Been having issues with the hot water system at my parents house.
They called a plumber who had a look at it (nil changing of parts).
They weren't there for more than 15 min yet their call out/labour fee was $230?
Seems pretty expensive to me?
What would you have done in this situation? My parents including myself are pretty naive when it comes to home maintenance etc.
@Miss B: He's at a shop. He has no callout fee. He's making more doing that for me, than replacing an iPhone screen.
Pretty sure people can, or at least after watching a 5 minute YouTube video… Except it's either illegal or not covered by insurance, to ensure the price stays high.
I swear the number of houses I see with shoddy YouTube researched projects is terrifying. Hell people can't even paint properly, if you can't paint your own home properly you shouldn't be touching anything that could leak, could electrocute, could fall, could break… in fact just stay in your chair.
Obviously if you half a brain you could work out most things, a quick scroll though the forums will let you know how the majority will do.
That's why Australia is falling behind in real developed economy terms, and we can only rely on digging dirt to sustain the economy and Centrelink.
All our highly skilled STEM non-mining professionals (tech, finance, IT) move to US/UK or Asia to work and contribute to the dynamism of those foreign economies.
Doesn't that tell you that those so called proffesjoal jobs are dog shit on toast ? Why does someone need 9 years of uni to read a script and give me my pill the GP has already approved?
Maybe a fail-safe to tighten loose drugs
Considering that they didn't fix anything nor their offered solution at an additional cost would guarantee a fix, I would say charge was rip-off.
This is a sad reality of excessive cost of labour. I get when people here say they have to drive to your home and back etc but for a 15 min job (without any fix), they shouldn't charge what they have, but hey they also have to pay a mortgage and that hilux or ranger like some others have mentioned.
It's frustrating but that's the reality, getting anything repaired like couple of decades is not the case anymore. Just learn to use tools and try and fix yourself.
PS: Recently my whipper snipper stopped working, went to local service they said service charge was approx. $150 plus parts, which may account to something well over $200. Thought might as well buy new one with warranty. Instead, I decided to take it apart and see what happened. All It needed was a $5 spark plug, now works like a charm. Not calling any tradies unless I really have to.
Heres the $230 invoice breakdown:
. Time spent driving from plumbers home > op's home
. Petrol for vehicle: home > op > home again
. cost of necessary vehicle suitable for the job. Some utes easily fall into the luxury car tax bracket + get charged more for tolls as classified as light commercial vehicles.
. maintenance for vehicle
. cost of all the various tools required to fix a myriad of situations
. cost of business registration, insurances and necessary building certifications
. cost of X amount of years worth of knowledge and skills to fix op's hot water system
. time spent driving from op's home > plumbers home
. Time spent doing op's "15 minute" job means not doing other jobs, so this $230 is also to cover loss of time from potentially doing 1 large job throughout the day.
. cost of quick maccas drive thru run on the way home after a long days work.
You're trying to explain the concepts of opportunity cost and amortisation to people who just want to rail against blue-collar workers who make a good living.
Nobody cares for this explanation because we all have transport costs to/from work and we all have opportunity cost.
Going to and from work once per day is quite different than travel who knows how far, to do who knows what job.
we all have opportunity cost
Not when you are already at work. You are working how ever many hours, and getting paid for that time. If someone spends 2 hours driving to your house to do a 15 minute job, that's 2 hours they could have spent actually working and billing someone.
Tradies make up the most elaborate stories to justify their daylight robbery hey
Cost of lube
Cost of teeth whitener to make smile more cheesy
No issues against making a living but that cost is ridiculous.
So tell me what's the issue with the hot water system, maybe I can diagnose the issue.
Plumbing business owner here.
Can I send you a quote and you tell me if it's a gouge?
Sure no worries
I think the call out fees also depend on distance and how quickly you want them to come. One time I had to pay this guy $120 for call out fee and he was living on the same street, plus $350 just to install the new hot water system. Total labour cost was as much as the system, all done in about 1 and half hours. Really made me question my career choice.
The lowest I've seen for call out fee was from PlumbFirst, $50, which could be waived if you decide to buy a new system from them, range from $3500 to $5000.
My mate just got a quote to r&r a hotwater system with an identical unit. Pipes line up to old ones etc. Swap in and out. Quote was $2700. He went to a plumbing supply shop and got the tank for $800 and did it himself. The quote was beyond ridiculous. Their google reviews are all positive too. Shocking.
I'm lucky as I know a local plumber who doesn't charge call out fees. I just talk to him an he gives me a price. It is easier a he already knows our house. He is Coming next week to disconnect our flued gas heater and remove all pipes from roof. Also he is going to fix me the front garden tap and replace the stake it is attached to. All for $220 GST included.
He is in Adelaide South in case you want his details.
yes, please provide me details via PM :-)
Is it expensive, yep
Does it sound normal, sadly yep
Plumbers and Electricians are very expensive in my experience they bearly turn up when they say they will! So count urself lucky!
I've seen tradies justify their high cost by how essential they are and the service they provide. I replied saying nurses provide an essential service yet earn nowhere near the same money and was told that without buildings nurses wouldn't be able to do their job, so tradies were more important and provided a more valuable service than nurses. Unfortunately as mentioned above it's the norm to charge these prices.
Nurses dont need to spend upwards of $10k a year on vehicles, tools and personal insurance???
Yeah, saving someone's life is totally less important and clearly justifies why tradies get paid more :)
Nurses are working in a government position, with a set wage. Why do people get so upset that someone who chose to do something different, gets paid more?
$10k? So about 40 hours of work, by the OP's charged rate? Wowee
You can save a lot of money by hiring a licensed plumber via airtasker. Ive had plumbers do jobs for $100 that when I've called plumbers directly I have been quoted much more for. You just need to be able to describe the issue and upload some photos. Then a plumber that isn't too busy will probably give you a reasonable price.
Going direct is good advice, everyone loves a cash job.
I would ask if there was a call out fee and hourly charges, so I wasn't bill shocked, prior to agreeing to them coming out. Not all plumbers charge the same.
Also, was this a weekend?
You need to ask for the cost before they come out. Once ether have come out, you can't do anything than paying their call out fees.
nah sounds about right to me.
Look at if this way: you’re not paying for their time, you’re paying for their skills. You’re not paying for the 15 minutes they’ve been there, you’re paying for the years of experience that allows them to o fix it so quickly
Except they didn't fix
far out dude then mention that in your opening post.
I think the average bulk billing GP charges $30-40 for a 15 minutes consult, those suckers should have retrained in the trades lmao.
Doesn't hurt to try and fix the problem yourself first. You're still ahead even if you'd spend a whole day working on the problem.
How is this so hard? Just ask for what the indicative charges will be upfront. If you don't like call a few others and decide on best course of action. If you call out and then are unhappy with the bill you've got little leverage, especially given lack on knowledge in said area.
We had a plumber out yesterday $165 for call out
These sort of charges are precisely why I advise people to study a trade or TAFE instead of wasting money on a university education. It's not to do with skills, it's supply and demand.
Trade apprentices earn from day 1. Uni students rack up debt from day 1. Uni grads are dime a dozen and it's difficult to find job with employers requiring new grads to have 2 years or more experience.
Parents send their kids proudly to uni, but they should be clever and send them to trade school.
That really depends on what sorts of degrees and trades we're talking about here.
Someone with an engineering, law or medical degree from a good university? Played right, it can become a licence to print money. Conversely, some shoddy cert-III in cosmetology or bartending is likely cash and time flushed down the toilet.
This exactly. Lots of great uni degrees, lots of great trades, certificates or diplomas. Conversely, lots of degrees, trades, certs and diplomas that are a complete waste.
Uni is a fantastic tool, just like trades are but I think it's used a bit strangely. Highschool to uni is a massive leap in education and jobs are extremely saturated. I personally wouldnt of had the focus and drive at 18 to go through with uni. Now I'm older it's different.
I did my apprenticeship and then worked as a tradesmen, ran my own businesses while getting my diplomas through tafe. Now I'm currently working on a bachelors and am slowly increasing knowledge base and my wage with a lot of real world experience by day and after hours study by night.
The biggest take away from these blue collar vs white collar debates is that I find most white collar workers have this expectation to be paid more money simply because they assume they are smarter and harder working.
Congratulations for forging your own educational path through life: attending uni in later years can be daunting if you're not well prepared.
There's certainly an issue of entitlement among graduates. Arts graduates seem particularly dismayed to find themselves mired in low-wage jobs, despite their holding qualifications often useless for any position bar public service generalist. In most fields, uni is only worth your while if you push into post-graduate or specialist studies.
I have a bunch of undergraduate and graduate degrees and worked long hours in logistics and project management. In my late middle-age, I chanced on a blue-collar job that pays me almost $200K to play with big machines a few hours a day. I can't say I've ever looked back.
I changed kitchen tap by myself. Connecting wrong pipes, visiting shop for wrong type of tap and twisting my back for a long time is a pain but finally I did it! Now I am a kitchen (not chicken, still mixed two words) expert!!! It worths to try.
Was it really worth it, though, once you factor in the time, money and physical wear-and-tear? If you spend five hours doing something that a tradie would have done professionally for $100, you've effectively paid yourself minimum wage. Most would consider that a rip-off.
I had two plumbers to fix another tap leaking. First one couldn't fix it. Second one fixed but left lots of dirty permernant marks around by kind of glue I think. It becomes black now and looks disgusting. I failed to remove them. Its hard to find right people.
Water damage from DIYs is very expensive and not covered by insurance.
So it likely wasn't worth it lol
If it is a "shower booth job" I will call a plumber. Even I don't think of it.
Always amused by the wage argument, sure you're not getting the hourly rate at your day job but if you're not actually working who's going to pay you? If it's within your ability, by doing it yourself you've gained a skill and confidence for next time AND you've saved $ by not paying someone else to do it. At the end of the day you're still ahead financially
Whatever you do physical wear-and-tear is happening every seconds. That's why today is when you are youngest in your life. So I don't care of "physical wear-and-tear".
You'll be able to do the next one in no time. First time I'd always a bit of a learning curve, but now you get to reap the rewards of a bit of knowledge gained.
I would have replaced that for approximately $250 including the tap.
The tap itself costs me $300. I am never looking around for better.
Stick to golf 😛
Always GOLF FIRST!! lol DIY is for rainy days.
Most people are brainwashed that they must go to uni and get a degree, don't work in a factory or do manual work as that's for bogans.
I work in an office after getting a degree in X, how dare that blue-collar person earn more than me.
These workers earn more because there isn't a million of them around so supply and demand and it's a regulated skill they had to train for. They probably keep the numbers low purposely by not training too many keeping the numbers low.
I use to work as a tradesman and around 10 years ago during the ea negotiations, one of the HR women was horrified that we were paid over $100,000.
She said they are just blue-collar workers, I went to uni to work in HR and there is no way these people are worth more than me (she said she was on $60,000).
I said to her ok, you start the machine and get it to run. It may look easy but we also spent years perfecting and learning the trade.
She left a few months later.
Plumbing isn't a job I would like to do and they deserve what they earn.
Changing a tap or putting in a new hot water system might be pretty easy and straight foward but they also dig trenches, clear out sewer systems which is dirty and hard work.
Ops plumber didn't do anything though
in Sydney I'm seeing ~$200 as the standard callout fee for most emergency type services
as a strata committee member I deal with lots of tradies - and often see them spend half an hour fruitlessly trying to contact residences where the tenant or owner is not responding (one day I slept in ! they went and got breakfast from a nearby cafe)
and then often have to go back for required parts after initial investigation reveals new problems
and often spend an extra few hours on work that turns out to be much more difficult than anticipated, and they don't add to the quoted price so basically absorb that cost
so on the law of averages - the difficult jobs might get charged less, and the easy jobs look expensive
so sorry mate - we exchange money for time -
if you want to save money you can spend time - trying to work out how to DIY
if you want to save time you can spend money - getting a professional to do it
good, cheap, fast - choose any two -
good and cheap - it won't be fast !
cheap and fast - it won't be good !
good and fast - it won't be cheap !
so yeah - $200 callout fee is pretty normal these days
many of these tradies drive from outer suburbs in peak hour traffic where it might take them an hour each way - you want them to do that for free ? not if they want to make a living.
I worked in service maintenance for tenanted properties. We would give all the required notices an allow them to book a 1hr window to suit them or we would assume it's a key job. We would turn up there and you'd still have about 25% of people not be home, or we would have keys and people would be home… Then complain that we will wake their baby or disturb them in other ways so we weren't allowed in.
Look into the RACV home call out program they have. It's like road side assistance for your home. It could work out cheaper in the long run than dealing with inflated prices.
+100
Unfortunately in Australia, these excessive fees from basic trades people are common and not at all reasonably proportionate to the cost of providing the service.
I have no issue with the idea of a call out fee if:
* covers reasonable travel expenses from their registered place of business (eg. hire a local plumber or pay more)
* covers reasonable proportion of their insurance costs
* covers reasonable proportion of their equipment costs
Beyond that it there should be an hourly fee charged pro-rata with a reasonable minimum on-site time. Eg. 30 min minimum, anything above that pro-rata charged against their hourly fee perhaps in 15 minute minimum units.
Also no issue with hourly fee varying depending on specialist expertise or equipment needed for a particular job. Eg. gas plumbing, high pressure plumbing, etc. where the impact of a bad installation is higher than basic home water plumbing or sewerage/drainage plumbing.
We have too easily accepted the over-charging carried out by plumbers. It's hard to change this course because the overcharging is now the industry norm, so consumers have little choice.
Have you ever paid a barrister? $5000 per day, specialist medical appointment $300-$450 per consultation sometimes more. Lawyer to send or receive an email $25, what about their charges for a 15min phone call?
Ah, the don't look here, look over there argument.
A few items to note. The insurance requirements of a medical doctor will surpass that of tradesperson by at least 5x. Average tradie should carry public liability insurance, valuable items insurance, and accidental injury insurance / income protection insurance. Your average medical specialist doctor will be paying $25,000 - $100,000 (depending on their speciality) per year just in medical indemnity insurance. The cost and time to become educated isn't even closely comparable. Hours worked to get to specialised level would be significantly higher as well. The cost you listed is also generally for the 1st appointment only and is significantly cheaper for subsequent appointments. Try asking your tradie to drop their rates by 50% after the 1st visit.
Similarly for legal professionals. General costs of carrying out business are higher. When you engage a barrister for a day you are often paying for at least 1 or sometimes 2 legally qualified assistants. Cost and time required to being admitted as a member of the bar outstrips training requirements of a qualified tradie.
Generally supply and demand will moderate goods and services cost in an open market. So at the moment those forces are allowing for tradie costs to maintain as they are. But proportionately speaking (vs. cost to supply) , they are relatively higher than most other professions.
My rates as detailed in comments below, are proportionate to your explanation above. That said, you are going to get over charges in all areas of business….Seems like the average Joe likes to unload on plumbers as being where the bar is set.
Barristers can charge so much because they are basically members of an extortionate guild that act as gatekeepers to the AU legal system. They certainly specialist skills and training but the prices they charge are mostly because of no oversight on legal costs in the dysfunctional AU legal system. Why is it just assumed to be normal that even relatively simple legal processes are expected to cost tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees? it is a mostly because of a self-serving lawyers community that exploits dysfunction in the system to line their pockets
Yes, those are problems too.
This is the same as any industry.
Half the people calling people out here for not knowing how to change plumbing would buy premade PC's or get a tech guy to fix their pc because they don't know how to. Or same with basic car repair issues.
Any skills can be learnt if you have the time and some initial money. But you can just pay and bypass the need as well as the headache and risk.
It's not the same due to government regulations on home reno
Yeap its a big rip off. But that’s sadly how it is. They charge you for their time of actual work + travel time + gas + part of their vehicle costs
How is that a rip off? If you could bring your plumbing issue to the plumber you could save on the call out fee / travel time.
I think paying workers to go on holiday, take sick leave, (sickie for the Melbourne cup), carers leave, parental leave and bereavement leave are a big rip off. Just so you know they are all costs factored into your wage….just like a trade has to factor costs into their charges.
Not saying factoring all extras is a rip off. I’m talking about the number itself that the plumber has charged is a rip off. Based on the numbers you have given;
Call out fee $50 / $70 after hours.
Hourly Rate $95 / minimum 3 hrs outside normal business hours.
OP’s job would have costed about $150 (callout + 1 hr) which is quite reasonable.
Now would you say someone charging $235 vs your figures is fair from customer’s perspective ?
Not really….but I know both Melbourne and Sydney charge higher rates than Brisbane.
I own my own plumbing business in Brisbane.
I think my charges are reasonable and I have no issues with repeat customers.
My charges are as follows
Call out fee $50 / $70 after hours.
Hourly Rate $95 / minimum 3 hrs outside normal business hours.
No charge to quote a job…..but in most cases you always allow for your time in the quotation.
Blocked drain $50 call out plus $250 to use a Hydro jetter includes 1st hours labour. Will also inspect the drain with a camera for this price
Camera inspection of a drain, $50 call out plus $175 for the camera and 1st hours labour.
Standard kitchen mixer tap replacement $230 plus gst including the mixer tap.
Tap set service (two taps all washers / o'rings replaced and breech seat machined flat if requited) $160 plus gst.
Sounds reasonable. Can you pm me your details and I'll put your number on my fridge? Thanks
As a plumber, would you charge "call out fee and minimum 3 hours outside of normal business hours", if you rocked up and 15min later walked away without being able to fix anything?
Nope I wouldn't charge a cent if I didn't fix anything.
I thought so. Thanks for replying…. it's a damn shame all other tradies aren't like you.
I had a call out to service my gas heater pre winter. Guy came and left in 15 mins, didn’t repair or serviced anything. Charge me $250 and wanted me to change this n that totaling $1000; I did not. If you charge then it’s fair to provide a service. It’s sinful to charge exorbitantly and don’t do much; morally wrong too.
I also realised their websites look very similar to each other so they are probably all linked and share the workload around. Sometimes they target the old, weak and vulnerable for more cash.
They pay for people to make their sites. They're probably just simple templates
Hahaha… this is why the "plumber" has found themselves in many a joke.
Sounds a bit steep to me.
Did he offer to do the fix there and then?
Most of the tradies are ripp off. One time electrician charged me $350 for 5min check and the issue was still not resolved. Bastard!
You should not have paid if the issue was not fixed
Is it electric hot water or gas?
There are some real ass tradies out there. Sorry to hear you got ripped off.
Good lesson to learn, next time ask for the charge before getting them to come in. Also weekends after business hours will be higher.
Having been ripped off my fair share by tradies, I now make sure I have a number of good tradies to give quotes.
I recently had to replace 15m of my main copper pipe under a lawn as the pipe started leaking.
The quotes ranged from $450 to $1750 for the same job. I picked the $450 plumber as he was recommended by someone else. He did a great job and probably did more than what I expected. He finished the job in less than 2 hours.
One of the plumbers charges $100/hr but estimated 6-8 hours.
Another charges $50/m regardless of whether it's 3 metres or 15 metres.
Yet another quoted $1,500 and then dropped it to $700 when I told him about the $750 quote.
Would recommend using service seeking / hi pages or similar to post your job.
Don’t say it’s “urgent” unless it really is (in reality you’ll get people wanting to come ASAP even if you don’t mark it at urgent) because all this will do is attract premium rates.
Then you can pick the most affordable / complete quote.
Of course try to work out as much as possible and do simple jobs yourself. You can learn a lot of YouTube and the internet.
I’ve had trades come and try to charge me $450 for “diagnosing” but not fixing. Turned out the problem was completely different and was able to get a full refund. These people were loaded with 5 star reviews as well on google…
Knowledge is the most valuable commodity these days. If you don’t DYOR, you run the risk of being at the mercy of unscrupulous operators.
Otherwise RACV emergency home assist sounds like a decent option, as mentioned by others.
If you want the roughest tradies, use HiPages
Another factor to consider is wear and tear.
Ie some trades just can't have long careers eg the traditional painter with back issues and shoulder issues.
The working plumber would have a finite lifespan.
Whilst I agree the op has been ripped off, many in my profession rip people off too, so I can at least understand the plumber too.
What about accountants charging over the top for covid paperwork?
I think the posters above who say to get a good set of readies / mechanics / professionals etc and use local word of mouth are spot on
I think the plumber involved has inadvertently given the op a CHEAP lesson to look into things first. They are going to save many thousands over the years now.
I've had the same happen. Call an 'expert' , they arrive, have no idea how to fix the problem, give some appalling advice, (ie. remove a whole bathroom to check for a drain leak then are shocked and surprised when I point to the easily visible access panels.) Then leave and bill over $200 after 15mins. Same thing happened to an (elderly) relative.
I actually think it's a scam and these dudes are just going around over quoting jobs they have no intention of ever doing and reaping the call outs.
Its sad that as a country we don't favour future-looking skills like robotic engineering or brain surgery. All our highly skilled STEM non-mining professionals (tech, robotics, IT, science research) move to USA/UK or China/Asia to work and contribute to the dynamism of those foreign economies.
We seem proud to compensate enormously well trades that a high school grad can easily excel in. No wonder we are known as the only OECD dirt-digging economy.
When a plumber makes more than an engineer,you know where the economy is heading towards…………. towards shitsville.
Some tradies suss you out and deliberately overcharge. Had one guy who happened to be someone I know from the cricket club come over to investigate why the water would continue flowing after flushing my toilet. He came in and opened the cistern (pickup number 1 as I didnt know how to open it) and pulled out the cistern. Told me the o-ring was screwed and would need a new one (pickup number 2). Went to his van for a few mins, came back and said he couldnt find the correct one and this should work otherwise we might have to replace the entire seat. Then proceeded to ask me what I do for a living (I told him the truth about being in IT). He pondered and said thatll be hundred bucks. I bit my tongue and paid up. Problem still wasnt fixed the next day so I followed him up via messenger and he was adamant the seat would need to be replaced. I decided to do it myself. Went down to my local Reece store with the part in hand and they gave me the exact o-ring. Total cost $5 + petrol. Hasnt missed a beat since. Two lessons, dont trust anyone you know as they will eventually try to rip you off and second of all try to google/research the problem if possible to save some cash
I wouldn’t leave my place for a job worth $100
Lesson 1: Ask for call out fee upfront.
Don’t like it? Rinse and Repeat
Look at it this way, plumber has to expend time getting there. Plumber has to have tools and parts to back up possible issues with job. Plumber is also bring the experience gained. Its not a neighbour across the road hopping over.
So he didn't fix the problem but still charges over $200.
This is day light roberry!
I dont think its daylight robbery though its frustrating for sure for the homeowners.
If the plumber didnt fix it they would supplied advice 'it cant be repaired you need to replace'. A plumber cant be expected to carry around a new hot water system of the specific type. I would imagine that the plumber advised of the callout fee. Sometimes you can fix a hot water system, sometimes it needs replacement.
I do think $230 is a bit much as well, but plumbers are in demand right now and the plumber has to take time to get there, allow for work to be done so even a quick attendance can have an impact on their earnings for other job.
NB The op didnt say they didnt fix it, though its implied.
@brendanm:
He's doing it wrong, he should be charging you for the full hour.