SteveCritten
Distinguished Member
Just my opinion but £45 ph seems a lot but not overly excessive, what they have done though is double the cost of the part. Up in in t'north £25 ph for an electrician is reasonable.
Just my opinion but £45 ph seems a lot but not overly excessive, what they have done though is double the cost of the part. Up in in t'north £25 ph for an electrician is reasonable.
Had a sparky over last week from a local company to supply & fit a replacement smoke alarm in my home. She came to my home, spent 2 mins looking and said she would nip out and buy a suitable smoke alarm from the local hardware store and come back. She came back around 1 hour later and spent around 20 mins fitting the new one, no issues there. However I've just received an invoice today from the company, and they charged me 2 hours labour + parts. Surely they should have charged me 1 hour + parts? I was always under the impression that labour time meant actual time spent carrying out the work, not travel time etc? I mean what if the sparky decided to go for a coffee or have a quick bite to eat whilst out shopping for the parts? I've already queried the charge with the company so waiting to hear from them but I suspect they're just going to say that time taken to buy the parts falls under labour time.
Cheers
Anything to do with Crestron and AMX control comes with big prices as well. There's a limited pool of engineers who know how to program the stuff and have the software to do so. It really is a licence to print money - even at the moment.We got somebody coming to commission an addressable controller (glorified dimmer switch).
£750 + vat.
I agree with the others: if they were asked to fit a new smoke alarm, they should have brought one with them. It's not like there's a myriad of different smoke detectors: they detect smoke and make a loud beeping noise!!!
Anything to do with Crestron and AMX control comes with big prices as well. There's a limited pool of engineers who know how to program the stuff and have the software to do so. It really is a licence to print money - even at the moment.
If you ever get any work done on these type of systems always insist on a copy of the source code file, as if you ever want a modification, you will need this to give to the programmer, or they will have to start again from scratch. Programmers never like to hand this over, as it otherwise ties them into the job...
That doesn't mean they shouldn't take an alarm to fit. If they were concerned about 'compatibility', they only had to ask what type of alarm is to be replaced; a system alarm or stand alone alarm.There are a ‘myriad of different smoke detectors’, and manufacturers will not specify, that there alarms will work with other manufacturers devices.
BS 7671 states that manufacturers instructions should be taken into account. I would even suggest, you might need to check with a manufacturer if their new alarms are backward compatible with their older alarms.
That diesn
That doesn't mean they shouldn't take an alarm to fit. If they were concerned about 'compatibility', they only had to ask what type of alarm is to be replaced; a system alarm or stand alone alarm.
Thanks everyone. First of all, the company is a large technical company (locally based) and electrical works is just 1 of their divisions along with plumbing, heating, mechanical works etc. I've been using them for many years as I've always had good service from them and they charge fairly reasonable labour rates (£45/h) compared to other electricians in the area - many charge £80+/h !! But anyway I wasn't expecting them to have the smoke alarm in stock, I was expecting them to have a quick look in my property first and come at a later date, as they have previously done for other work - they have no call out charges. Or at the very least, They could have asked me to email them a photo of my existing failed smoke alarm so that they could buy a suitable one in advance of the visit.
They charged me £45/h labour (ex vat) + £42 for parts (ex vat) so £158 in total incl vat. However I've paid them £104 to their bank account (ie just 1 hours labour) and said I'm not paying them for 2 hours. If they kick up a fuss, I'll politely remind them of the time their plumber messed up the install of the immersion heater on my hot water cylinder causiing me huge inconvenience - the tw@t flooded the utility cupboard with water seaping downstairs into the kitchen through the ceiling. They paid for the decorating and repairs but I won't be forgetting that experience...