Owning your own home

It does feel more natural for sundries to be included in the labour rate (as does fuel, transport, bookkeeping, etc.)

Doesn't work that way, some of the sundries (repaircare epoxy resin) are too expensive to include in the labour rate and it would mean the 1 hour jobs I do on the bike are also paying to run the van.

Another thing I've never done but will have to start doing is double the labour rate for the first hour. I can't do 8 hours of 1 hour jobs in a day if I'm going on the time I arrive on site.

Your final point, yes, a lot of people will be using materials they know and trust. Nothing worse than getting crappy materials that slow you down or mess your s**t up.

The bike shop analogy is fine.

Incredible read last few pages. @princeperch coming across like an entitled tosser here. Amazing.

I'd be happy to reveal to a client what the mark-up is if they asked, but I wouldn't put it in the quote/invoice. It's never actually been asked of course because mark-up on materials/third-party services is a given, it's expected.

but will have to start doing is double the labour rate for the first hour

At least. The telecoms company I used to work for would have a much higher rate for the first hour, then lower for 2nd and subsequent. Followed by a slightly reduced rate for half Day (4 hours) and again for full day (8 hours).

Meant punching down a cat 5 cable could cost a customer what they considered a ridiculous amount, but we had to cover the engineer's time and travel going to and from site. Obviously B2B is not directly comparable to what is being discussed here, but the principles work out.

Am I in the memes thread?

Maybe sundries wasn't the best choice of phrase. I guess I'm talking about a bit of clear silicone vs £15 Elephant's Foreskin coloured silicone to match these particular tiles which you probably can't use before it goes off. Or a couple of screws to attach something vs 20,000 screws to build your decking.

As to the charging more for the first hour - again trades vary, but that doesn't seem uncommon or unreasonable to me. A mate basically adds 2 days to any job under a certain timeframe to account for setup/cleanup. On a 1 day job that obviously X3 the cost, making him potentially uncompetitive, but that's him pricing according to his costs.

It would be a totally unreasonable thing to ask, because you'd need to factor in all the other costs too.

But here we are talking about literally buying something that does a job then fitting it. Like an exhaust, or the proverbial bike chain*, or a tap. As someone said earlier if it's a % then that's a pretty finders fee for some peoples tabs judging on the kitchen/extension thread.

*how come this hypothetical bike shop isn't also changing the cassette?

Yes.

Sure but it’s one or the other and a ‘day rate’ should cover all normal business overheads.

you also have to factor in the “can you just”

this can cost time and money and is often expected to be free.

As I say, it’s only really helpful if the customer already knows exactly what they need, where to buy it from, can supply it in time, are happy to buy a bit extra just in case (which I always do, but don’t charge for) - most of the time this criteria can’t be met so just makes more work for everyone.

On the flip side, the guy who did your boiler sounds like a wanker/div.

Which kind of gets to the heart of the issue: people have so many bad experiences with tradespeople that they want to have more control over the situation by buying materials etc to avoid being exploited. And while I totally understand, as someone who is up front and honest with their customers, it makes my life way harder when everyone is constantly haggling and treating you with suspicion. Even in this thread loads of people don’t want to accept that acquiring materials has costs and takes time. I need to build in holiday pay, sick pay, time spent doing admin or any other unpaid activity etc into my labour rate - and this is with people already baulking at hourly rates (because they almost always draw a false comparison to rates of pay for full time employment).

The other crux is that people ALWAYS think they’re being reasonable as a customer, no matter what they ask. As I say, this is why I gave up, lol.

Sounds like the venerable call out fee.

My usual punter based routine is: do I have a trade I trust to do the work based on previous, if so message and book them, pay bill.

If not get Recommendations from friends/family then quotes and if I'm happy to pay what they are asking then boom I'll book.

Having a rage about how the quote/invoice is broken down seems churlish. I pay the whole bill not just parts of it.

It's like the old gag:

"
Hourly rates:

£100/hr
£140/hr if you watch and ask questions
£180/hr if you help
£220/hr if you worked on it first
£260/hr if you and people in online forums tell me how to do my job
"

Yeah that's not how I work, you always have to communicate with the client. Dont also know why you'd give yourself grief fitting something that you've not said but heyho

people have so many bad experiences with tradespeople

And vice versa. Opinions like that become pretty entrenched pretty quickly, and everything is benchmarked against the lowest common denominator.

My current plumber is great, although he taaaaaalks.

Is the bike chain 5,9,10,12 speed, some weird SRAM spec?

You are also paying for the knowledge and experience of the staff to choose the right part based on the system(bike), that should have a cost.

People know bikes here but could you choose the right valve to replace a damaged in a CH system?

Just because a punter has the internet doesnt mean they will source the right part (done it myself when I thought I could fix things myself then ended up paying for a plumber and the correct part anyway) skills knowledge and experience have a cost.

Tbf, it’s a lonely job being a sole trader.

Putting this thread on ignore for my own sanity.

Aye but on Princes theory earlier he's not paying you a mark up for just picking up the fuckin phone.

Great read the past few pages. I've no idea if the tradesmen I've used have charged me on top of the cost of the materials for their buying / choosing / whatever (is that the root of this discussion? I've lost track). It's never occured to me that this is something that happens tbh.

Had I known I probably would have been a bit miffed about it. I've no interest in buying the materials your need and I'm happy to leave that to you as the expert.
However, I'm already paying you once for your expert opinion, knowledge of what to buy and contacts of where to get it in your daily rate. Not sure why I'd have to pay you extra to apply that knowledge at the builders merchant vs in my house fitting it.

Software developer here, If I was consulting I wouldn't charge extra to do it if one day I had to apply a slightly different subset of my knowledge in a different location to the usual one.

Yeah but you’d charge if you needed to go to the shops to go and buy something for a client wouldn’t you 🤦‍♂️

I might charge them petrol and parking... I wouldn't charge them anything on top of each item I bought.

Edit - but obviously this is hypothetical as I dont't have to do this, and there are likely no exact equivalences... I wouldn't charge them a percentage of any licence costs I used, or in choosing to download or choose one new tool over another or something - it'd be in my day rate.

So you’re happy to not charge an hour or two of your time? Mental IMHO.

I avoided that as its the same thing as I got into with prince. Ridiculous logic.

Putting this thread on ignore for my own sanity

That went well ;-)