A plumber to avoid

[DiamondsAlways]

Hi everyone,

I have been reading lots in this forum but did not have much to contribute. Thank you every one.
However, today I have something to share but I am not sure if I can identify the trader. Are there any rules in our fornum about this matter? If you want to know which plumber to avoid, please drop me an email. But let me call him AAA.

I just had our bathroom renovated but we are very unhappy about the work that the plumber AAA has done:
1) he quoted $45 per meter for tiling, but later told us he actually needed to charge us $60 per meter. We were not happy with this sudden 'out of the blue' charge. But being reasonale and knowing the normal price, we agreed the increased price. But surprisingly, 10 minutes later, he told us in fact his price is $65 per meter, not $60! That made my wife upset and she did not want to pay the extra $5 per meter (the total areas is about 9 sq meters but quoted 10 sq meters). At that point, AAA threaten to walk away from the job. As he started packing, we were facing the empty bathroom, and there was no way to get another plumber to continue the job. So we were forced to acept his term.
2) now the bathroom is done, but, he did not put the O ring into the mixer so that there is no seal under the mixer. Water gets into the mixer seat, and drips into the vanity. Well, he said "Nothing to do with me. Go to get a new mixer. you did not get this F***ing mixer from me." I know this is still under warrenty, but we did not want to deal with him anymore. At the end, we got another plumber to spend just 10 minutes to put in the new O ring, and it works. The good plumber said "how could a qualified plumber forget to put an O ring when install a mixer!"

There are also a few other rude things that I did not want to talk about here.

Anyway, I would like to share my expereince with you, hopefull you can avoid using this plumber AAA.
By the way, I am in Melbourne, eastern suburb.

 

[Pushka]

We had a plumber who charged us for the time he wrote out, in ridiculous detail about what he had done, the tax invoice at the time of the job. When I queried the cost with main office they said their GPRS details indicated he had been there 20 mins. The fact he spent 10 minutes writing out the bill was my problem! The bill came to $130 because he had spent longer than 15 minutes. Consumer affairs said what they charged was unethical. But not illegal because I had not specifically asked if they charged for the time in writing the tax invoce. Needless to say I mention to as many people I can not to use them.

 

[willair]

1) he quoted $45 per meter for tiling, but later told us he actually needed to charge us $60 per meter. We were not happy with this sudden 'out of the blue' charge. But being reasonale and knowing the normal price, we agreed the increased price. But surprisingly, 10 minutes later, he told us in fact his price is $65 per meter, not $60! That made my wife upset and she did not want to pay the extra $5 per meter (the total areas is about 9 sq meters but quoted 10 sq meters). At that point, AAA threaten to walk away from the job. As he started packing, we were facing the empty bathroom

Maybe you should have just let him walk,a quote is a quote and you have to stand by that quote,btw everybody makes mistakes,and also there a lot of plumbers that are out there that are not Plumbers,they have not done the six years to be a plumber,i know a few that could not even cut a copper pipe straight or fix a tap,but they still make 350k a year the problem with some people in the plumbing business is,if you act like a loser
then they will treat you as loser,btw did you pay the bill?..willair..

 

[silversands]

We once had a tiler quote to tile two houses. We were thrilled with the verbal price quoted. Should have smelled the rat at this point. Asked for invoice and didn't get it. He began the job and we asked for it again. We weren't pushy enough and he completed the job and handed us a bill that was 15%higher than verbal quote. (average tradesman, job was ok not great.)
We asked why higher and he says oh the sq metres were higher than quoted?
What the? We showed him the invoice for tiles delivered. He says "oh that can't be right" and insists we pay him for what he laid which he still insisted was 15% more than we told him there was.
So we measure the area with him following every step shaking his head and grumbling. "Oh ok your measurements are right but I had to move your stove in the kitchen and cart box's of tiles to all the different rooms so I need $690 more!"
He then (in a foul mood) admits he had quoted us per metre but hadn't measured the job - just assumed the job would pay more all up because it looked like a larger area than it was.
Meanwhile he had written a cheque to another tradie for work done on his own home that was gonna bounce if we didn't pay the extra. Of course this was "our fault!"
We refused saying we'd pay $100 extra for moving the stove but that
it wasn't appropriate to manufacture extra reasons to charge more because HE had made a mistake. He then threatened to smash the tiles off our front porch with a hammer!
We were so over it, hubby produced $300 extra and said "leave"
Moral = never let anyone start work without producing your written quote.

 

[craigb]

was this "plumber" an actual plumber or was he another "bodgy brothers incorporated "
if he was tiling im suspecting the latter,
Please people spend the differance and use qualified people??
The criteria i had to go through from maintenence to licence seperates the difference by 180 degrees.

 

[oasis1frog]

Poor workmanship, ripoffs, tax cheating are common occurrences with many shonky tradie cowboys (no offence to honest hardworking tradies on this forum), licensed or not.
It's time ACCC and Consumer Affairs get off their backside and do something !

 

[RumpledElf]

Makes me glad I do my own tiling.

The plumber we got late last year I had to wait 5 months for. He charged us exactly as quoted. He left the tap connections raw (kind of pinched sealed on the ends) for us to finish off and still gave us a compliance cert. We're getting the father-in-law to connect the raw connections on Monday, he just happens to be a plumber too, but its a technicality so he can install hot water systems.

Apparently this sort of thing is reasonably common, the guy who installed the kitchen seemed fine with the way everything was left.

 

[Property Meister]

Stories like this really really annoy me....

Bad attitude combined with, bad work combined with every nightmare possible

 

[DiamondsAlways]

More details

Thanks everyone for your comments.

A couple of you asked me more details:

This AAA bathroom renovations should be a registered plumber, or at least as he claims.

Now when I looked back to the whole thing, I can share you more expereicens. We had our kitchen renovated by a fantastic company Kitchen Squared. The expereinces with the Kitchen Sqaured plumbers and workers are so good that we natually gain trust on all other trade people.

But this proves to be a mistake. Not all trade people are the same. When the AAA came to gave us a quote for a new bath room, everything looked fine and we did not suspect anything.

but now when I look at it further, I discover that this AAA does not have a postal address in his business card, no land line telephone number, no his surname.

Even with a wrtten quotation, he still does not keep his words.
He try to get away every mistakes he made.

Take this one as what he said: "You don't need to worry about the mixer (leaks because no O ring seal), becasue only idiots put water onto the mixer seat. and I have done my best. If you want me to fix it, you need to buy a new mixer with the O ring." We went back the shop where we originally bought our new mixers, and the shop keeper showed us how the original package includes an O ring with all other parts in a sealed bag!

He must have forgotten to put the O ring into the mixer seat and now he refuses to fix it.


For us, we learnt a lesson:
1) if some one's business card doe snot show a full name, not showing an address, and no land line phone number, then we would suspect his integrity. I do business too and i have nothing to hide so all our names and address and contact details are there for our clients.
2) we should withheld 10% payment for two weeks until every things are fine.
3) from now on, we will use ONLY big companies for all our other projects.
4) for small projects, we will do it ourselves.
5) we will never use this AAA bathroom renovations and plumbing services again.

 

[Property Meister]

.
2) we should withheld 10% payment for two weeks until every things are fine.

agree with everything you say, however, I know how you feel, but am not sure how well this would work or would it be legal, surely a tradesperson (good or bad) deserves to get paid at the end of the job....

 

[mikey investor]

Plumber to use!

Who was the plumber? I want to know details???

We used a plumber in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne who came out twice to finish a job for us, and who never accepted payment!!!

We are too scared to use him again, in case he refuses to charge us again. We even knocked on his door and offered him cash!

Mikey