Some people!!!!

[kirkgas]

call her back and say that you can do it next day saturday morning ! and you will charge her £50.00 and then ring again friday about 8pm just to confirm next days work and say see you in the morning at 7;30-am ! put the phone dawn and go enjoy your self ! when she call to ask you were are you , just say you are sorry and you have forgotten !then re schedule for sunday morning ! when she call asking where are you you just say how sorry you are and then reschedule for next day !
then let as know much she can take of it !!!

haha you are a bad man, but i like it, a lot

 

[kirkgas]

You are also undercut by the part timers !! Firemen . shiftworkers etc who get gas safe registered and do jobs for beer and holiday money on their days off . They dont need to make a living its fun money ! Gas safe just take the money from whoever they dont care , so that £350 quote might well be from a bonafide hobby installer

i think it is a bit unfair bring this group into the mix (or perhaps not) but if they choose to register themselves and do the job properly then if they want to work holidays and days off then fair play to them, (Idont want to so i dont so i dont earn as much as they do, both our choices) do you think it is any fairer for a full time gas guy to register as a second business and do work that they could probably have passed to their employer and done during the day and made their boss a profit

 

[kirkgas]

we must have a AGREEMENT TO HAVE MINIMUM CHARGED ON ALL WORK,just like minimum wage thing !!! who can we contact can we not make a agenda our selves

that is too idealistic, so you meet all the local guys in the plumb cetre and say "right we charge £40 per hour and add 20% onto material costs" not unreasonable in anyones books, the problem, apart from the fact it is illegal, is that the type of people who would stick to this agreement are not the guys who are the problem anyway, it is the unregistered cowbow type guys who are causing all the problems with being too cheap
and even if all the good guys did agree soon enough one would say ok i will do it for £35 per hour this time, then that starts the ball rolling as he gets all the calls and the rest are raging that he is undercutting, so someone else will do it for £34 to get some work, and we all know where that leads to, and anyway not everyone needs to charge the same money depending on their business and lifestyle, some people have been working for yrs and are great at what they do, they have everything down to a fine art and have their van and mortgage paid off, why shouldnt they charge £35 per hour if that meets their needs, if you NEED £40 per hour that needs to be your problem,

 

[bert large]

i cover devon/cornwall retirement home for plumbers /gas fitters here .
once you start charging over £400 for labour on boiler change you just as well sit at home all day as will never get work .

I'm based in the same area as you Gaspastemania. I wouldn't install a combi for less than £600 & I have plenty of work. Theres a lot more to it than just price. If you get work from areas such as Salcombe or Dartmouth you can charge a lot more than that as those areas are mainly inhabited by rich Londoners.
There are less affluent areas like some of the rough parts of Plymouth but I'd rather not work there anyway.

 

[capitanpugwash]

In game theory it is referred to as the Prisoner's dilemma and explains why a collusive oligopoly (where all tradesmen work together and collude to maintain high prices) would fail in the real world. Read: Prisoner's dilemma - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Exactly what kirkgas describes...

 

[pauls]

I'm based in the same area as you Gaspastemania. I wouldn't install a combi for less than £600 & I have plenty of work. Theres a lot more to it than just price. If you get work from areas such as Salcombe or Dartmouth you can charge a lot more than that as those areas are mainly inhabited by rich Londoners.
There are less affluent areas like some of the rough parts of Plymouth but I'd rather not work there anyway.

when you say £600 you must be including materials aswell im in the SW and you aint gona get near £600 labour only

 

[bert large]

Thats for the labour & a very small amount of pipe & materials. Not very much needed in a combi swap.
Obviously its all contained in the overall cost with the boiler, flue, timer etc. etc.
The boiler mark up also comes into play here. I know I don't mark up as much as a few colleagues do so the overall cost is kept down.
I agree it would be a struggle to get that on a labour only job though.

 

[Plumbcrazy56]

when you say £600 you must be including materials aswell im in the SW and you aint gona get near £600 labour only

I moved to Torbay from Croydon 7 years ago,and I very soon found out that charging London prices meant losing nearly every job I quoted for.