Insurance
Money down the drain: Brits waste £140m a year on home ’emergencies’
Brits throw £140m down the drain every year by calling in tradesmen for needless jobs or home ’emergencies’ like changing a light bulb.
In a survey of 1,100 registered tradesmen by comparison site RatedPeople.com, 37% find themselves being called out for unusual emergencies once a month.
The ’emergencies’ range from children wanting help to clear up a party in their parents’ home before their parents got back to help with burying the family pet.
Philip McKinney from trade company, Inspired Vision, said: “It doesn’t happen every day, but it is not uncommon to turn up to a job only to find that what the homeowner really needs help with is something entirely different, especially if they’re embarrassed about a situation.
“Discovering that the reason an appliance isn’t working is because it is turned off, or that noises are actually the vibrations from the freezer, can raise the occasional eyebrow, especially when the customer is paying for an emergency call out, which is why it is so important to brief a tradesman properly to make sure they’re able to quote fairly for the job and deliver a good standard of work.
“We always want to spare our customers from embarrassment, but you do wonder sometimes: if people actually stopped and thought about the problem, would they realise that it wasn’t as much of a crisis as it seems?”
In addition to the ’emergencies’ tradesmen solve on a daily basis, some 36% said that over 10% of their day is usually taken up with helping out the homeowner with jobs unrelated to the task they’ve been hired to do, often delaying them from completing their work.
Half of Brits said that if they have a tradesman in their home they’ll see if he can help with other minor tasks around the property.
Typical unusual ’emergencies’:
• Locating the source of ‘noises’ (experienced by 9% of tradesmen)
• Changing a light bulb (experienced by 8% of tradesmen)
• Being called out to ‘fix’ an appliance, only to discover that it’s turned off at the switch (experienced by 4% of tradesmen)
• Flushing out drains to locate lost watches and rings (noted by 2% of tradesmen)
• Releasing someone who is locked in a cupboard (cited by 2% of tradesmen)
• Cats and other animals trapped under the floorboards (claimed by 4% of tradesmen)
However, despite the frank responses from the tradesmen, the general public have been less candid.
Only 3% owned up to calling in the professionals when the task was not an emergency, while 5% said that they had called a tradesman in only to find that it was simply the case of switching on the power source.
Just some of the reasons some tradesmen were called out: “One customer called me out as an emergency to bury her pet hamster.” “One customer called me to check on a “terrible leak.” When I went to check on it, I discovered that the customer had recently showered and had the curtain on the outside of the bath, rather than the inside, causing the shower water to run down directly onto the bathroom floor.” “I was asked if I could urgently come round to hang a picture as the relatives who’d bought it for the customer were visiting for the weekend.” “I received an emergency call from two kids who urgently needed their house re-decorated. They had had a big party and needed to cover their tracks before their parents came home.”
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