Hi guys - appealing to TRADESMEN of all levels here…
Just wondering. How do you deal with excessively relentless & brutal hagglers?
Have you had customers push you to the point of becoming angry & walk away?
Do you favour better payers and cut corners (or worse) with the truly soul-less haggler?
Number 2 reminds me of the eBay sales
I have a friend who's pretty savage when it comes to haggling (as a tradie). He quotes a fair and competitive price upfront as he hates going back and forth. If someone tries to haggle, he just ups his price.
He told me, "don't push your luck when you get a good deal"
I'll definitely try this when I'm selling something :))
For small jobs, whatever.
For big jobs, I haggle but I pay without delay. I don't agree to pay huge holding deposits - you can take a few hundred to know I'm serious but if you want a few thousand to buy materials or whatever, no.
My process is: get 3-5 quotes. Reject the weirdos / unprofessional ones. Of the ones left, call the cheapest back, give him a lower price and see what he says. Try the "if I pay cash can you knock the GST off at least?". He should at least say yes to the GST question. If he says no, try it with the second cheapest. I generally get what I want for honest pricing with the above method.
General negotiation tips
1) always be polite, no point getting into a shit slinging fight with tradies
2) approach every conversation as if you're on the same team. "We're very close" "I really want to work with you" "I really want to make this work"
3) back your numbers with credible reasons, e.g. knock 10% off because I'm paying cash. e.g. "company ABC quoted xyz, I prefer you because reasons, but I need you to match their price." of course xyz is made up.
4) just because you pay cash, doesn't affect deductibility of your expense. Many ways to document the expenditure. Ask for a cash receipt as opposed to an invoice. Take before and after photos. I've had most tradies issue me a tax invoice even though I pay cash, after explaining to them what data the ATO can and cannot gather (most tradies are actually very interested in this area). E.g. with today's technology, the ATO simply cannot match an entity's issued invoices to every other person's expense claims - there's no centralised invoice database, so how the f would the ATO know what invoices you (the tradie) issued, if you get audited? unless you're stupid enough to hand it over.
5) ask for everything you want, at the very start. Tradies ream you in the anus for every change you ask for, and rightfully so, subsequent to coming to a price agreement.
6) ask for a labour quote only and tell him you will reimburse every receipt he shows you - this prevents the tradie from whacking another 100% profit margin on every fckn item he buys for your job. Some might think "oh well he will just increase his labour rate then" - yes! he would, but that's ok, for two reasons. a) it allows you to more easily compare apples to apples with other quotes and b) there's a reasonability limit - the tradie wouldn't quote $2000 per hour and expect to get the job.
7) never believe the bullshit about experience. A tradie's experience benefits him, first and foremost. Unless your job is bloody building a rocket engine involving partial differential equations, all jobs are pretty basic to a professional in the right field. All experience does is it lets the tradie know where he can get away with cutting corners. I've had times where the greener tradies do what I consider to be a better job because he was less experienced and spent more attention / overengineered areas that didn't need it etc.
8) after I became comfortable with the whole process, I started to only pay for tradie time and reimburse expenses. I tell them to just quote me their hourly rate, then knock off 10% cash, then I basically own their time for whatever I need them for. I find the value for money is astonishingly higher if I pay for a tradie's time rather than fixed price. There's so much a tradie can do in a day, it's amazing. Even if I'm paying $100 per hour, I prefer that over fixed price. It has the added advantage of being able to request changes on the fly, requesting a different process (e.g. I want my architraves liquid nailed as well as nailed, tradie tells me it's not necessary, I ask him nicely I want it that way, and it's all fine because he's being paid for his hours).
10+ years of being a customer has taught me the above.
edit more tips
9) check his work carefully before final payment because once you pay him that final dollar, he is never ever coming back (with the exception of minor issues that are easy to fix, in which case it might be easier to just DIY)
10) my personal preference but for jobs that are big enough to have progress payments, I always set aside the final $500 for clean up - tradies usually don't clean up at all. This makes them clean up.
11) have quote clearly define in writing what you're paying for (for fixed price projects) - might need to sue them later for breach
Downvote for dishonesty. I don't know if anyone ever told you this but lying is a no-no and doing it to take advantage of someone is even worse.
I'm always fair and reasonable with my pricing - you can tell the liars with their "I can get it for X price from Z", ok, that would be below cost for me so I would suggest going for that deal because I cannot match it", "ok I will take it from you for Y then…" …yeah right.
I'm not seeing any egregious dishonesty in the comment. What did I miss?
He refers to my fake comparison quotes. I don't see anything wrong with it - it's everywhere in every day life. When you buy a house or a car, you get lied to by the selling agent. Tradies lie to your face about how little money they make from the job / how expensive materials are / how they bust a drill bit for every hole they drill - it's part of life mate, and anyone living in a fantasy world where people always tell the truth is just gullible.
@echelon6: Oh yeah no, unless you're being stupid, there likely is someone who'll charge that little. They just might not do as well a job. We're not doing a price-beat here.
a few thousand to buy materials or whatever
Cashflow is very important for small business owners, and provided they are professional and will accept credit card for the deposit (so worst case you can chargeback) I think it's very reasonable to expect their initial expenses be covered.
I don't order anything from suppliers without full payment upfront, after which it's sent directly to customers most of the time. It's never been an issue. (IT Industry though, so YMMV)
Been burned once and seen others burned like this - the thing is while your premise is reasonable, there's enough choice for customers to not have to put up with this. Any business needs to have adequate working capital for these situations otherwise they should be quoting smaller jobs. The point of a deposit isn't to finance the supplier, it's to secure the supplier's commitment to the job. If supplier needs client financing, a separate agreement should be drawn up, the materials should be delivered directly to client site and title of goods remain with client the entire time. Extra paperwork and hassle… easier to just choose someone else in that case.
The thing I have learnt from dealing with tradies is. Top dollar does not guarantee a good job.
AT MOST you get what you pay for.
The corollary is: the cheapest quote will never work out to be the cheapest.
Doing your homework does.
I haven't spoken to a tradie in the last 2 decades that would haggle. They set their price and you take it or leave it.
As customer.
We installed a front fence a while back. Quoted from 3 different tradies, one progressively cheaper than the previous one, without me even mentioning any sort of price.
We ended up going with the last one, not only because he was the cheapest between the three, but also because he could justify his prices. The first guy wanted double of what the third one quoted, and that's using less material than the third one.
I think as a customer, most (not all) people don't mind paying a bit more IF tradies could justify the prices.
And this coming from a parent, please don't treat any parents with kids as cash cow. Just because I have kids doesn't mean suddenly I am more willing to depart with my money without good reason.
This.
With the wide variety of quotes, it is really hard to get a sense of what is a fair price for a job. Half the people you ask for a quote from just throw out a ridiculous price and are very easily having their noses out of joint why you ask why they are so expensive.
Fence builders are notoriously bad on price quoting and quality of work. I had one guy tell a neighbor that he couldn't finish the job properly and cut corners because we came out of our house and told him he was making too much noise and our kids were sleeping (we weren't even home that day! lol).
Or in the case of air-con installers, you just have people outright lie to you about their products and services (had one guy swear on his mothers life that the air-con he was trying to sell me was current gen, when I told him about the actual current gen, he thought I was making things up. Ended up going with a guy that was cheaper and installed the current gen air-con).
I run a small IT business (just a 1 man thing).
If someone haggles - The job doesn't get done. Barring ongoing arrangements, my rate is my rate and the solutions and technology that I recommend are what I deal with. Haggling, providing your own hardware or any other method to drive the cost down means I don't do the job.
I've learnt this that hard way, I've wasted so much time on the phone , in person , quoting etc. It's usually non-Australian born people who are accustomed to haggling / not paying the first price they hear so you can't blame them.
That said I'm not against working out how to make something cheaper for a client, but it will mean less capable hardware,less robust infrastructure, less redundancy etc. There's usually a solution for the client with minimal funds, the issue is when they want the $1000 of work done for $100.
Get multiple quotes with as much detail as possible. Go with the price that you feel comfortable with.
From a consumers point of view, haggling occurs due to the perception the merchant has marked up their price considerably. This could be a cultural issue or due to bad past experiences dealing with a few tradies.
I think, if you are a genuine tradie and belive you set a good price, you don't need to reason with these hagglers, just say its final and justify the reason for the pricing. Let the consumer decide after that. The important thing is provide reasoning, this is so the consumer can compare apple with apples once they start getting quotes from multiple tradies
Best advice to all tradies is to give a genuine price - hence when your customers ever try to haggle, you can walk out easily.
The problem I have (as a customer) is almost every tradie I met so far doesn't give a genuine price, so if you don't haggle you could miss out.
Some of you may think, the tradies give discounts because they want the job - no, most of the cases (in my experience) is because they think they can get away with the job by doing it "cheap and nasty" since they already give the discounts.
I have only met one gentlemen tradie, he made a mistake and he fixed it at his own cost. He wasn't the cheapest but I now realised he was the best one so far.
The rests were just after the money and kept giving excuses "I have spent many hours on this on that, and they're not part of the quotes… I have done extra works for you to make you happy… bla bla bla" - the fact was the actual job wasn't done properly (possibly it was a bit difficult than the extra works).
I am the "soft customer" type - once the tradie said it's all done I just pay. I don't like holding the payment because I understand the tradie needs to be paid.
But I usually got disappointed with the quality of works later after I have the time to check. I know this is a lesson for me but it's so hard to check on the completion day.
As others have said I don't normally haggle, I have on occasion entertained it on the basis that it will likely lead to ongoing work, in this case I start by reducing what is priced for in the quote, ie, I can do it for $XXX less if I take this item out of the quote, it then often let's you know if they are just low balling or it's an actual funds issue, I am sometimes happy to reduce the price for reduced work but not just because they want it cheaper.
I generally don't entertain any "what's the cheapest" type calls.
Word of mouth will also dictate what your future clients will be like, ie one person says to there friend we got a job done and got it for cheaper than the quote by $XXX so guess what the next person is also going to expect.
Tradesman and registered builder here. Bricklayer but I do renovations and new homes complete.
I quote the job to be done in the correct way using actual trades and preferred suppliers.
Clients can then accept or deny my price. No negotiations as I tell them I won't be happy with the end result if done cheaper or with substitute trades or suppliers/materials. I show them all of my costings and my margin (most are surprised at the cost of indemnity insurance) so they know how much I stand to make, so they know I am not ripping them off. I explain each item if they need it and will also provide invoices at the end if they wish. People tend to love it or hate it (some think a 20% margin/profit is unfair for whatever reason). End of the day, hagglers aren't worth my time as they are haggling on the quality as well as the price.
What if those really poor households that need some work done, how should they ask for a lower price.
A plumber told he me did work for such families at material cost as he could see they were really poor. He considered it as doing a good deed.
That is very good of him. Can you let us know who he is?
I'm sure some here on Ozbargain are doing it tough…
Commercial tradies = $$
Domestic tradies = Debt collector + Headaches
Is $500 a good price to install a Laundry tub and tap by a licensed plumber. Took three hours.
This is interesting. I've got to have three trees removed from my backyard. From what I understand reading this long post you just accept whatever is quoted, don't haggle?
Of course not, everything is open to negotiation. Trades are not in some special category where their authoritah shall not be questioned.
Tree removal i would probably haggle. Something like a bathroom or kitchen renovation, definitely not.
Gonna be a lot of tradies looking for work once this construction boom subsides…
Used to work for a small IT show, and similar experience to the others. My prices were fair, but they always got a good job. The people who wanted to haggle were generally the same ones who would try everything to get out of paying after the job was done. After a couple of bad experiences, I would just nicely suggest that they would be better served by a different company if cost was more important to them than quality.
As the customer, I haggle on a lot of things. But one thing i dont haggle on is tradies.
I just know that corners will be cut, or the quality of work will be lower. Pay their asking price, and they'll put in the effort to do the job properly (I hope..)
I don't haggle my price is my price I learnt a long time ago that the people who want to haggle are also the ones who want to complain and just aren't worth the effort,I would rather have time off than work for less than I think I'm worth
Nope. Not a tradie but we absolutely quote different rates to people depending on how difficult they'll be. The same work doesn't necessarily take the same amount of time and energy if you factor in stupid questions, haggling, needing to chase up payment, changing requirements, etc.