Plumbing Cost For Buckingham Palace

[ChrisR]

WHat can the OP do? He has one expensive looking quote, one "vague".
He can only keep asking for quotes

 

[Softus]

I've just given him one. It was very specific, and not at all vague.

 

[stevebamford]

You seem to have asked 10 people to all come and give free quotes on your system

The cost to them of that could be about £200 each so that timewasting could explain £1800 of the price!

To me its criminal to waste peoples time like that.

Thats why I never make free visits to give quotes which are only then used as the basis of a specification and as a baseline price to be bettered.

Instead I ask a few questions and use a simplified form of quoting to give a telephone budgetary price which in your case would come to a little under £10.000 had it been in our local area.

Alternatively I charge for a visit to advise on the options available which the owner can then use as the basis of a specification for local installers to quote on.

Tony

Tony - you're being way too harsh. I spoke to several people by phone first and then I tried to get 3 quotes

1st guy didn't turn up
2nd guy seemed very competent during visit but never gave me a quote
3rd guy quoted £17K

so i ended up with one stupid quote !

so then tried three more

4th guy didn't turn up
5th guy quoted £12K but was vague about what he was going to do
6th guy didn't turn up

so now have one vaguely reasonable quote which still seems high and the guy was a bit vague..

so I've had 3 no-shows which has wasted loads of MY time, 1 who hasn't quoted yet, 1 stupid quote and 1 vague 'well it might cost you blah .... but i won't say what i'm going to do'

which is why i've phoned the next batch ......

 

[stevebamford]

can anyone let me know a ballpark on this

The job would cost one million pounds, including all materials and VAT.

i'll have two please !

and do you do electrics

 

[SeanT]

You seem to have asked 10 people to all come and give free quotes on your system

The cost to them of that could be about £200 each so that timewasting could explain £1800 of the price!

To me its criminal to waste peoples time like that.

I don't agree with that.
1. It doesn't cost £200 to get a bloke to site, even in a large bureaucratic company like the one I work for it only costs £50-60 including an hours work out of the guy once he gets there.
2. Someone working on their own / for a smaller company won't come out and give a quote if they have loads of work on, or they'll do it in their spare time if they do.
3. If you want the work, you have to quote for it.
4. It's a big job, that he's had one unrealistic quote for, and a load of people waste HIS time coming round, looking, and not quoting, or not showing up - maybe he should send an invoice to the ones who didn't show up for wasting his precious time (I'd suggest £200 going by your rates....) - how much is his time worth? As the op says, what else can he do other than get more quotes - it's not like he's getting ten quotes for a 500 quid job is it??

 

[htgeng]

What would be really funny is if he went with BG and they then contracted the work to the guy who quoted 17k.

I suggest you go onto the ARGI website and ask there if anyone would give you a price. I have done a project where I got about 4 days paid help from another argi person and it worked out well.

 

[Agile]

I don't agree with that.
1. It doesn't cost £200 to get a bloke to site, even in a large bureaucratic company like the one I work for it only costs £50-60 including an hours work out of the guy once he gets there.
2. Someone working on their own / for a smaller company won't come out and give a quote if they have loads of work on, or they'll do it in their spare time if they do.

I dont see how you can say that doing a quotation can ever be done "in their spare time"???

Free time is for playing golf or being with the family, not doing quotations!

To give a proper quotation its necessary to spend at least an hour on site to examine the existing system and discuss the options for replacement. Then there is travelling to and from the property. In London thats about one hour each way on average. Then it would take about an hour to check the prices of the major parts to be used and then another hour to prepare the quotation.

I am talking about a proper competitive quotation and not just "New boiler and rads £17,000!

In less time than that I could have done a chargeable boiler repair!

Tony

 

[stevebamford]

fair enough that quotes cost money but thats part of running a business. Ultimately no quotes means no work!

But i fail to see any excuse to arrange to come round for a quote and then not bother to turn up - and not even to make a phone call beforehand to rearrange or cancel

as you can probably guess I'm getting pretty frustrated about it all !

 

[D_Hailsham]

I dont see how you can say that doing a quotation can ever be done "in their spare time"???

Free time is for playing golf or being with the family, not doing quotations!

I agree it's not "spare time"; but it's not chargeable time either.

A few year ago we decided to replace our very old patio, which was very uneven and cracking up. We approached three local landscapers. Each of them spent about an hour on site, making sketches, measuring up. discussing alternative designs and paving. They then went away and, a few days later, we received their quotes. One of them even had produced coloured scale plans showing exactly what was proposed.

Not one of them made any mention about charging for the quotation

Architects are another example. A firm or architects will spend, literally, thousands of pounds competing for a large development without any payment. (I was told, by an architect, that the model of say, an office block or Terminal 5, can cost £40,000 or more.) They know that if they want the chance of the job they have to do the work.

 

[Agile]

Neither of those senarios are quite the same as a quotation for plumbing work.

They are effectively proposing a design for the customer to choose from and if their design is selected then they over charge for it.

Architects have the small print well tied up but you could have chosen the landscape design you liked and got any old builder to build it for you much cheaper.

A heating engineer will examine the existing system and find out the clients requirements and advise on a technical solution to the problems. I call that consultancy and I charge for that. After I have been paid then the client can choose anyone he likes to implement my solution.

If the client has a plan of the requirements as some architects do then we give a free quote based on the plans.

I dont normally make unpaid visits.

Tony

 

[JohnD]

I don't know about Architects, but lots of businesses will not waste their time preparing proposals if they think they have less than (say) a 1-in-3 chance of getting the job.

 

[gas4you]

I usually do quotes on the way home at 4-6 o'clock. Spend around an hour I suppose for a full system such as this, measuring all room sizes etc asking what they would like and compare that to waht can be done for a reasonable price.

Then go home, work out heat loss/rad sizes 30 mins, then price up parts on Plumbs web site, 10 mins, type out quote, 10 mins, put in post with brochure on the boiler etc.

Yes it's time I would rather be spending at home doing paper work
but thats life for a sole trader I'm afraid.

I would estimate between £10-£12K plus Vat, for all quality components and a warranty/back up you can trust for 2 years.

 

[D_Hailsham]

Neither of those senarios are quite the same as a quotation for plumbing work.

They are effectively proposing a design for the customer to choose from and if their design is selected then they over charge for it.

And, of course plumbers/heating engineers never overcharge.

 

[stevebamford]

I usually do quotes on the way home at 4-6 o'clock. Spend around an hour I suppose for a full system such as this, measuring all room sizes etc asking what they would like and compare that to waht can be done for a reasonable price.

Then go home, work out heat loss/rad sizes 30 mins, then price up parts on Plumbs web site, 10 mins, type out quote, 10 mins, put in post with brochure on the boiler etc.

Yes it's time I would rather be spending at home doing paper work
but thats life for a sole trader I'm afraid.

I would estimate between £10-£12K plus Vat, for all quality components and a warranty/back up you can trust for 2 years.

Thanks v much

 

[stevebamford]

An update on my heating woes...

1st guy didn't turn up
2nd guy seemed very competent during visit but never gave me a quote
3rd guy quoted £17K
4th guy didn't turn up
5th guy quoted £12K but was vague about what he was going to do
6th guy didn't turn up
7th guy (BG) didn't turn up
8th guy - turned up, seemed very competent - but hasn't given me a quote (2 weeks ago)
9th guy - should be here tomorrow
10th guy - turned up tonight - seemed very competent - and had installed thermal stores which is an interesting option - will wait and see whether I get a quote

so still one quote so far ....

so should i contact another batch ? or should i buy a book on installing your own heating ?