Browse Forums General Discussion 1 Mar 17, 2010 1:36 pm Firstly, I know that tradesmen are entitled to evenings/weekends off like the rest of us, but everyone I speak to thinks I should be at home during the day when they can come and give me a quote or do work, and they seem quite taken aback when I mention that I (and my husband) both work full time, and quite long hours. After all, the reason we can afford all these expensive renovations is the fact that we both have careers! This is a semi-rant, but how do you cope with this around a full time job, just take time off from work and hope your employer will understand (our jobs don't really allow a lot of this). Re: Tradesmen/work during business hours - how do you do it? 2Mar 17, 2010 1:46 pm Hi mishb, How about having a relative pop over to the house to ensure they can let the tradie in? I've seen my neighbours do that a few times, especially with these foxtel technicians... they never seem to want to do repairs over weekends, regardless how urgent the issue. Re: Tradesmen/work during business hours - how do you do it? 3Mar 17, 2010 1:51 pm alfy Hi mishb, How about having a relative pop over to the house to ensure they can let the tradie in? I've seen my neighbours do that a few times, especially with these foxtel technicians... they never seem to want to do repairs over weekends, regardless how urgent the issue. No relatives at all in my city, except for a cousin who lives way over on the other side of town. We don't know the neighbours well enough (only moved in a few months ago) although they are very lovely. And all of our good friends work full time too! Re: Tradesmen/work during business hours - how do you do it? 4Mar 17, 2010 2:12 pm mishb alfy Hi mishb, How about having a relative pop over to the house to ensure they can let the tradie in? I've seen my neighbours do that a few times, especially with these foxtel technicians... they never seem to want to do repairs over weekends, regardless how urgent the issue. No relatives at all in my city, except for a cousin who lives way over on the other side of town. We don't know the neighbours well enough (only moved in a few months ago) although they are very lovely. And all of our good friends work full time too! Ouch! Guess you could insist for a Saturday morning visit? Re: Tradesmen/work during business hours - how do you do it? 5Mar 17, 2010 2:24 pm some of us are flexible.. with quote times but day time is the best time to see everyting in full light... Kodiak Data Cabling onFaceBook Consult*, Design and Installation Data, TV, Home Theatre/ AV Cabling, Multi Room Audio, IP CCTV and Door Intercoms Ask for a Quote. *DIY DATA Cabling Is Ilegal Re: Tradesmen/work during business hours - how do you do it? 6Mar 17, 2010 2:28 pm My partner and I both have flexible working hours, which helps a lot. Also, we are both permanent employees and get annual leave etc. So even if we didn't have flexible hours there is still a way around it... take an annual day off or chuck a sikkie Re: Tradesmen/work during business hours - how do you do it? 7Mar 17, 2010 3:41 pm I've found some trades to be quite flexible, and happy to come in the late afternoon or early morning. That usually allows for only being a smidge late for work (or leaving early). We're lucky in that we have flexible working hours, so we can make up time when we need to. There have been times when I've had to get my mother or a friend come round and wait for a delivery though. I have no idea how you manage though, if you don't have access to leave or people who can help out. Is the work that you do at all compatible with working from home? Perhaps you could make arrangements to do that on occasion, at least on a temporary basis? Re: Tradesmen/work during business hours - how do you do it? 8Mar 17, 2010 4:41 pm I have had to take the occasional annual leave day, but I really do like to save those for actually taking a holiday. I don't mind doing it for major work, but not so someone can pop in for 20 minutes just to give a quote. We've had to take a few days off to have our house rewired (took 3 working days). I'd never take a sickie, I just don't do that. I've arranged to take tomorrow morning off for the installation of our spa fence. This has meant I've had to work late this week (I will be here until 8-9 pm), and when I called today to confirm, they have our job scheduled for Monday. When it's impossible for me to not be at work. Thanks guys. We were seriously thinking about putting an upper storey extension on our house, but decided against it as (among other reasons) I don't know how we could possibly do it while working the jobs we do. Re: Tradesmen/work during business hours - how do you do it? 9Mar 18, 2010 7:05 am I have similar issues... The only reason I can afford to build my house is because I work, a very fulltime job with exceptionally long hours (7am - 12pm is much more common than I'd like it to be). Taking even a couple of hours off is just not possible when deadlines loom and other people are waiting on my feedback for projects to progress. The biggest problem I've had to date is dealing with the council... "Just pop down and fill in this form and pay it" - Your office doesn't open till 9am - you close at 5pm and you refuse to take money over the phone or the internet even though you obviously have a merchant account that allows you to because you're already doing internet transactions online for some types of bills, you're more than an hour away from my office in peak hour traffic and I have a deadline every day for the next month that can't be shifted. If it wasn't for my Dad being able to drop past... I'm not sure how I would have managed. Re: Tradesmen/work during business hours - how do you do it? 10Mar 18, 2010 7:44 am Oh, I love this "just pop in" We had a slightly different situation - some tiles we had selected when we did our selections in Adelaide 6 months previously had become discontinued by the time the builder was up to the tiling stage - ok we said,we'll have a refund on those and pick our own from tiling centre here on the weekend. No, you have to pick from our approved centre in Adelaide, can you just pop in there by end of week and selelct something else? Just pop in ????!!!! We live in a country town 350 km from Adelaide - an 8 hour round trip away and we both work. Eventually they agreed to let us choose our own tiles here Re: Tradesmen/work during business hours - how do you do it? 11Mar 18, 2010 8:11 am Quote: I should be at home during the day when they can come and give me a quote or do work My wife and I both work so we face the same problem. I understand that tradies do not want to work afterhours and weekends and luckily I have the flexibility to leave the office and meet them. But what I hate is the no shows. Since we started our reno project, I must have left the office early and made the 40 minute drive home at least 5 times only to have the tradie not turn up. i would suggest nothing is unreasonable for PCI. we did all sorts, including checking the hot water, checking all the GPO's had power, testing that the showers were… 9 98695 Just to makea point about this, an approach that some people have found sucessful in negotiating these rises down, Is to provide some workings to the builder, specifying… 4 81734 The only thing to add to these comments is that where possible it's always good to try and work with people than just say "no" because you can. Having someone… 4 17153 |