Am I being taken for a ride.......

[sythai]

Scenario :

Local contractor gets in touch with me August last year, priced 6 jobs to date for him and won none :thumbs_down:

He's told I'm pricing against another spark, fair enough. I was(am?) pretty keen to get some of his work, all decent stuff 3-5K : extensions, loft conversions + various small commercial projects. Which would be good for me.

I've kept my pricing fair to try and get in there with my first job. But its coming to the point now where I'm getting fed up, each quote is taking a good 2-3 hours.

So I'm going to add this to the bottom of the next one which I'm about to submit

Just a following note. At present I have now priced 6 jobs for you and not won any of them. It would greatly appreciated if you could give me some quality feed back as to the reasons why, am I too expensive if so by how much (I understand as you’ve informed me before I am pricing against another contractor that you use.) I have tried to price fairly wherever possible.

As you can appreciate each quote takes some time to put together. If you would like me to quote from now on I am happy to do this on hourly charge basis for you, if winning the job then this would be deducted off the final cost. I would like to work with you and hope that you understand.

Any thoughts..?

Cheers

Sy

 

[GLENNSPARK]

well for a start i wouldn`t be asking em how much i am overpriced by.........they dont (and probably wouldn`t) have to disclose this info.....but you can be sure they will use it as ammo to fire......

 

[Dan the spark]

Dont think you can be any fairer than that really sy, we all know it takes a lot of effort to do a quote and if your not winning any then this is obviously going to be frustrating. As you say, you can only but ask him why your missing out. Does he ever call you back and let you know you haven't won the job?

 

[trev]

A guy near us who owns a LOT of property used to ask me for quotes a lot, I'd go to take a look at the job to get a feel for it then spend a couple of hours knocking quotes up which, like you, never went past that stage. So I had a day off one time about a week after pricing a rewire for him and there was a bunch of asian lads in the property, cables snaking around inside, drills going like the clappers their van said something like Singh Brothers Builders so I waited for a few minutes and one of them came out for a smoke and I got chatting to him.
It turns out what this guy was doing was getting me to knock a quote together as a "real electrician" then going to these guys and telling them to beat my price so next time he asked me to price something I told him there was a £100 charge for it which if I got the work could be deducted from my final bill.
Surprisingly, he told me not to bother and never has asked me for another.

 

[Octopus]

Scenario :

Local contractor gets in touch with me August last year, priced 6 jobs to date for him and won none :thumbs_down:

He's told I'm pricing against another spark, fair enough. I was(am?) pretty keen to get some of his work, all decent stuff 3-5K : extensions, loft conversions + various small commercial projects. Which would be good for me.

I've kept my pricing fair to try and get in there with my first job. But its coming to the point now where I'm getting fed up, each quote is taking a good 2-3 hours.

So I'm going to add this to the bottom of the next one which I'm about to submit



Any thoughts..?

Cheers

Sy

Next time he asks for a quote, deliver it in person and talk to him about it. IMHO "talking" via email isn't going to help

 

[GLENNSPARK]

A guy near us who owns a LOT of property used to ask me for quotes a lot, I'd go to take a look at the job to get a feel for it then spend a couple of hours knocking quotes up which, like you, never went past that stage. So I had a day off one time about a week after pricing a rewire for him and there was a bunch of asian lads in the property, cables snaking around inside, drills going like the clappers their van said something like Singh Brothers Builders so I waited for a few minutes and one of them came out for a smoke and I got chatting to him.
It turns out what this guy was doing was getting me to knock a quote together as a "real electrician" then going to these guys and telling them to beat my price so next time he asked me to price something I told him there was a £100 charge for it which if I got the work could be deducted from my final bill.
Surprisingly, he told me not to bother and never has asked me for another.

thers this "sparky"....doing work for the local mills around here.......all the asian mill owners use him....but by god....is his "work" frightening or what.....no support of cables.....no idea of safe zones.....poor termination...lol.....

 

[trev]

Sad but true Glenn

 

[Octopus]

Actually it wouldn't surprise me if the builder is using your price and doing it himself.

 

[sythai]

I've never actually met the guy and he only lives round the corner, spoke to him on the phone a few times and seems nice enough. Its all priced off plans.

Maybe it would be better to go and drop the quote off, email can be quite impersonal and one way.

Did question him a couple of jobs back, just asking if any feed back.. he's pricing against other contractors and had won 2 out of the 3 jobs I'd priced.

 

[Marvo]

Cover-quoting is often used in bigger companies where they want to use a particular contractor but their accounts or procurement department always want three quotes regardless so two poor contractors end up quoting even though they'll never get the job.

Then of course you get the guy who's doing the job himself but gets a few quotes to assist him with costings and quantities. Some are even cheeky enough to take it one step further and go back to the contractors and ask for a layout drawing or schematic. This particular brand of low-life I have maximum contempt for. I can tell you a few stories about how I've set traps for guys doing this and cost them a lot of money.

 

[SPARTYKUS]

Cover-quoting is often used in bigger companies where they want to use a particular contractor but their accounts or procurement department always want three quotes regardless so two poor contractors end up quoting even though they'll never get the job.

Then of course you get the guy who's doing the job himself but gets a few quotes to assist him with costings and quantities. Some are even cheeky enough to take it one step further and go back to the contractors and ask for a layout drawing or schematic. This particular brand of low-life I have maximum contempt for. I can tell you a few stories about how I've set traps for guys doing this and cost them a lot of money.

Sounds interesting!!

 

[trev]

I can tell you a few stories about how I've set traps for guys doing this and cost them a lot of money.

And you called me a dog a few days back?

 

[netblindpaul]

Marvo,
Please spill the beans!!!

 

[Marvo]

Ah what the hell, it's in the Arms

I quoted many years ago for a complete hydroponics project. It was fairly small scale, they had 11 plastic tunnel-type greenhouses, each about 40 meters long that required power installation and a complete drip feed irrigation system. The water on the site was supplied by council but only to the lowest point on the site. The area with the greenhouses was 140 meters higher and the heavily forested slope was steeper than 45 degrees with a 16 meter vertical cliff face at the bottom. The water system needed a booster pump set at the council tank and storage 3 x10000 liter storage tanks by the greenhouses.

It wasn't a massive project but there were plenty of things that made it a particularly tricky one. I split the design into sections and quoted each one accordingly. The customer was project managing and came back several times requesting more info on the specs. Seven or eight meetings later I was getting suspicious as they were asking for pipework layouts and power cabling layouts so I ran off a complete set of drawings with several minor modifications to each one.

Anyway there were one or two more meetings just to iron out a couple of things they still weren't too sure about then all of a sudden the customer dropped off the map.

 

[Marvo]

I'm going to spread this across a few posts in case one goes missing and I end up with the kind of depression that results in me putting my fist through another monitor.

Edit....we've also had three 15 minute power outages here today so I'm playing it cautious.

 

[Marvo]

The customer was evasive, wouldn't return calls etc and after a week of trying to establish contact I all but gave up. Once every couple of weeks I'd phone but still no calls returned.

Months went by, I was occupied with other work and it was probably six months later I received a phone call from a very Afrikaans gentleman. He explained how he'd been called to the hydroponics system to sort out a few problems and the customer had suggested he contact me directly for some info.

I told him I was all ears and only too happy to be of assistance so fire away with the questions. He explained there was a few problems with the pumps on site. One pump at the council tanks had catastrophically failed when 11 of the 14 impellers had stripped and caused shaft damage as well. He had called the pump supplier and taken it back for a post mortem and apparently the damage was due to impeller lift having occurred due to insufficient head pressure.

I immediately extended my commiserations and suggested he get the original installer to sort out the problems because it sounded to me like the pump might have been mis-spec'd for the job in which case the designer would be liable.

 

[Marvo]

He explained there was also a problem with another pump that supplied the main pressure tanks for the irrigation system. From the date of installation this pump had been cycling occasional on the thermal protection which was apparently eventually disconnected. All had been okay for a couple of months but then the wet end had disintegrated due to erosion or corrosion on the back of the impeller. The impeller was replaced and they had installed a self flushing filter system to ensure it wasn't particulates in the water causing the problem but, alas it had reoccurred a second time and the pump had recently been replaced in its entirety.

At this point I was nearly in tears laughing and could hardly disguise it. I suggested he send me a copy of the drawings with the specs so I could rule a few things out and maybe come up with a few suggestions.

 

[netblindpaul]

Please keep going I like this!

Been working with a long time mate of mine the last few weeks, he is the spark for my client now, has been for a while, but they now need an independent in there for insurance reasons.
He worked at ISCOR on the Transvaal for a while, obviously living out there, I've had some cracking stories of late 70's early/mid 80's SA!

 

[sythai]

Revenge is sweet... Liking it Marv. That will take some beating

 

[Marvo]

Sure enough the next day the fax arrived of the specs used. The idiots didn't even have the sense to disguise the fact they were my drawings apart from correction fluid used on my company logo. My name was still in the 'Drawn By' info box. I nearly shat my rods on the spot. I tried phoning the original customer to find out what the hell was going on but still my calls were ignored. Next day I went to the site bright and breezy. I knew at 6am the full time maintenance guy opened up and started his rounds so I had a chat with him.

It transpired that the guy who had recently phoned me was the customers brother in law. He was a full time navy employee who worked EL&P on the local navy buildings and it was him and a team of navy electricians that had done the installation of the complete system 'in their spare time'. Apparently the project had been a comedy of errors from day one. One of the guys doing the installation had slid down the mountainside and wound up in hospital. The pipework they had installed had been just rolled out on the forest floor along with the cables for the bottom pump controls and power. It had been torn to tatters by the porcupines that roam the slopes and now had tape joints galore all along its length.

With hindsight these guys would have done this job justice anyway without any subtly amended specifications from my side.