Contractors skimming money?

[rocker]

Do contractors always skim money off from subbies? I mean, I'd expect them to have a bit, but I recently found out from a customer that a guy I'm working for has told her £2000, but he eat me down from 18 to 1700. That's £300 off a seventeen hundred quid job, and that seems a lot to me (considering he has his own substantial fee as well). AND he keeps making me do extra downlighters et al for no more money.

 

[johnsparks23]

its all ways been common practice. small builders are the worst offenders. now that we are in a recesssion, prices have dropped substantially but the main contractor still wants to make the same profit, hence the subby takes a bigger hit. i'd like to say , tell em to go jump..........! but we all gotta work, cos some other subby will undercut you. stick with it. the banks have just posted a decent rise in profit, so it will filter through to us at some point in the next 12-18 mnths. till then bite the bullet!

 

[Phil]

well lets put it this way i know a painter and decorator who is a millionaire now after ripping all trades off on big night club builds. he would be in charge of the build from a project management position and at the end snag them and knock 50% off the quotation, he of course took his fee and all the cheques for the contractors were passed to him in his name for him to do his bit of ripping them off. he ended up being snagged himself after i was called in to rectify the mistakes the unqualified electrician had made on three builds. he had also charged him for a sound and lighting system that was existing and 15 years old. needless to say he is no longer in the position to do this any more and i have told every contractor in the north west who i have come into contact with to stay away from him.

 

[rocker]

i have told every contractor in the north west who i have come into contact with to stay away from him.

Nice! It's not that I didn't expect a bit, and we agreed a price and hopefully that's the price I'll get in the end, but that's still 17% of my fee and that seems like a hell of a lot of a 'finders fee' for seeing my motor outside a B&Q and asking if I can do certificates. Plus the whole job has been a bloody shambles from front to back, I should have finished 3 weeks ago but have been messed around loads, coming in to be told that whatever needed to be done hasn't been and they're not ready for me to work etc. The bloke couldn't organise a drinks soiree in a brewery. He had the ceilings done before the roof was finished, for example, when it was chucking down with rain. And he keeps changing his mind. And he keeps going 'oh, just a socket over there, somewhere' and when I put it over there somewhere he goes 'no, it needs to be in this exact location' WELL WHY DIDN'T YOU BLOODY SAY THAT TO START WITH? And one of his guys went through a cable so I spent half of yesterday fault-finding on a bloody new instalation.

Aaaaanyway, hopefully I'll finish today and I can forget the whole affair.

 

[mnmwill]

Cant you charge him for the fault finding m8, try and make up the shortfall that way?? If one of his blokes went through your cable then he needs to pay for it top be put right. As for what he is skimming off the top, i'd expect em to take 10%, but 17% takes the P!

 

[Mark_Burgess]

There is no way for someone like that would I do extras for free, everything has a price.

The big job I am on has had a quote given in for every extra job, about seven so far. No work will start on the additional work with out the price agreed first, maybe in this instance I am lucky because the company I am working for likes every thing done by the book.

So maybe you should tell him the price should go back up to £1800 for all the extras you have done.

 

[rocker]

Good point.... normally I chuck in a couple hours worth of fault finding but in this case... maybe not. Should be getting money on Friday so maybe I'll stick on the extra £100 in downlighters and fault finding.. I doubt I'll get it to be honest but it'd be nice to see the look on his face. I already know the customer has given him a grand that was meant to go to me after the first fix of the partial, but I've only seen £500 of it (that was all I was going to ask for at that stage, but still what's happened to the other £500?)