Cost of simple electrical work?

A number of electricians and plumbers in Canberra overcharge if you are not careful. They use tricks like refusing to quote up front (not even giving an hourly rate) and then charging what they think you can pay. Even if they quote, they often omit telling you that GST is extra.

This is not to say that there are not a large number of honest, hardworking and reasonably priced trades people in the ACT – you have to just shop around and go by word of mouth.

We could always consider agitating for regulation of what tradespeople charge per hour? It would need federal legislation but might save a deal of heartache. Upper and lower limits (or ranges) per job or per hour would be good.

dundle said :

I suppose it’s just luck of the draw. I had one come over to check my switchboard, turned out the issue was so small it was done in under 5 minutes, I wasn’t charged at all!

HELP!

I have a switchboard problem and I want to know who your guy was!

While he’s there, there’s a down-light that needs looking at too.

I suppose it’s just luck of the draw. I had one come over to check my switchboard, turned out the issue was so small it was done in under 5 minutes, I wasn’t charged at all!

doesn%u2019t know how or where they are wired

The OP said it was to “replace 5 light fittings”. How exactly do you think they’d be wired?

You were ripped off!

Unlikely. I suspect there is more to this story.

1. A sparky ain’t going to do a house call for $100.00.

2. ‘Replace 5 light fittings’ could mean a range of things. A sparky ain’t going to quote ‘$100.00’ over the phone to replace 5 light fittings when he has not seen them, doesn’t know how or where they are wired, and doesn’t know the client.

3. How DO you change a light fitting ‘with no wiring involved’?

First: tell him he is dreaming.

$100 and hour is about right for the 1st hour. Its what maynor and Cochrane charge so tell him that.

If he persists, ask him for his license number and contact Bepcon or whatever the electrical authority is called these days. Ask to check if he is registered in the ACT. and oh ask him for the required Bepcon electrical completion form and for a tax invoice show his tax file number. If he persists, say mate $100 cash and wink wink

If no wiring was involved and access was easy, why didn’t you do the work yourself? Electrical DIY books are easy to find or search for an electrical forum. As for the rules, they were made to be broken.

In New Zealand, homeowners are allowed to work on their own houses’ electrics, so the OP could have done the fairly minor work themselves and saved some money, as long as he/she was confident they had a reasonable idea what they were doing. But not in Australia, where electrical contractors are given a government-backed monopoly; note that you can be a fully qualified electrician, but you need a contractor’s license before you can work legally. You could have a Degree in Electrical Engineering, but unless you’ve got that contractor’s license, the law considers that a barely qualified tradie is a safer bet.

The elephant in the room in all this is that do-it-yourself minor electrical modification is a thriving activity. You don’t think all those guys crowding the electrical hardware aisle of Bunnings every weekend are sparkies doing weekend work do you? If the government was honestly concerned, they would restrict sale of such items to those who could produce their contractors’ license number. And don’t believe all the smokescreen about ‘safety’. If it was an issue, we would have heard already about an avalanche if do-it-yourself electrical deaths in NZ. And if the government was really committed to economic reform, they’d allow anyone who could pass the requisite tests to do their own work. But the Contractors and the Electrical Trades Union wouldn’t like that.

Were any upgrades to your meter-board required? An RCD on the light circuit for example?
But still, $500 does sound steep.