Landscaper wanted!

schmeah said :

CanberraMum said :

Is anyone else tired about the dodgy tradies hurting the reputations and livelihoods of the good ones?? I was offered a $600 discount to pay cash the other day, which really pissed me off. Not least cause some-one offering to drop the GST is still wrong, it should be 40% (GST and Company Tax) – but because it just rips off the honest businesses doing the right thing. Fortunately it was the first of my three quotes anyway, and it was still exorbitant…so I gave the tradie whose quote I did (and who was quick, clean and honest) accept an additional carton of beer! and I have a warranty 🙂

You managed to get multiple quotes .. Christ, when we had a water related emergency I called every plumber listed on the Northside; they either didn’t answer, didn’t return phone calls or told me they couldn’t do it. One plumber mob got back to me and came around that same day and gave us a quote to do some substantial work .. we spent all the next week chasing other plumbers to get an alternative quote but it was just impossible .. messages always went unanswered and given the urgency of the situation options were limited. We just went with the first/only mob – who were excellent, efficient and very thorough .. other tradies lost out on a few of $K (or we got robbed .. ).

Actually, we only managed to get one quote (from Bernie) and we were so desperate we grabbed him. The price was reasonable, they cleaned the site carefully before leaving and even asked us if we had any rubbish we wanted taking to the dump with their load of rubble.

CanberraMum said :

Is anyone else tired about the dodgy tradies hurting the reputations and livelihoods of the good ones?? I was offered a $600 discount to pay cash the other day, which really pissed me off. Not least cause some-one offering to drop the GST is still wrong, it should be 40% (GST and Company Tax) – but because it just rips off the honest businesses doing the right thing. Fortunately it was the first of my three quotes anyway, and it was still exorbitant…so I gave the tradie whose quote I did (and who was quick, clean and honest) accept an additional carton of beer! and I have a warranty 🙂

You managed to get multiple quotes .. Christ, when we had a water related emergency I called every plumber listed on the Northside; they either didn’t answer, didn’t return phone calls or told me they couldn’t do it. One plumber mob got back to me and came around that same day and gave us a quote to do some substantial work .. we spent all the next week chasing other plumbers to get an alternative quote but it was just impossible .. messages always went unanswered and given the urgency of the situation options were limited. We just went with the first/only mob – who were excellent, efficient and very thorough .. other tradies lost out on a few of $K (or we got robbed .. ).

Thankyou PLANDSCAPE! Landscaping completed at last. Finally, after several people, including one of the tradies mentioned in a reply on the Riotact failed to give a quote after promising to get back to us, we have had the landscaping done by an expert.
What a fantastic company PLANDSCAPE is. The boss – Bernie Whalan, who has an Industrial Design degree – is a friendly, super efficient guy with 3 excellent employees. Bernie sent us a quote within 12 hours and started work the next day. The semi-circular compressed granite drive, the courtyard paving, the 2 retaining walls etc were completed within a week. My partner and I, both worked in the engineering, architectural field and we were both impressed by the quality of advice and the workmanship.
Plandscape phone number is 0407275223, or plandscape.com.au

Is anyone else tired about the dodgy tradies hurting the reputations and livelihoods of the good ones?? I was offered a $600 discount to pay cash the other day, which really pissed me off. Not least cause some-one offering to drop the GST is still wrong, it should be 40% (GST and Company Tax) – but because it just rips off the honest businesses doing the right thing. Fortunately it was the first of my three quotes anyway, and it was still exorbitant…so I gave the tradie whose quote I did (and who was quick, clean and honest) accept an additional carton of beer! and I have a warranty 🙂

screaming banshee said :

Cost $400. Not bad money for 5 hours work.

Feel free to put yourself through the necessary operator and licensing courses, purchase a truck and dingo, register a business and abn, obtain the correct insurances, spend a sufficient amount on advertising and then sit back and wait for those hundred dollar bills to roll on in.

Just make sure you can afford to pay off the equipment, keep them fuelled and maintained, keep the insurances up to date, pay the mortgage and feed the family…hell, I reckon you could probably do all that for 20 bucks an hour so you could charge $80 and walk away with $60 for every hour you work. Make sure you put some of that away though for the occasions when the equipment breaks down, or the weather keeps you from working. You’ll probably want to save a little for a holiday too, no such thing as annual leave when you work for yourself, you cant rely on the dollars coming in unless you are putting in the effort.

You too could be that well off if you are prepared to put all of your personal possessions (not to mention your marriage) on the line, start your own business and work your arse off.

Geez, one customer is not responsible entirely for the tradie’s holiday, savings etc etc. And I would suggest that the tradie did negotiate or state the rate that he would do the work for before he started.

Obviously I’m not aware of this poor tradie’s individual circumstances, i.e. wife and dog left home, kids no help at all and only his banjo for company on those freezing winter evenings when he has to make a choice between heating the house and buying a loaf of stale bread, but I earn about $47 an hour and out of that pay everything I need to including my own insurances, super, income tax, mortgage, vets bills, doctors bills, investment property expenses & mortgage and still have some left over, I think that $80 an hour is about right.

cynical_rendering said :

screaming banshee said :

Cost $400. Not bad money for 5 hours work.

Feel free to put yourself through the necessary operator and licensing courses, purchase a truck and dingo, register a business and abn, obtain the correct insurances, spend a sufficient amount on advertising and then sit back and wait for those hundred dollar bills to roll on in.

Just make sure you can afford to pay off the equipment, keep them fuelled and maintained, keep the insurances up to date, pay the mortgage and feed the family…hell, I reckon you could probably do all that for 20 bucks an hour so you could charge $80 and walk away with $60 for every hour you work. Make sure you put some of that away though for the occasions when the equipment breaks down, or the weather keeps you from working. You’ll probably want to save a little for a holiday too, no such thing as annual leave when you work for yourself, you cant rely on the dollars coming in unless you are putting in the effort.

You too could be that well off if you are prepared to put all of your personal possessions (not to mention your marriage) on the line, start your own business and work your arse off.

Funny that tradesmen neglect to mention these overheads when there at the pub loudly stating: “mate, I make 100 grand a year more than any public servant or uni graduate”

LOL

Then again do you really believe most stuff you hear ppl boasting about when they are drunk?

screaming banshee said :

Cost $400. Not bad money for 5 hours work.

Feel free to put yourself through the necessary operator and licensing courses, purchase a truck and dingo, register a business and abn, obtain the correct insurances, spend a sufficient amount on advertising and then sit back and wait for those hundred dollar bills to roll on in.

Just make sure you can afford to pay off the equipment, keep them fuelled and maintained, keep the insurances up to date, pay the mortgage and feed the family…hell, I reckon you could probably do all that for 20 bucks an hour so you could charge $80 and walk away with $60 for every hour you work. Make sure you put some of that away though for the occasions when the equipment breaks down, or the weather keeps you from working. You’ll probably want to save a little for a holiday too, no such thing as annual leave when you work for yourself, you cant rely on the dollars coming in unless you are putting in the effort.

You too could be that well off if you are prepared to put all of your personal possessions (not to mention your marriage) on the line, start your own business and work your arse off.

Funny that tradesmen neglect to mention these overheads when there at the pub loudly stating: “mate, I make 100 grand a year more than any public servant or uni graduate”

Gungahlin Al said :

jesse said :

cross said :

Holden Caulfield said :

Most of them are selfish pricks.

+1

Maybe try someone like Tradeworks where they get multiple quotes on your behalf if a tradie did not turn up it would reflect badly on them , or I,ve heard good things about the Grey Army at http://www.greyarmy.com.au

Thanks for the info. I didn’t know about Tradeworks. Sounds like a great idea. I will also contact Grey Army.

My 76 year old partner wanted to hire a machine and do the work himself, but he was convinced by “she who must be obeyed” that it would probably be better to employ an expert.

Re the ads in the paper : We had a great job of tiling ( on our porches) by a nice chap called Csiske, who advertised in the Chronic. You can be lucky sometimes. 🙂

I was also going to suggest the DIY route, but you do get tossed around a fair bit on a Dingo (especially when learning to use it), so at 76 (no offence) it may be stressing on more frail bones somewhat.

The other thing about dingoes is that you basically hold the throttle handles with thumbs and first two fingers, and use the pinkies and ring fingers to push and pull the controls for the loader and bucket at the same time as you are moving. These are fingers that otherwise get used for next to nothing, so after a day of maximising your rental investment, you can count on having essentially unusable hands for the next 2-3 days! (Speaking from experience…) Painful – and you need to factor that down time into your work schedule!

Goodness. That is awful. My partner’s poor old hands are shot (arthritis) from his job, so he would have found it impossible.

CoffinRX2 said :

Adrian from Renew Landscaping 0415 508 244

Thank you. Will give him a call today.

Mordd said :

screaming banshee said :

Cost $400. Not bad money for 5 hours work.

Feel free to put yourself through the necessary operator and licensing courses, purchase a truck and dingo, register a business and abn, obtain the correct insurances, spend a sufficient amount on advertising and then sit back and wait for those hundred dollar bills to roll on in.

Just make sure you can afford to pay off the equipment, keep them fuelled and maintained, keep the insurances up to date, pay the mortgage and feed the family…hell, I reckon you could probably do all that for 20 bucks an hour so you could charge $80 and walk away with $60 for every hour you work. Make sure you put some of that away though for the occasions when the equipment breaks down, or the weather keeps you from working. You’ll probably want to save a little for a holiday too, no such thing as annual leave when you work for yourself, you cant rely on the dollars coming in unless you are putting in the effort.

You too could be that well off if you are prepared to put all of your personal possessions (not to mention your marriage) on the line, start your own business and work your arse off.

Ok while amusing to read and im sure quite accurate, the OP wasn’t suggesting that they were overpaying the tradies, just that they thought the amount they were offering was fair for the work involved, which it seems to be. While I can understand the defensiveness in your comment, if you actually are a tradie and not just an internet back seat driver, then maybe referencing them to yourself or a friend you know would have been more productive all round than the rant you posted, just saying.

Thank you. 🙂