It wasn’t CWJ from West Kirby by any chance? Simon Jones is an absolute cowboy.
Every builder thinks they’re some salt of the Earth Stakhanovite when in reality (as someone who has plenty of experience with them) they’re some of the whiniest, petulant, unhealthiest, belligerent chiselling crooks I’ve ever had the misfortune of dealing with.
Most construction companies have complete removed their entire snagging departments because the amount of snags these feckless cowboys can’t be bothered to correct is completely overwhelming them.
They’d have half their workforce ‘building’ and the other force cleaning up the lazy mistakes and cut corners of the first half.
So their solution is just to give up on audits and oversight which makes the problem so much worse.
Added to that the injury that all builders believe they’re poor buggers who are barely scraping by when the minimum starting salary of builders in this country is around double the median average salary.
Somebody needs to take them down a peg. They’ve ridden high on the horse for too long.
It looks like she is to some degree the author of her own misfortunes.
However, round here there is plenty of work and some builders are quoting up to 18 months lead time. And if you don’t pay a deposit, or agree to pay for materials up-front, you don’t even get on the wait list. Somebody else will.
I’ve plenty of nightmare builder stories if there was time.
No doubt in my mind that builders need regulating.
I’ve got no idea why there aren’t larger firms that deal with home owners or the public rather than waves of self employed guys.
They’d make a killing.
I assume they don’t really exist because people don’t want to deal with the general public.
I’ve probably only met one or two guys that I’d trust (one plasterer and one electrician) out of about 100.
Roofers are another breed of scammers.
I just do everything I can myself now – put myself on a plastering course, do my own basic electrics, tiling, flooring and also do any plumbing and carpentry.
A lot of the stuff is surprising easy and I’ve saved thousands getting it how I want it to a high quality.
Fitted my own engineered oak flooring with decent underlay at a cost of £650 for a 4.5 x 4m room.
Money saved on that is money that can be spent on things I can’t do.
This is why I will never give anyone a deposit “for materials” unless I have a history with them.
Any builder that could do something as big as an extension has a credit line with their suppliers, if they don’t I would immediately question why.
Generally I just don’t use trades that aren’t on recommendation from other trades anyway, it hasn’t failed me yet.
If only people would stop hiring builders dressed in cowboy outfits.
My EU immigrants workers did an excellent job within the time allocated and under budget.
That was a few years ago. They are gone now.
I think that the root cause of the issue is how we, Brits, culturally and societally treat and think of construction and builders.
In the UK Construction is treated as a trade for underachievers, criminals, and academic failures.
I had a mate from Aus who over there is a “tradie”. A respected professional career that is highly sought after and respected. He came here briefly to the UK and absolutely fucking hated it. He’d go on job sites and dozens of people there were ex criminals who couldn’t find any other work, absolute dossers, people who could not give a flying fuck. As a result he absolutely fucking hated being here so went back to Australia.
The issue with construction in the UK is (as always) classism. Until we change the way we think of construction it will always encourage this us and them mentality/divide. Until it regains it’s status as a skilled trade, until it’s actually given a crumb of respect you won’t get respectable builders. You won’t get builders who don’t act like criminals when they’re treated like criminals. You won’t get trustworthy builders until you get people who can trust builders.
Also, how fucked up is our prison system if a reformed criminal who has served their time is considered so unreformed and dangerous that they have to be banished to a construction site because God forbid we put them in a dangerous place like behind a desk in an office!
Isn’t the construction industry at all levels known for being corrupt af though?
So, how do you actually vet out the bad ones and find a good builder?
As a builder myself who wouldn’t dream of doing this and in fact probably even takes the knock himself plenty of times this makes me sad. It only increases distrust with customers and makes it even harder for the honest ones to do a good job when everything is viewed with scepticism.
I would never get building work done unless I absolutely had to. Ripping people off is an accepted part of the job.
Loads of it going on here
The “down from Londons” all seem to be buying the historic waterside properties and having them gutted to get the bi-fold doors and grey double glazing checked off their lists
Some of these projects have been going on since 2020 while the owners are away
Good work if you can get it
If anyone is reading this ever has any construction work done, never pay for anything up front. Agree a payment schedule with your contractor, or better yet use JCT contract, and only pay for what has been fitted or installed. Use contractors with a solid history of similar work in the local area. Again, never pay for anything up front at all. Any decent contractor will have credit with a supplier and won’t need a penny from you to obtain materials.
What kind of idiot is paying in advance for no work done? XD
If there is a legit company offering services, they will have enough fluency to start the work with a small advance. And then you pay them as the work progress, with final payment after finishing and agreeing on that (quality etc).
People are getting scammed because they are looking to do cheap shady, no rules, of-tax work. Had it coming.
so many total cunts in the building industry all wanting cash ….many gain your trust then hit you with oh ive had to charge a bit more cos it taken longer etc etc …they often dont turn up when they should especially if youve paid them some money …
This comes as no surprise. They could do something about this ultimately, if they wanted.
If Nick Knowles got on board with enough experts, they should vet tradesmen to a high standard and all contractors would have approval. If you seek a trade done with no approval, that is kinda your own fault if it all goes tits up because you cut corners and took risks.
Then the tradesmen don’t need to be vetted by the people that need the job done. Who puts the onus on the buyer? This is why we have gas fitters who have Corgi registration. Building matters are no joke, and this kind of shit should have been clamped down on years ago.
Meanwhile online is full of faked reviews as ever, often you don’t have the time to verify. Hence the idea that the experts validate/vet, it IS their speciality after all.
But try bringing it up. It seems some of these so called experts became wannabe football pundits instead.. and then we wonder why this country is so fucked..
Yeah if you can detect cynicism in my replies of late, maybe you’re starting to get a good idea of why. The shit state of things lately is astounding. It could be better than this, but it’s not, is it? Nor is it likely gonna be unless stubborn Nimbys accept change needs to come above vanity.
Honestly, construction, or anything related even to handyman etc, workers in Essex area are mostly horror. Are there normal ones? Possibly, maybe wasn’t lucky enough. Charge RIDICULOUS amounts, work ethic…what even is that. Quality, varying from 2 to 6 maybe.
This grows to such a scale because the government, police, trading standards do nothing about it.
My friend wanted to replace a leaking roof on her extension. She found builders on reputable website with good reviews and history. When these builders were away, she got another builder to inspect the works and he basically said that everything was done not according to standards and they used cheapest and inadequate materials possible – they didn’t use materials my friend paid for. She confronted the builders and they told her that another builder was out of his mind etc. and then started threatening her that they will rip everything off if she does not agree to complete and pay the rest of the money. She called the police to take them away off the property. The police did come, but they were advocating for fraudster builders and tried to persuade my friend to let them continue work!
She managed to explain that they are committing a fraud by showing the invoice and the labels from materials she took from the skip – they didn’t match. That’s when police told them to leave and police left as well, saying it is a civil matter and none of their business.
That’s when it started going off the rails. My friend hired new builders to do the job again, but these muppets would be coming every morning and threatened new builders that they are going to “sort them out”, they also followed one of the builders home and were taking pictures of his wife, then next morning showed up with like 10 people and showed that builder picture of his home and his wife and told him if he wants to be able to walk, and his wife safe he needs to leave the job and so he did.
Guess what police said? They said that it’s not a crime to take pictures and it’s not their problem that the new builder was not man enough to stand up.
New builder said it’s not safe to work at her place and canceled the job taking the deposit.
She asked police if they could help her making sure these people don’t harass her. Police was not interested.
She tried to hire a security company to see if they could protect her home while the works are ongoing, but every single company refused to work mostly saying it’s a too small job.
Can you imagine something like this happening in the 1st world country?
She spent most of her time stressed as these people kept calling her that they will come at night and destroy her house. Called police multiple times and every time police said that it is a civil matter and she shouldn’t waste their time.
Eventually she found a builder who decided to take the job despite the risk that was explained to him. He brought his mates who were into MMA etc. and told the fraudsters if they show up again, they’ll never be found. They indeed stopped coming and builder finished the job.
The whole thing caused my friend a severe depression, and cost 4 times over the budget and she had to borrow money from friends.
Couple of months later the fraudsters started calling her again from time to time saying things like “we are coming tonight, you fraudster woman, we will take what’s ours” etc.
They would send her texts e.g. before Christmas they send “Better be home this Christmas, there will be a surprise for you”. So she actually canceled a trip to her parents and didn’t invite anyone to her place out of fear and shame.
Trading standards were also not interested. They said something along the line that builders probably made a mistake with the materials and my friend overreacted and this is not a case they would want to follow as it is a waste of time.
To my knowledge these people were still operating as of last year and probably a ton of people, who don’t know about the trade have their roofs done against building regulations and will probably have to re-do everything if found out.
This is what you pay tax for. You think you will get help when in need, but police will only shit on you.
We’re having some bathroom updating work done at the moment, and I’m chatting to the foreman about his collection of Porsches and he tells me which Porsche garage he thinks is the best. I’m actually fine with that – he does excellent work and our house is a bit of a nightmare to work on (being 400 years old). His company’s expensive, but the work is done really well, on time, and (apart from the plumber who’s a bit of an arsehole) the tradesmen are great. I can’t wait for it to be finished, though.
If she has an agreement in writing and knows the people and their address she can take them to “small claims “court. Fees for £10,000 to £200,000 are 5% of the claim, but I would say it is well worth it to retrieve the money. The builders either have to cough up, and if they don’t they will get CCJs and court appointed collectors after them.
I was a roofer and the amount of shit we’re getting in the comments is both understood and sad.
Same thing happened to my mum. A rogue builder took £18K from my mum for a new kitchen and some renovation in 2017. The state of the work was shocking and the entire kitchen began to fall apart within 6 months. The electrics were shoddy and another electrician had to come and correct the builders errors despite the builder being qualified allegedly. £18K down the drain. My poor mum who was in her early eighties at the time hid a lot from us otherwise we would have dealt with the cowboy builder. Horrible situation
In the US, we call them Hillbilly Contractors. Pretty close to your description.
Get three bids and then do checks on the one you like the best. Pay for materials yourself, a deposit for the work and then the balance when work is done.
I was quoted £400 to fit a worktop between two walls and a hole for a sink. It was literally two cuts. The unit, plumbing and battens were already in place.
I did it in one hour for the price of some new jigsaw blades £5.
As someone who works in a DIY shop, it’s amazing how many people who are paid to be painters don’t know shit about what paints are which.
I work in construction and cowboys are rife at the moment
28 comments
It wasn’t CWJ from West Kirby by any chance? Simon Jones is an absolute cowboy.
Every builder thinks they’re some salt of the Earth Stakhanovite when in reality (as someone who has plenty of experience with them) they’re some of the whiniest, petulant, unhealthiest, belligerent chiselling crooks I’ve ever had the misfortune of dealing with.
Most construction companies have complete removed their entire snagging departments because the amount of snags these feckless cowboys can’t be bothered to correct is completely overwhelming them.
They’d have half their workforce ‘building’ and the other force cleaning up the lazy mistakes and cut corners of the first half.
So their solution is just to give up on audits and oversight which makes the problem so much worse.
Added to that the injury that all builders believe they’re poor buggers who are barely scraping by when the minimum starting salary of builders in this country is around double the median average salary.
Somebody needs to take them down a peg. They’ve ridden high on the horse for too long.
It looks like she is to some degree the author of her own misfortunes.
However, round here there is plenty of work and some builders are quoting up to 18 months lead time. And if you don’t pay a deposit, or agree to pay for materials up-front, you don’t even get on the wait list. Somebody else will.
I’ve plenty of nightmare builder stories if there was time.
No doubt in my mind that builders need regulating.
I’ve got no idea why there aren’t larger firms that deal with home owners or the public rather than waves of self employed guys.
They’d make a killing.
I assume they don’t really exist because people don’t want to deal with the general public.
I’ve probably only met one or two guys that I’d trust (one plasterer and one electrician) out of about 100.
Roofers are another breed of scammers.
I just do everything I can myself now – put myself on a plastering course, do my own basic electrics, tiling, flooring and also do any plumbing and carpentry.
A lot of the stuff is surprising easy and I’ve saved thousands getting it how I want it to a high quality.
Fitted my own engineered oak flooring with decent underlay at a cost of £650 for a 4.5 x 4m room.
Money saved on that is money that can be spent on things I can’t do.
This is why I will never give anyone a deposit “for materials” unless I have a history with them.
Any builder that could do something as big as an extension has a credit line with their suppliers, if they don’t I would immediately question why.
Generally I just don’t use trades that aren’t on recommendation from other trades anyway, it hasn’t failed me yet.
If only people would stop hiring builders dressed in cowboy outfits.
My EU immigrants workers did an excellent job within the time allocated and under budget.
That was a few years ago. They are gone now.
I think that the root cause of the issue is how we, Brits, culturally and societally treat and think of construction and builders.
In the UK Construction is treated as a trade for underachievers, criminals, and academic failures.
I had a mate from Aus who over there is a “tradie”. A respected professional career that is highly sought after and respected. He came here briefly to the UK and absolutely fucking hated it. He’d go on job sites and dozens of people there were ex criminals who couldn’t find any other work, absolute dossers, people who could not give a flying fuck. As a result he absolutely fucking hated being here so went back to Australia.
The issue with construction in the UK is (as always) classism. Until we change the way we think of construction it will always encourage this us and them mentality/divide. Until it regains it’s status as a skilled trade, until it’s actually given a crumb of respect you won’t get respectable builders. You won’t get builders who don’t act like criminals when they’re treated like criminals. You won’t get trustworthy builders until you get people who can trust builders.
Also, how fucked up is our prison system if a reformed criminal who has served their time is considered so unreformed and dangerous that they have to be banished to a construction site because God forbid we put them in a dangerous place like behind a desk in an office!
Isn’t the construction industry at all levels known for being corrupt af though?
So, how do you actually vet out the bad ones and find a good builder?
As a builder myself who wouldn’t dream of doing this and in fact probably even takes the knock himself plenty of times this makes me sad. It only increases distrust with customers and makes it even harder for the honest ones to do a good job when everything is viewed with scepticism.
I would never get building work done unless I absolutely had to. Ripping people off is an accepted part of the job.
Loads of it going on here
The “down from Londons” all seem to be buying the historic waterside properties and having them gutted to get the bi-fold doors and grey double glazing checked off their lists
Some of these projects have been going on since 2020 while the owners are away
Good work if you can get it
If anyone is reading this ever has any construction work done, never pay for anything up front. Agree a payment schedule with your contractor, or better yet use JCT contract, and only pay for what has been fitted or installed. Use contractors with a solid history of similar work in the local area. Again, never pay for anything up front at all. Any decent contractor will have credit with a supplier and won’t need a penny from you to obtain materials.
What kind of idiot is paying in advance for no work done? XD
If there is a legit company offering services, they will have enough fluency to start the work with a small advance. And then you pay them as the work progress, with final payment after finishing and agreeing on that (quality etc).
People are getting scammed because they are looking to do cheap shady, no rules, of-tax work. Had it coming.
so many total cunts in the building industry all wanting cash ….many gain your trust then hit you with oh ive had to charge a bit more cos it taken longer etc etc …they often dont turn up when they should especially if youve paid them some money …
This comes as no surprise. They could do something about this ultimately, if they wanted.
If Nick Knowles got on board with enough experts, they should vet tradesmen to a high standard and all contractors would have approval. If you seek a trade done with no approval, that is kinda your own fault if it all goes tits up because you cut corners and took risks.
Then the tradesmen don’t need to be vetted by the people that need the job done. Who puts the onus on the buyer? This is why we have gas fitters who have Corgi registration. Building matters are no joke, and this kind of shit should have been clamped down on years ago.
Meanwhile online is full of faked reviews as ever, often you don’t have the time to verify. Hence the idea that the experts validate/vet, it IS their speciality after all.
But try bringing it up. It seems some of these so called experts became wannabe football pundits instead.. and then we wonder why this country is so fucked..
Yeah if you can detect cynicism in my replies of late, maybe you’re starting to get a good idea of why. The shit state of things lately is astounding. It could be better than this, but it’s not, is it? Nor is it likely gonna be unless stubborn Nimbys accept change needs to come above vanity.
Honestly, construction, or anything related even to handyman etc, workers in Essex area are mostly horror. Are there normal ones? Possibly, maybe wasn’t lucky enough. Charge RIDICULOUS amounts, work ethic…what even is that. Quality, varying from 2 to 6 maybe.
This grows to such a scale because the government, police, trading standards do nothing about it.
My friend wanted to replace a leaking roof on her extension. She found builders on reputable website with good reviews and history. When these builders were away, she got another builder to inspect the works and he basically said that everything was done not according to standards and they used cheapest and inadequate materials possible – they didn’t use materials my friend paid for. She confronted the builders and they told her that another builder was out of his mind etc. and then started threatening her that they will rip everything off if she does not agree to complete and pay the rest of the money. She called the police to take them away off the property. The police did come, but they were advocating for fraudster builders and tried to persuade my friend to let them continue work!
She managed to explain that they are committing a fraud by showing the invoice and the labels from materials she took from the skip – they didn’t match. That’s when police told them to leave and police left as well, saying it is a civil matter and none of their business.
That’s when it started going off the rails. My friend hired new builders to do the job again, but these muppets would be coming every morning and threatened new builders that they are going to “sort them out”, they also followed one of the builders home and were taking pictures of his wife, then next morning showed up with like 10 people and showed that builder picture of his home and his wife and told him if he wants to be able to walk, and his wife safe he needs to leave the job and so he did.
Guess what police said? They said that it’s not a crime to take pictures and it’s not their problem that the new builder was not man enough to stand up.
New builder said it’s not safe to work at her place and canceled the job taking the deposit.
She asked police if they could help her making sure these people don’t harass her. Police was not interested.
She tried to hire a security company to see if they could protect her home while the works are ongoing, but every single company refused to work mostly saying it’s a too small job.
Can you imagine something like this happening in the 1st world country?
She spent most of her time stressed as these people kept calling her that they will come at night and destroy her house. Called police multiple times and every time police said that it is a civil matter and she shouldn’t waste their time.
Eventually she found a builder who decided to take the job despite the risk that was explained to him. He brought his mates who were into MMA etc. and told the fraudsters if they show up again, they’ll never be found. They indeed stopped coming and builder finished the job.
The whole thing caused my friend a severe depression, and cost 4 times over the budget and she had to borrow money from friends.
Couple of months later the fraudsters started calling her again from time to time saying things like “we are coming tonight, you fraudster woman, we will take what’s ours” etc.
They would send her texts e.g. before Christmas they send “Better be home this Christmas, there will be a surprise for you”. So she actually canceled a trip to her parents and didn’t invite anyone to her place out of fear and shame.
Trading standards were also not interested. They said something along the line that builders probably made a mistake with the materials and my friend overreacted and this is not a case they would want to follow as it is a waste of time.
To my knowledge these people were still operating as of last year and probably a ton of people, who don’t know about the trade have their roofs done against building regulations and will probably have to re-do everything if found out.
This is what you pay tax for. You think you will get help when in need, but police will only shit on you.
We’re having some bathroom updating work done at the moment, and I’m chatting to the foreman about his collection of Porsches and he tells me which Porsche garage he thinks is the best. I’m actually fine with that – he does excellent work and our house is a bit of a nightmare to work on (being 400 years old). His company’s expensive, but the work is done really well, on time, and (apart from the plumber who’s a bit of an arsehole) the tradesmen are great. I can’t wait for it to be finished, though.
If she has an agreement in writing and knows the people and their address she can take them to “small claims “court. Fees for £10,000 to £200,000 are 5% of the claim, but I would say it is well worth it to retrieve the money. The builders either have to cough up, and if they don’t they will get CCJs and court appointed collectors after them.
I was a roofer and the amount of shit we’re getting in the comments is both understood and sad.
Same thing happened to my mum. A rogue builder took £18K from my mum for a new kitchen and some renovation in 2017. The state of the work was shocking and the entire kitchen began to fall apart within 6 months. The electrics were shoddy and another electrician had to come and correct the builders errors despite the builder being qualified allegedly. £18K down the drain. My poor mum who was in her early eighties at the time hid a lot from us otherwise we would have dealt with the cowboy builder. Horrible situation
In the US, we call them Hillbilly Contractors. Pretty close to your description.
Get three bids and then do checks on the one you like the best. Pay for materials yourself, a deposit for the work and then the balance when work is done.
I was quoted £400 to fit a worktop between two walls and a hole for a sink. It was literally two cuts. The unit, plumbing and battens were already in place.
I did it in one hour for the price of some new jigsaw blades £5.
As someone who works in a DIY shop, it’s amazing how many people who are paid to be painters don’t know shit about what paints are which.
I work in construction and cowboys are rife at the moment