What went wrong here???

A freind does carpentry and building work, does good work anD fair priced. 3 years ago he got a call to do a small garage and entry way. He gave them a price and went over it. The next year they called him again, same deal, he told them he would honor the last year price! This year they called him again, He told them he was going to have to charge for a new estimate as prices had changed. And he figured his time was getting eaten up. ONE WEEK LATER ABC COMPANY WAS PUTTING UP THE GARAGE!!!

apparently he was waiting for prices to go down -lol

Two things happened:

1. People shop price. They don't want to pay for quality and craftsmanship, they want the cheapest price out there. That's how Walmart survives.

2. ABC company has the economics of volume on their side. You can get materials cheaper when you buy by the boxcar load, and you can hire nail-pounders for minimum wage.

When things like that happen, I indulge in a little [i:654c4848f0]schadenfreude[/i:654c4848f0] knowing that they will get exactly what they paid for and be complaining about it in a couple of years.

People just like to jack with you, I get the same kinda thing. Somebody will ask, how much would it cost to get certain tractor overhauled. Or put a clutch in my ole mowing tractor, figure up a parts and labor price, well I gotta think about it. Next time I see them at the sale barn, you still interested in doing that, yeah if you get it down there, I'll do it. Hear later they took it someplace else, I don't put much faith in that anymore, I give them a price, if it shows up ok, if not, I've always got something else to do.

This is exactly where the saying comes from " everyone should work for the public for a while to understand it".
The scenario that is worse is that the customer has him build the garage , then pays him based on the quote of the lower price the received from ABC. I have often been told that no one is worth $$$ per hour.
Just part of the adventure!

I get that too and just shrug it off as part of being a contractor.
Folks call you to come over and look at a project so you go and give them good ideas that you think will be best. Never hear back.
Then you drive by and see someone else doing the job and using Your ideas.
C'est la vie
Everyone has to eat - even lousy carpenters.

ive had a similar deal doing pine needle removal, first time i showed up and i consider my prices on the low end around here as i figure working for a dollar or 2 less per hour and working, is better than pricing myself so high that people cant afford to hire me,and doing nothing anyway i got a call to clean off a lot, i showed up with several tools including a pine needle rake that i designed and build myself , a small dump truck,to completely remove the debris from the lot, and a tractor with a landscape rake to get the larger thicker areas, [ the lot was 3 acres and had never been cleaned off], did the job, got paid, next year i got a call asking if i would do the job for another guys quote, even though the job was going to be easier and quicker with only a years worth of pine needles on it the quote was ridiculously low i passed, but curious i drove by to see who was working so cheap, it figured, a tatooed guy with a 4 foot pony tail in a beater compact worth maybe 200 dollars with 1 walmart rake, he piled everything at the curb where the city will eventually pick it up sometime between 6 weeks and 6 months after the wind, kids and dogs have scattered half of it back on the lot

I would assume was a local job. Strangers do you better.
A prophet (read contractor/carpenter) is not without honor except in his own country. Matthew 13:37

i DID NOT SAY ANTHING BAD ABOUT THE OTHER COMPANY. But get old saying"bitterness of poor quality lingers long after low price is gone"!!!!

The two i like is they buy the parts somewhere else cheaper and want you to do the work!!!! The second is they bring it to you to fix it after other outfit could not!!!

i know how u feel after years in car repair bussines had this hapen many times and a lot of times the customer went where he can get credit i am not sure i would worry about it probly wouldnt want to do any work for him anyway but u know wont get all the work from the best customer hard to figger why

Some people shop well others buy UGOS. It is a back handed complement that he was willing to do good work for competitive prices but was under bid. No skin off, other than the relationship (is any) with the customer. Which holds little value as far as I can see. Jim

My problem is contractors that don't show up to do the job.They come give you an estimate,i give them the go ahead,pay in cash when done,and you don't see them again.I need some cement work done.The contractor keeps pushing the job back and doesn't even call anymore.

Some people will pit contractors against each other and keep going back and forth to get them to lower their price. It doesn't show a lot of integrity if a contractor plays along with these games. Good customers will ask for an estimate or a quote. Just an estimate is nice because the customer may decide to add something once they see how the job is going. The absolute worst customers are the ones that want all kinds of work done, like your price in the beginning, are very happy with your work, add more work they never mentioned but come to the end of the job all of a sudden it isn't what they wanted and they try and haggle on the price. Luckily these kind of customers are rare. You feel like not charging them anything and undoing all the work you did. I had a few customers hire me for a small job and at the end of the job say that someone else would have done it for $10 cheaper. Well then they should have hired that guy.

My dad had a bank after him about shoddy work one time. He submitted a bid for a driveway and basement, never heard back on it, saw that they had someone with an old Bobcat scrape the grass down and slobber a little gravel down for the driveway.
A couple years later the place was sold and there were some issues from the way the other "contractor" did the work. The bank wasn"t real happy when they saw my dad"s copy of his bid and realized the receipts they received were forged.
After that he was sure to include the words "proposed" or "estimated" several times throughout the bid on materials lists and machine time and such. Especially if the people mentioned they had a buddy with X machine who could do it for Y amount.

I would give a rough estimate upon inspection of the job and explain that I would be happy to provide a detailed estimate of time and materials in writing for X dollars. If I got the job then the money was fully refundable, credited to the job. I got some funny looks and a few PO'd people but I figure that my time is worth something. If it didn't work out I figured the job probably wouldn't have gone well either. You can't please everybody. Jf

My problem is getting the good contractors to come give me a price as they are so busy.

It works both ways.
About a dozen years ago, I needed a major remodel on an older house. This remodel would have kept a couple of guys busy for about two months. They would have been paid the minute they submitted their labor requests and while there would be both indoor and outdoor work, the indoor work could have been done when the weather was bad. I called over a dozen carpenters and they all said that they would come over (sometime) to give me an estimate. Usually, the story was that they'd come over on a Saturday or a Sunday, have a beer or two while I told them about my plans, they would then give me an estimate, and then they would get to work. Out of those dozen, only two crews gave me a bid. Since I was well aware of their work history with local customers, my only requirement to them was that when they start on the job, they stay on the job until it was finished. They agreed to those conditions. When they did start, they obviously forgot about the one condition, because one crew would show up whenever he felt like it and the other one had such a bad temper that nobody else could tolerate him.(BTW, the carpenter with the bad temper has since lost his work partner because nobody can get along with him. He had to take a job as an apprentice carpenter with somebody else)
I finally got my nephew, fresh out of carpentry school, to do it. After my nephew started on the project, they finally realized that I wasn't fooling around and they begged to come back and finish their work. I asked them if they remembered what my one and only requirement was. They repeated it to me, but I told them it was too late.
The only job they wanted (at the time) was to do carpentry work on building a brand new house. They didn't want the hassle of a remodel. About 4-5 years ago, they had a hard time trying to find any work at all and some of them had to take other jobs. It didn't hurt my feelings a bit.

Article in the Detroit paper today on how homebuilders are having problems getting workers. The wages are much lower than they were a few years ago.

I had one do that estimate tic-tac-toe game on me a coupla tears ago. I had cleared and bush-hogged an old farmstead for them, and he wanted me to bid on the mowing, and some landscaping. I was too high for him on the mowing so he went with mr lowball, and his can crew. They powerseeded the lawn, and used too much seed, plus only went over it one way, so there were numerous skips, some 24" wide! They built him a paver basket ball court, against the side of an old tobacco barn, did no drainage work, and the BBall court is all washed out, now. He called, and asked if I would repair it, I told him, to go back to the guy who installed it for warrantee work, I don't fix other contractor's work!

A guy I worked with on a commercial job as a drywall finisher told me about the time he did a finishing job on a house for a small contractor. My friend supplied the mud and did the sanding (nasty job, if you've ever done it) . When he finished, he submitted the bill for the labor and material. They guy kept putting him off and putting him off and funny thing, nothing else was getting done on the job, like paint or trim, other than some landscaping. So my friend decided to take matters into his own hands, he drug the lawn sprinklers inside the house, turned them on and left. Never did hear from the guy either.