1. The electrican is a sole trader trying to stay below the VAT threshold, it's easy to do this if you are just selling your labour, much harder if you are also buying and reselling materials.
2. The electrican does most of their work as a subby and doesn't want to get involved in the materials supply game.
While valid points as to why he does not want to be suppling materials, just telling the customer to get it in would generally result in a complete farce of stuff missing, stuff wrong, and stuff thats the cheapest brand possible.
It's best handled by communicating the list of what is required to the wholesaler, confirming that appropiate pricing will be used, and telling them that the customer will be comming along with their credit card to pay for them, and either picking them up, or leaving them to be picked and so you just have to swing by on the way there to pick up a box thats all been paid for and picked.
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