Todays residential repairmen, Suck !!

Nevada Ed

Nevada Ed

US Veteran
Bronze Supporter
Joined
Nov 2, 2012
Messages
13,764
Reaction score
13,284
Location
Reno Nv
I hate to say it but the people that companies send out to your home to fix stuff,
just don't have the knowledge or the skills need to do the job right or correctly,
and might even leave your "Unit" in worse shape that when they arrived.

Earlier this year I had to have a 2nd repairman do $610, worth of "Repairs"
to company "A's" work on one of my repair jobs.

This month I had a company come out to check my elec. water heater out
due to only having warm water.
Five days later, the "Hot" water was, warm again.

They could not find out the problem.

The reset button kept popping out.

I went and bought a new thermostat and looked on the net how to install it.
Even though I worked 33 years in commercial construction, I am deathly afraid of electricity,
and lot looking forward to my quest.

I found out where the problem was.
The plumber had broken a wire and only had 1" to play with, to
splice in a longer section and used a "Screw on" plastic joiner, to do the job.
It must have been a poor fit, causing the thermo unit to "Pop".

Plus, why do electricians use "Short" wires to do their work!!

Even two other wires were of almost "Minimum lengths" to reach to their connection points,
with no "Extra" that could be on hand, just in case?

After reshaping and working with the wires, I finally got all six wires
onto the new thermostat, and turned back on the power, as the wife watched the heater, for sparks or smoke. :eek: :rolleyes:

Luck was with me and it was "Humming" inside, so maybe hot water in an hour or so.

I though my worst fears were the Dentist..........

times have changed. :mad:
 
Register to hide this ad
Watch our for repairmen.

My Watch: An Instructive Little Tale
Written in 1870 by Mark Twain

Quote; My uncle William (now deceased, alas!) used to say that a good
horse was a good horse until it had run away once, and that a good
watch was a good watch until the repairers got a chance at it. And
he used to wonder what became of all the unsuccessful tinkers, and
gunsmiths, and shoemakers, and engineers, and blacksmiths; but
nobody could ever tell him.

Full story at link:
http://infomotions.com/sandbox/alex-lite/twain-my-640.pdf

One experience with self appointed and self annoited repair person was classic.
A "roofer" was on site doing some work.
I pulled out my magnet on an arm and swept for nails on gorund.
He was totally amazed and did not know about magnets to pick up dropped nails.
It would have taken a major ubgrade to qualify him as a "Bubba".

Bekeart
 
I got very lucky a few months ago. Leaving one of my favorite gunshops I spotted a handyman van in the parking lot. I went back in and asked who was attached to it.

A real nice guy said it was his and that while it's a company truck he does side jobs. His speciality is electrical but as it turns out he's very handy at all kinds of jobs. He's done a number of small jobs for me and I've passed his name/number on to some friends that have been equally happy with his work.

Got lucky on this one!
 
How frustrating. There are some excellent vocational apprenticeship systems, though they are rare here.


Sent from my motorola one 5G using Tapatalk
 
Nation wide shortage of electricians coming. Actually it's already here. The last time I tried to hire an electrician to rewire a hot water heater to code it took two weeks and numerous phone calls to 5 different contractors before I found one willing to do a job that took 3 hours. I wanted it done right so it could be inspected and documented. What a PIA.
 
My son left the oil fields 7 years ago and went to work for an electrical contractor with 30 employees. 7 months later he was sniped by a commercial contractor with 900 employees,given a $2/hr raise and put in their apprentice program. He’s a journeyman now with lots of overtime as they can’t hire enough skilled people.It’s a good time to be in the trades.
 
When I find someone good, whether it's a builder or a mechanic or a dentist, I become the most loyal customer in the world. Unfortunately, my builder is so good he's too busy for small jobs. I have a mechanic who is truly a mechanical genius when it comes to repairing things. He has kept my old Checy truck running and driving like new now for two decades, and it recently passed 500,000 miles. I still trust it every day and use it on long trips. Unfortunately for me, the US post office discovered how good he is and he's now almost 100% of his time rebuilding every bit of all those old mail trucks that have millions of miles on them.

Like others have said, there are good tradesmen out there, they're just in such high demand that it's hard to find them.
 
bigwheelzip said:
How frustrating. There are some excellent vocational apprenticeship systems, though they are rare here.


Sent from my motorola one 5G using Tapatalk
Click to expand...

This is totally different, you are talking "Union Shop" here.
4-6 six years to be a Journeyman, in most trades.

It is rare today to see a non-union shop send it's workers to college or trade schools to learn their craft.
They might have a class on their site, where workers tell the new workers, what they know.

However, this is not working out in the Reno areas, from what I am seeing, over the last three years,

and, yes there are skilled workers out there but if you need emergency work done today
in the plumbing field, 7 out of the 8 offices that I called, had a
minimum, four day waiting period, some a week, before they could do repairs !!

Same day repairs or emergency calls are expensive, if you can find a business, that can come out .

When the wife wants a hot shower............. it is an EMERGENCY !!
 
Last edited:
I don't really trust anyone to do something I can do myself. Some things are beyond my scope but not many.

It is a good time to be in the trades and be competent. When the housing market slows down, more tradesmen should be available and looking for work.
 
A friend of mine had a rental home, "plumbers" were working on a drain in the crawl space. My friend and I stopped by on our way to lunch, and the occupant said the hot water tank exploded! I walked over, used my Swiss Army Knife screwdriver to inspect the wires. Someone had grabbed the 220V wires and jerked until they shorted! The nitwit plumber was climbing out the crawl space. I told him to call the shop and tell the owner he owed my friend a new Hot Water tank and installation. He ran for his truck and drove off. I called the plumbing office and told them their man tried to short the water tank out and started an electrical fire. The house owner and I were going to castrate every male employee of their company so the idiots couldn't reproduce! They denied everything but no charge on the drain pipe.

We drove to the hardware store bought 3 feet of wire and 6 large wire nuts. Ran new wires from the connection box to the top thermostat. Was done in about 8 minutes! My buddy bought my lunch! (It was his turn to buy anyway!)

There are crooks and thieves everywhere!

Ivan
 
I wanted to enclose my 400-sq foot, under roof patio and make it an inside room--AC, floor tile, tongue & groove ceiling, etc. Called several contractors and asked for estimates. We went with the only one who bothered to respond.

Yeah, they're not really hungry enough.
 
Here, when you get an appliance repair person to come to your home to fix something they are recently arrived from a country that has no electricity and few or no home appliances. They do, however, come to your home with their old world attitude that they have a job so they are connected and since you called for help you are not connected and are several steps below them. It quickly goes down ill after that.
 
I am old enough to know I am not ever going up on a roof again. Last spring we had a 70mph wind that ripped two sheets of tin off my barn roof and flipped them over the other side. I couldn't get a contractor, barn builder or handyman to even talk about repair. I finally found a guy that was about 45 miles away that came and gave me an estimate. He was a big farm kid, maybe 285 pounds and a shaggy beard, but he said he would do it. He bought the two new sheets of tin, screws his tools, truck and time. He replaced the tin and crawled all over that roof screwing down loose spots.

He was on my place over four hours and probably about that much driving two trips. He charged me $500.00, I paid him $550.00 and was very happy. I told him lunch was on me.

When I was that age I did all kinds of second jobs for my fun money, now you can rarely find help.
 
I hate it when you call somebody and they tell you they will be there tomorrow or whenever and they don't show up OR call . I had a guy call me two days after his scheduled appointment and said that he got hung up on another job because of material delivery issues . I asked him if his phone was also broken ? Told him his services were no longer needed .
Called a fence company for an estimate on a short section of wood privacy fence . I told the woman exactly what I needed and she said she would work up an estimate and email it to me . A month later I got an estimate from her . I didn't even respond ..
 
I've owned a general contracting company for decades doing commercial and residential remodels and new construction in OKC. People ask me all the time if I know of a handy man and I tell them I wish I did, I could use about 5 or 6 of them right now. One guy in my church said he had a handy many service and could do simple home repairs, tree trimming, and painting. I said great, whats your rate and he said $117 hour. It turns out he couldn't do much more complicated things than hang a shelf or replace a door knob and he was swamped with a backlog of work!
 
Last edited:
I try to be as self sufficient as possible. In the 43 years as a homeowner I have always been able to do my own plumbing, electrical, carpentry, automotive, motorcycle, small engines and firearms repairs. I help friends and neighbors out as much as I can and truly feel bad for the people who are not handy and don't have the aptitude. All I can say is I hope they make a ton of money!

Good and honest tradesmen are quite hard to find and when you do find one they are busy busy people.

There are a few exceptions to what I will do myself. I will NOT do anything at all related to landscaping! Hate it, hate it, hate it!! I just had my landscaper here yesterday and while I paid a lot I was very thankful he showed up on time and did a great job planting new shrubs and trees. While I will tackle small painting jobs, when it comes to repainting the entire house that is when I start dialing the phone! Used to do that many years ago - not a fan of big painting jobs!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Latest posts

Back
Top