to have a look and not much was said come to think of it. I mentioned about having a valve so that we could add hot water as I had read somewhere that it was a good idea but that was pretty much about it. 

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20 minutes ago, enandess said:

As I mentioned above I am not suggesting rip off just a lack of communication on both sides. We are novice boaters and had trusted Rose Narrowboats (it could equally have been 'insert boatyard of choice') to do the job... when we rang them they merely said the job was bigger than they thought. In hindsight this is when we should have asked for more explanation and Rose should have flagged up their revised estimate. 

 

The reason I have posted is as a warning to others to be careful if they want work undertaken so that they don't end up with a surprise like we did. 

Did they not look at what was to be done, open the cupboard doors and sussed things out ect before quoting. To be honest if they did that, like I would do, and the final bill should only vary perhaps by a tenner or maybe twenty quid including parts and maybe VAT, either way of the quote . Its really strange init that the final costs to the cutomers is never below an original quote.

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"bigger than they thought"

here is my equation

 

1, ADD friendly  new boaters 2 then gently add a small amount estimate    3, mix in 15 minutes of conversation 4, infuse a medium sized workman 5, cook for a few hours and hey presto

you have a full blown rip off leave to cool for a few hours and pour the wine

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The original £90 estimate was given by what we said in the office. We had thought that some pipes going behind the w machine were water pipes but it turned out they were C/H pipes. The pipes in the kitchen cupboard come up from under the floor and then into the cupboard. 

 

Hindsight is 20/20 vision but wish we had waited until I could get the tools from home and had a go myself. 

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1 minute ago, enandess said:

The original £90 estimate was given by what we said in the office. We had thought that some pipes going behind the w machine were water pipes but it turned out they were C/H pipes. The pipes in the kitchen cupboard come up from under the floor and then into the cupboard. 

 

Hindsight is 20/20 vision but wish we had waited until I could get the tools from home and had a go myself. 

They should have gone and checked it out properly before guessing. 

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I, following advice on here, fixed my no longer functioning gas fridge with a bit of wire for a wire brush run through the gas jet. Ten minute job... except that to get the fridge out, I had to dismantle the kitchen cupboard, which involved various other bits of kitchen furniture, all of which had to be put back again afterwards and took most of the next day too. At a boatyard's probable cost of forty quid an hour (more if they'd got someone in to do it), the whole job would have been about £600. And as I was doing the job, it didn't really matter if things got bodged a bit in the process - a boatyard has to do it right.

First law of boat maintenance is that it'll take at least twice as long as you expect, cost probably double the estimate even if you do it all yourself, and you'll have to take something else to bits to get at the bit you want to fix. And then it won't fit when you try to put it back.  It's mostly because everything is linked to everything else and it's all trying to squash as much as you can into a very small space, and it's also why trying to fit out a boat while you're actually living on it is virtually impossible - it can be done, but the boat tends to be surrounded by a blue fug of swearing for a couple of years.

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2 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:

So the truth emerges.

 

You are blackening the name of a reputable company because you provided them with incorrect information on which to base their estimate.

 

I would suggest that you delete your original post, or at the very least make a public apology

and I would suggest that if anyone gets a quote off Rose boats, treats it as meaningless until they have made sure that Rose look at the job before quoting, and itemise the job with the quote, and are instructed not to spend more than a certain amount without reference to the customer.

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3 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:

So the truth emerges.

 

You are blackening the name of a reputable company because you provided them with incorrect information on which to base their estimate.

 

I would suggest that you delete your original post, or at the very least make a public apology

Not very fair - presumably the yard had looked at the boat before they made their estimate and also thought the pipes were for water?

It's very rare that an estimate for work on a boat doesn't get at least doubled when the work gets done.  I had some work done estimated at about a hundred quid that ended up costing just under a thousand (virtually no parts, all labour), but at least they phoned me up to warn me they were having trouble. 

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1 minute ago, Richard10002 said:

and I would suggest that if anyone gets a quote off Rose boats,  any boatyard treats it as meaningless until they have made sure that Rose the boatfitters look at the job before quoting, and itemise the job with the quote, and are instructed not to spend more than a certain amount without reference to the customer.

Just my slant on the situation.

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