Issues with hiring a plumber

[woods89]

Having too many people lined up willing to pay $125 an hour and a mark up on materials is not like friends bugging you to come volunteer your time and help out. the more you work the more you make. high demand comes with its benefits if youre willing to strike while the iron is hot.

I've been backlogged 4-8 months for general remodeling work for about the last 5 years. It's not quite like that.

Scheduling becomes very difficult beyond 2-3 months because of the variables involved. There really isn't much of a labor pool to lean on to handle influxes of work, especially when a lot of the work you do requires some rather esoteric skills. Both materials and labor costs have been volatile enough at times in the last few years that quotes really aren't good for more than a month or two. Being backlogged also means I miss projects I'd like to do for people I'd like to work for. All this adds a lot of administrative headache to the mix.

I'd love to stay about 2-3 months out. About the only thing a person can do is raise prices to achieve this, and yet with so few skilled tradesmen it's still tough to get there.

Like @displacedtexan said, it gets stressful and overwhelming pretty easy, which is why a lot of guys have PR issues. It has to be aggressively managed.

 

[jkensek]

I just built a house and of all the contractors, the plumber was the worst. Didn’t really want the jobs offered so was slow which held stuff up. Then I provided my own shower and tub faucets and he kept the other ones from the builder when he knew the deal up front. Very shady. I don’t think it’s the industry but man not great!

 

[Drenalin]

There are jackasses in every line of work. Some of you are painting with too broad a brush with your opinions on contractors and tradesmen.

 

[GSPHUNTER]

I worked in and around the trades for over 38 years. I saw the very best, guys who literally wrote the book on a given subject, to guys who would not make good shoe salesman. So indeed there are good and not so good in every trade. Some guys think that, if can spell plumber, electrician, air conditioning Mech welder, pipe fitter, they are one. They stand out as do the very best. You just have to know what to look for when hiring someone. As the saying goes, buyer beware. To OP, I hope you got your work completed in a timely fashion and at a price you are comfortable with.

 

[Dust Rider]

Give ‘em half and charge them double.

 

[Chad717]

No excuse for leaving a mess but the price sounds reasonable to fair. I bill out at $200 an hour with apprentice. Most people have no clue how expensive it is to operate. Plumbers have some of the highest insurance it is very unforgiving, when there is a leak there’s costly damage. It’s not too late for the people that complain about how expensive it is to go back to school to be a plumber and it’s only going to get worse. I always tell people to get kids into the trades there’s good money in it.

 

[Boarmaster]

Smallish jobs are tough seem hard to get anyone interested in coming out and giving you an estimate Let alone three trades coming out and giving you one. I guess if you make $125 an hr actually plumbing and our busy then your not too excited to spend a couple hrs going to the job and back then writing an estimate for 6-8 hrs worth of work. I can see both sides of the coin. Some customers only want to see the time you where working on their job and don't see the time on either end of the job. For small jobs I found it best to use a tradesman that was referred to me by a friend or just do it myself with all the screw ups I will make. This all sucks but thats where we are at.

 

[Mk44]

Pretty much everyone (plumbers, carpenter, electrician, etc..) marks up the price of material around here. As for the mess your plumber left behind, it is unprofessional.

 

[Boarmaster]

You have a point, and you had the means and time to fix it yourself. That's not the case for everyone. Don't forget the liability that the plumber took in taking the job. If the pipe settles or doesn't work, he'll have to stand good for it.

Not everyone has a buddy with a mini hoe, and even if they do, not everyone wants to risk hitting an unmarked gas line and the BS that comes with it. Not to mention the 6.5' of dirt that could collapse on your head while you're down there.

i'm being a little over the top, but making the point that a lot of people have no idea what goes into keeping the lights turned on at work.

Good for you for saving the money. But the family of 6 where dad's working 60 hours a week to provide, they he doesn't have the time or ability to do it. $1250 is cheap if he can stay at work and pay it off that way...

More than 1 way to approach it.

This.

 

[5MilesBack]

Your time isn’t worth pay? You got all that digging done for that cheap? You got a company with a camera to come do that for that cheap?

My time is "free". So ya, doing anything myself I save a ton of money. Digging out the sewer line was $350 and very reasonable IMO......a hole about 3 feet wide, 6.5 feet deep, and maybe 8 feet long. I filled it in with a shovel when I was done with the line. Running the camera down the lines cost me $165, I thought that was very reasonable as well.

I'm just saying that $1250 for two hours work and about $50 in parts is quite ridiculous at $600/hr for just labor.

 

[chaser_2332]

The bill doesn’t seem unreasonable however the mess is unacceptable. Tradesmen are retiring and dying off way faster than they are being replaced. Eveyone now wants to get paid to post on Instagram so if you get people willing to work and do a good job contractors are more than happy to pay their employees well. That gets passed on to the consumer, no other way around it.

 

[CJohnson]

He shouldn't have left a mess. But, if you didn't agree to a price up front that's on you.

Also, if a homeowner calls me and says anything along the lines of, "I did xyz myself to save some money and I just need you to come do this minor thing so I can finish." it's usually a pretty big red flag for me. 99% of homeowners have zero idea of what they're doing and it makes almost everything harder because you've got to unscrew half of what they've done so you can halfa** make everything else right. If they really knew what they were doing, they wouldn't have called in the first place.

I'm interested in what the OP does for a living and if the job was so easy to do why he just didn't finish it up himself.

 

[WV Mountaineer]

My time is "free". So ya, doing anything myself I save a ton of money. Digging out the sewer line was $350 and very reasonable IMO......a hole about 3 feet wide, 6.5 feet deep, and maybe 8 feet long. I filled it in with a shovel when I was done with the line. Running the camera down the lines cost me $165, I thought that was very reasonable as well.

I'm just saying that $1250 for two hours work and about $50 in parts is quite ridiculous at $600/hr for just labor.

I understand your reasoning. It’s why I work on my vehicles myself if I have the time. But, let’s be fair.

If the guy owned the backhoe or small excavator, he has fuel, insurance, trailer maintained e, and hauling costs. If you rent one, they drop off is $250 minimum. $250 to pick it up minimum. That’s $500. Then you’ve got rental fees. At about $300 a day. That’s $800 right there. The cost of owning it and doing it isn’t going to be much cheaper. So, all of a sudden it’s not $600 an hour for labor. It’s the national rate.


I’m not arguing. I’m only stating what you over looked. I’m glad you got it done. You seem to be one of those guys that does things for himself judging from previous posts. And, I’m glad you were able too.

 

[stanginthe11s]

WV, it all depends on the way you look at it and the person. if it cost 800$ to rent a machine to do the job then he saved 400$ actual, but theoretically saved more. the contractor uses his machine for only 2 hrs for a price of 1200$ but 5miles uses the same machine for 24 hrs so if you broke it down hourly it only cost 67$ for 2 hrs of machine time. plus 20$ for gas. I do agree, that sometimes its not worth it to do it yourself to save a few hundred. for me I look at time I will lose from hunting or fishing lol, cost of equipment, and do I want it to be my problem if something goes wrong either now or later.

on the flip side of that, I have paid people to do jobs while I was hunting only to come home and have to do it right anyway, so its a tough call.​

 

[5MilesBack]

I understand your reasoning. It’s why I work on my vehicles myself if I have the time. But, let’s be fair.

If the guy owned the backhoe or small excavator, he has fuel, insurance, trailer maintained e, and hauling costs. If you rent one, they drop off is $250 minimum. $250 to pick it up minimum. That’s $500. Then you’ve got rental fees. At about $300 a day. That’s $800 right there. The cost of owning it and doing it isn’t going to be much cheaper. So, all of a sudden it’s not $600 an hour for labor. It’s the national rate.

I'm not arguing the excavation rate, $350 to dig that hole that would have taken me a week with my shovel.......priceless. It was the plumber that worked two hours and charged $1200 just for those two hours of labor. I get it.......they can and do charge more for fixed price jobs than an hourly rate. But on the other hand, several years ago we had a 3" copper drain line that developed pin hole leaks. The plumber came out and cut out the 90 degree elbow and maybe 3" of copper pipe on each side and replaced it with PVC and attached a couple Fernco couplings, and charged us for 3 hours work. After getting a little experience with this stuff, I (and most people) could have done that job in 20 minutes. I realize they have business expenses to pay for, but my goodness.......$600/hr on one job, and 3 hours for a 20 min job on another? Sheesh

 

[Chad717]

I'm not arguing the excavation rate, $350 to dig that hole that would have taken me a week with my shovel.......priceless. It was the plumber that worked two hours and charged $1200 just for those two hours of labor. I get it.......they can and do charge more for fixed price jobs than an hourly rate. But on the other hand, several years ago we had a 3" copper drain line that developed pin hole leaks. The plumber came out and cut out the 90 degree elbow and maybe 3" of copper pipe on each side and replaced it with PVC and attached a couple Fernco couplings, and charged us for 3 hours work. After getting a little experience with this stuff, I (and most people) could have done that job in 20 minutes. I realize they have business expenses to pay for, but my goodness.......$600/hr on one job, and 3 hours for a 20 min job on another? Sheesh

So why didn’t you do it yourself then? I understand that does seem high and I have never charge somebody that much if it was truly only 20 minutes worth of work but I change my own oil on my vehicles maintenance them do whatever I can do and I don’t understand why some people would call to fix some thing they could’ve done themselves and then complain about it. It always seems easy and that a homeowner could’ve done it themselves after they watch a professional do it with the right tools and know how……

 

[2five7]

OP, do the sinks leak? If not, then consider it a win.

I bid a deck a few weeks ago, the customer offered to pay an additional 20% over my bid price if I would get it done this past week. I took him up on that. I made a lot more per hour than your plumber is charging you, and my customer was super happy.

The moral is, next time get a price up front.

 

[RS3579]

Then I have to chase my money because people complain AFTER the work is done that I’m too high.
This is why I’ll never own my own company. It’s to easy to just get up and work for another company. Time spend with my family is worth more than the time spent chasing money!

 

[5MilesBack]

So why didn’t you do it yourself then?

I wasn't home at the time, and I had never done any type of plumbing before then. I'm sure that's the process many of us go through. "Have no experience or expertise with something....pay high prices to get stuff done.....learn how to do it ourselves". I'm still in stage one with electrical......probably because I've never needed an electrician.

I've always said "I'm not willing to pay someone to do something I'm capable of or willing to do myself". Knowledge, experience, and will.......goes a long ways.

 

[ljwhitetailer]

I think you're justified in asking for an itemized receipt of materials and labor. In fact, I recently did the same thing with an underground contractor that seemed to charge an excessive amount for work that we did not have a signed agreement for. He has never furnished such a bill, and I am yet to pay.