Jump to content

A warning to others...


enandess

Featured Posts

20 minutes ago, mrsmelly said:

Have they been online? Do they like me take no notice of personal opinions online? 

Yes Dearie, 

but you are just [ :D ] a "numptie", whereas Rose are a business.

Bad news spreads faster than butter on a hot teacake.

Good customer services pays off: I purchased a Tecsun radio last week, and it did not do as I expected from the advert . They offered to take it back, but it is a cracking thing, so I declined, they THEN refunded a tenner for inconvenience! Amazing! 

I will buy another radio from them, they do "all singing all dancing" as well as my £30.00 portable radio.

Edited by LadyG
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, canalboat said:

from the original post of the original poster:-

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

 

And when they said that - what did you reply?

That was precisely my point in #7.  I don't think we've had the answer.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

11 minutes ago, LadyG said:

Yes Dearie, 

but you are just [ :D ] a "numptie", whereas Rose are a business.

Bad news spreads faster than butter on a hot teacake.

Good customer services pays off: I purchased a Tecsun radio last week, and it did not do as I expected from the advert . They offered to take it back, but it is a cracking thing, so I declined, they THEN refunded a tenner for inconvenience! Amazing! 

I will buy another radio from them, they do "all singing all dancing" as well as my £30.00 portable radio.

I had businesses for long enough to know that In this day and age of tinternet it's best to disregard any good or bad press. I also know a huge number of boaters and am quite sure les than ten percent are on this forum so it will not make any difference to this particular company who are always busy. If you look at my trip advisor reports for my last business they are nearly all exelent or very good with the worst being a couple of averages. The couple who now run it already have a few crap reports including a couple of terribles all in less than a year. Is the business still busy? You are damn right it is and at my suggestion he as I do never replies to the trip advisor reports online as they mean for nowt in the great scheme of things. The customer is not always right and in fact on occasion has be told so and asked to leave which is still the way my last business is run by the new couple who now own it. Nice customers are nice customers and numpties are numpties, customer or not. ?

  • Greenie 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Athy said:

I am quite surprised that our forum member from the company has not yet contributed to this thread. It would be good to read an explanation of the bill.

Smelly hits the nail squarely on the head with...

1 hour ago, mrsmelly said:

Have they been online?

No they haven’t, unless they signed in incognito. Last sign in was Sunday. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Naughty Cal said:

And that is why the garage where the OH works provide estimates, not quotes.

I get that but we specialized in Jags Rolls Royces and Aston Martins and when you do the job often enough you can quote because generally its the same every time, its much more difficult if you are a general repair garage as you get every sort of vehicle through the door, and you are then reliant on the times book to estimate the cost

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Naughty Cal said:

 

Do they ring the customer every time something else crops up?

Yes, if your re-estimated quote is off and it’s going to be significantly higher then you ring the customer.     If you find something always keeps cropping up then your basically shite at your job and should do something else.

  • Greenie 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On ‎17‎/‎09‎/‎2018 at 19:23, Mike the Boilerman said:

Whole job would take me about three hours, taking my time over it. Even adding an hour for drilling the skin fitting hole that's still only four hours. My guess is the fitter needed something from B&Q and took three hours for the trip to get it which gets us up to seven hours at £45 an hour. Maybe £70 materials. I'm still only up to £385.00.

 

Something does not add up here. My gut feeling is the installer was feeing his way and didn't really know how to go about it, and the OP got charged for both head scratching time to figure out how to actually do it, AND the excess time it took to do it the awkward and expensive way.

In the motor trade, most jobs at a dealer are priced by what it says in the book, i.e. if the 'book' says it is a three hour job, that is what you will be charged even if they did it quicker.  The problem with marinas is that they charge for the time taken which indeed might take in head-scratching time, plus time taken to have a mug of tea and chat to a colleague. Also the level of skill is very variable and what might take an experienced person one hour might take three for someone unfamiliar with the job.

 

I can recall a time when a marina "electrician" took two hours looking at a problem and still couldn't fix it; another electrician identified the problem in five minutes and fixed it in fifteen.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

22 minutes ago, dor said:

In the motor trade, most jobs at a dealer are priced by what it says in the book, i.e. if the 'book' says it is a three hour job, that is what you will be charged even if they did it quicker.  The problem with marinas is that they charge for the time taken which indeed might take in head-scratching time, plus time taken to have a mug of tea and chat to a colleague. Also the level of skill is very variable and what might take an experienced person one hour might take three for someone unfamiliar with the job.

 

I can recall a time when a marina "electrician" took two hours looking at a problem and still couldn't fix it; another electrician identified the problem in five minutes and fixed it in fifteen.

After some cowboy had fiddled with my wiring [how can anyone think they should just start work with no instruction?],   I had quote of £2K to fix the wiring on my yacht by yet another cowboy, this time I had to leave the boat for 14 days [liveaboard], and they could not provide a wiring diagram.

I got a proper guy to do the job.   It took him about four hours actual labour on the boat, it cost less than £600 [included Garmin], and I never ever needed another electrician after that, come hell or high weather, everything worked. I also got some education on electrics, batteries, and lifestyle choices, great guy.

Edited by LadyG
Link to comment
Share on other sites

19 minutes ago, LadyG said:

After some cowboy had fiddled with my wiring [how can anyone think they should just start work with no instruction?],   I had quote of £2K to fix the wiring on my yacht by yet another cowboy, this time I had to leave the boat for 14 days [liveaboard], and they could not provide a wiring diagram.

I got a proper guy to do the job.   It took him about four hours actual labour on the boat, it cost less than £600 [included Garmin], and I never ever needed another electrician after that, come hell or high weather, everything worked. I also got some education on electrics, batteries, and lifestyle choices, great guy.

What's Garmin,? Scottish for a tip, :unsure:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

52 minutes ago, dor said:

I can recall a time when a marina "electrician" took two hours looking at a problem and still couldn't fix it; another electrician identified the problem in five minutes and fixed it in fifteen.

 

This is very true in my field too. I find I can approach a busted boiler and diagnose it in five minutes, if not seconds. This afternoon's fix I was able to diagnose before the door to the cupboard containing the boiler was even opened as I new the make and model of boiler and I recognised the incorrect noise it was making. Another technician might easily have spent an hour tracing the fault from a standing start. As did I the first time I encountered this particular fault on this particular boiler. 

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, peterboat said:

I get that but we specialized in Jags Rolls Royces and Aston Martins and when you do the job often enough you can quote because generally its the same every time, its much more difficult if you are a general repair garage as you get every sort of vehicle through the door, and you are then reliant on the times book to estimate the cost

So does Liam amongst the classic car restorations and crash repairs. They still do estimates rather than quotes.

 

They don't work to the time book they work to what they think the job needs.

 

In some cases that escalates. One Porsche came in for £10k of restoration work. The final bill was £25k. More work than expected was uncovered as panels were taken off by which point it is either scrap the car and pay the bill or carry on and get it finished. In the end it worked out ok for the owner as the carr ocketed in value durinv the time it was at the garage which made the repair worthwhile. 

 

This isn't a one off either.

1 hour ago, Robbo said:

Yes, if your re-estimated quote is off and it’s going to be significantly higher then you ring the customer.     If you find something always keeps cropping up then your basically shite at your job and should do something else.

No such thing as an estimated quote. It is either an estimate or a quote.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 minutes ago, Naughty Cal said:

So does Liam amongst the classic car restorations and crash repairs. They still do estimates rather than quotes.

 

They don't work to the time book they work to what they think the job needs.

 

In some cases that escalates. One Porsche came in for £10k of restoration work. The final bill was £25k. More work than expected was uncovered as panels were taken off by which point it is either scrap the car and pay the bill or carry on and get it finished. In the end it worked out ok for the owner as the carr ocketed in value durinv the time it was at the garage which made the repair worthwhile. 

 

This isn't a one off either.

No such thing as an estimated quote. It is either an estimate or a quote.

Should still be easy to give a fairly accurate estimate even when working with classic cars.   If it escalates then you need to contact the customer.   I have classic cars, and there is always more work than first figured and taking panels off and finding other stuff should not come as shock and I would expect someone who has been working on cars like these to find the major issues before starting any major work.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

13 minutes ago, Naughty Cal said:

 

No such thing as an estimated quote. It is either an estimate or a quote.

But if your estimate or re-estimate is way off the final figure then you either fraudulently gave a low figure or really shite at the doing the job. 

  • Greenie 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, Naughty Cal said:

Indeed. Something is even and estimate or a quote.

 

Not sure why people struggle with the difference.

Where do they stop?

 

Do they ring the customer every time something else crops up?

If an estimate of £90 looks like becoming a price of over £500, you call the customer - end of, IMHO :)

 

I don’t know where, in between these figures, it becomes OK not to call the customer. I would definitely want to know if it was going to be double the quote.

 

It would probably be sensible to provide a figure up front, and give the customer the chance to discuss. 

  • Greenie 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

19 hours ago, Laurie.Booth said:

So what is your point?

 

 

LadyG was trying to point out that a quote is a fixed price where an estimate is, well just that.

 

No contractor will quote for a job which is an unknown quantity. Most work on boats is almost always an unknown quantty. 

 

I often had this situation when I was working, and could only resolve it satisfactorily by agreeing an hourly labour rate for each skill required, plus parts at a fixed percentage above what the contractor could get them for, along with periodic reviews on how the work was going.

 

However the boatyard should still have contacted the customer each time the cost was going to rise substantially.

Edited by cuthound
To add the last sentance
Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, haggis said:

When the boat we had a share in was being repainted at Streethay, we were given a price for what we wanted doing and I was appointed the contact for the job. It was an old boat which had never been properly prepared and repainted before and every time Streethay founded something not covered by the quote I got a phone call with details of the problem, options and prices for fixing it and asked how we wished to proceed. Quick email to others owners and we gave Streethay instructions. The result was a job completed in accordance with our wishes and no surprise when we got the invoice. That's how a boatyard should proceed I think 

Haggis 

It's how any contractor doing anything should proceed - in this age of email and mobile phones there really isn't an excuse.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, haggis said:

When the boat we had a share in was being repainted at Streethay, we were given a price for what we wanted doing and I was appointed the contact for the job. It was an old boat which had never been properly prepared and repainted before and every time Streethay founded something not covered by the quote I got a phone call with details of the problem, options and prices for fixing it and asked how we wished to proceed. Quick email to others owners and we gave Streethay instructions. The result was a job completed in accordance with our wishes and no surprise when we got the invoice. That's how a boatyard should proceed I think 

Haggis 

That was the same experience we had with Streethay and our repaint.  We had a chat about what we wanted doing which was more than just the repaint.  We were given an estimate for every part of the works and once agreed the works started. Several of the jobs had issues when they were started, at this point the work stopped and I got a call to discuss the options and agree what would be done along with a revised estimate. Each piece of work was then invoiced when complete and nothing differed from the provided estimates.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.