Toolbox The Different types of customers you have working as an electrician

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[00:00:00] With so many different people in the world, it's hard to only work for one type of person. Then again, if you could choose, what would your ideal customer be like when working as an electrician, you meet all different kinds of people. This podcast goes through the different types of experiences that I've experienced over time as an electrician with different customers and exactly how I've dealt with.

The nightmare customers, the difficult customers, and the nasty ones too, along with another customer. Once I had that was quite a flirt toolbox. Talks for electricians, helping electricians reduce stress, gain back time, and earn more money. Hey there. Once again, it's your host, Ben Polter, and over the past 20 years or more of being an electrician, I know we get to meet some weird and wonderful people in our experience as electrician was working in different premises, different install sort of thing with domestic, commercial industrial.

You meet all different type of people. It's part of the job. You're not gonna get every single customer. You have to be an absolute dream, to be honest with you. Where would be the fun in that? And I think the most fun customers to deal with are these people that exactly know what they want doing. They know how you're gonna do it.

What he's doing, how long it's gonna take you. And they've got a rough idea of how much it can cost cuz they invite you around the house to give them a quote because they just wanna see how much you are gonna charge them. But they've already got a figure in mind exactly how much they want to pay you.

They might have had a couple of guys go around before they get two or three quotes, but no one's actually given them a quote to the price that they wanna pay. So they'll just carry on getting more and more people to go around and it's. It's when they say to you like, it is a simple job for you to do.

This is an easy one for you. It's a little job. It'll only take you an hour or so then what am I doing here, mate? I don't understand if you know exactly what you're doing, , it's tricky. It's hard to say sometimes , to keep a straight face to a customer and say, okay, you know so much about it. It's, , why don't you do it yourself?

So then wise, chatting away after a cup of tea and looking what one's doing. They've got a new hot tub and it wants wiring up, but it's okay because you've got a cable there already. What does that cable do? That cable does the garden lights. Okay. Then let's have a look at your consumer unit. And the consumer unit is probably older than both of us put together, and we're 40 year old guys.

And I wouldn't say I get satisfaction of sort of letting them know that it's not gonna go to how they assumed it would in their head. It's, it's a bit of a tough situation. It puts you in sometimes when you've got to explain them to 'em that it's not that simple. You've got to do it to standard, it's got to be safe, and you're gonna upgrade your fuse board.

It's gonna cost you basically 10 times more than that figure that you've got in your head. And even if it wasn't so bad where you had a consume unit that was beautiful, beautifully new and fresh, and it was all safe and up to standard, you've just spent six grand on a new hot tub, why wouldn't you wanna spend 500 pounds to get that installed correctly?

And when I meet these sort of type of customers, I tried to give them a ballpark figure. There and then right in front of them to say, look, this is gonna cost you around 1500 pound or 2000 pounds, something like that, because you've gotta get the work done for it to be safe to me, to be able to sign it off to me, to be able to walk away and say, yeah, that's not gonna catch fire.

But you know for a fact that they're gonna keep getting electricians off of Google or for word of mouth to try and find someone to wire that hot tub. Offer their shed for a little bit of beer money. You'll know for a fact that af after a few weeks of that, , installed, not hearing anything from them, they've may more likely found someone that wired off the garden lights and it was either melted or tripped or they're having problems.

The hot tub doesn't get hot or doesn't stay hot, so they phone you up and politely say, um, hi, can you come and do that job? After all, it happens all the time. And I think that's the domestic side of things for an electrician. Yes, there are a lot more domestic customers like that than there are in the industrial and commercial industry, but you do, however, get these clever managers who work for these big companies and they'll call you up.

To get you to come round to give them a quote for some, , electrical work that they wanna do in their house. Maybe they're having a kitchen refitted, or they're having their garage turned into a fun room or living room, something like that. So some big job that they're doing at their house, but they don't necessarily want to pay for themself.

So they'll get you to come round. They'll tell you about this big company they work for, and yes, they also need electrician of that company. So their plan is to get you to do some work at the company. But also add their kitchen or their dining room or the work they want doing at their house, just add it onto that invoice and I'll get it done for free.

And some of the guys, they actually tell you that. Why is your look around the house having a cup of tea, get on farm with them, quoting for the work. They'll explain to you the plan. The plan is like, yeah, I'm gonna get this done through my company. So basically I don't have to pay for it. And I don't know whether their boss is okay with this or whether they're just being cheeky, cuz.

You can't do that. They're gonna lose their job if their boss finds out, basically. I don't think it's such a big deal if maybe they actually own the company. Cuz yes, you can put it through, they can claim the tax back or they can do something, I suppose if it's their own company, but when it's not their company, I think that's just a bit cheeky.

It's happened to me in the past before where I've done a load of down lights in a kitchen and they've said, oh, just come round to the company, deal also, and then fit this outside light. And what's an outside light fitting, gonna cost maybe a couple of hundred quid, but they want you to charge them a 1200 quid or something, whatever the cost was for the down lights and put it through the company.

When the manager is in charge of signing off the invoices for that company, they might get away with it, but it leaves a bit of a bad taste in my mouth and it's just a bit too bad you can't do that. I don't wanna be involved in something like that cuz that manager, if he's doing stuff like that, it's not gonna be at that company for long is he?

And you are not gonna be, if you are participating in that sort of ripping the company off, so to speak, it's gonna drag you down. But I think you'll be surprised actually how much of this actually happens in the building trade. It happens all over, and I've seen it no, end of times, as my 20 yard years or more as an electrician.

I think with commercial and industrial, they're a lot more organized. I don't mind doing a commercial and , industrial sometimes because they like to have everything on a bit of paper. Your risk assessments and it don't like to know exactly what you're gonna do, cuz when you quote a job, it's been worked out with the time it will take to do it and the materials that you're gonna use.

So, Myself or the electrician, whoever's gonna do it, they'll plan the day before or maybe the week before by ordering all the materials and they'll plan their time accordingly. You've got maybe a full week there, or you've got maybe a couple of weeks or a couple of days, something, you'll plan your time around it.

You've got a diary, you've got a schedule to keep. You've got jobs to book in. So this is what you do. You, you plan your time around that specific job, what you've got. But it doesn't always go to plan. Now does it, cause I did it the same thing in a doctor's surgery. I was asked, asked to run some new data cables for a new office that they were installing.

Um, as an electrician, I think you might well know that running data cables. It's quite simple in my eyes. It's, it's not live and it's a lot easier, and you get that 305 meter drum that you can just pull nice straight runs. It's quite an easy job sometimes. I enjoy doing it, so as long as you have the correct kit to sort of test the RJ 45 plugs end to end, then.

Do. Do you read it? It's easy going now. When I quoted the job, there was a person that showed me exactly where the offices was gonna be, how many points they want, where the desk is gonna go, and then where they actually server cables or the network cables needed to run to where they needed to pick up their supply to connect to the rest of the server in the whole surgery.

So in my eyes, it was sort of obvious that I'll need to get inside that server. But when it, when it actually came to it, and I needed to get into that server room on that day, I was told that, I'm sorry, but there's sensitive information involved in that server room, which I understand completely. And to gain access to that server room, it could take up to a week for you to be authorized.

What out was a bit of a. So that sort of messed me around for that week. I had to re jiggle work around. These things happen. It's gotta, it wasn't, I'll say it wasn't anyone's fault, but it weren't mine. I thought it was obvious. So it was somebody's fault. I'm not gonna hold my hands up to it because I need to access that room.

But we got it sorted around about in the long run. It got, it got worked out in a couple of weeks where I got authorized to get into that server room. I had to have a, I think it was a security card to sit with me to watch. , I don't understand what, I don't know even what was in that server room or how would get information from it, but I assumed that maybe they couldn't have the service go down.

So they had to have someone to sit and watch, which wasn't too bad cause I had someone to talk. And as you may well know with this podcast, I like Shane. So there was a lesson learned from that job. Maybe never assume the customer knows any knowledge of the job, of what you're gonna do. Explain in fine detail, especially industrial commercial like.

Um, burying off areas or the access that you might need to gain with a cherry picker, with ladders, something like that. Explain in fine detail what you're gonna do, what areas you're gonna need to access to. Let them know so it doesn't hold you back for that day when you actually finally turn up with all the kit raring to go and get, you get a stop pot on you straight away.

Therefore, it dumbs it down. It's a nightmare sometimes, but this stuff happens and we carry. And you'll find that a lot of customers, mainly the most customers, to be honest with you, you meet, they'll usually have a price in mind what the job is gonna cost them. And I refer to this because it is mainly in domestic installations with landlords.

Landlords are the worst. They always think they're, if you tell 'em a price, they'll try and. Exactly all the time because they don't care. It's just there's, it's just a job they've gotta get done in a property. It's not gonna benefit them in a way. Well it will do. Cause it's their property and they're sort of gotta look after it, but they don't really care too much about what.

But materials you put in. Sometimes when you recommend, you say, right, I'm gonna put these l e d downlights in. Cause they're a lot better. They'll last a lot better, they'll be more efficient. But they're 15 pound each. Hang about. What about them? Once on screw fix for 2 99. Yeah. I'm not gonna touch them, but that's what they'll want you to do.

It happens all the time. Or even so now with the EICs, they've coming to be a legal requirement for landlords to have, but they just assume that, yeah, you just gotta get an electrician to come round and tick things off to say, yep, it's safe. But these safety checks are for a reason. And they hate it when they get a fail.

They maybe get a C one or say they get an unsatisfactory on that certificate. I don't understand why. What's wrong with this house? Because the property has been decorated from top to bottom, fresh paint and it's got a brand new kitchen, but the landlord and he's mate down the pub, fitted it him. They didn't take any consideration into maybe, Hmm.

Might get the electric electrics checked, or, Hmm, I might get the boiler tested. Nothing like that. If it looks right, if it works, then ha, we'll leave it in there. Give it a lick paint and rent it out. There's a lot of properties around the UK at the moment that are finding it hard when they get an. E I C R and to find out that they need to do some work, they need to upgrade that electrical supply to that property.

It's not as good a condition as what it maybe looks like from from the initial visit. A lot of the time after their, uh, landlord and their friend or whoever they've got in there has finished decorating to make it look nice and lovely, they'll call an electrician, I think. Yep. We'll get it tested. We'll get on these test certificates on it, and then we'll just rent it out and we'll be rolling in it.

I, I assume, not saying I'm rolling it, you know what I mean? It'll be like an asset for them to be rent in out a property, but a good electrician can turn up to a property within 20 minutes. It is gonna tell if it can, it'll fail. It'll fail. A A E E I C R without a doubt. And a lot of the time it is when you go to a light switch, you go up to a light switch, it looks quite old, or it, it might even be brand new, but you whip it off and you find out there's no earth in there.

Even though sometimes there might be an earth of the ceiling rose, cuz a lot of people they say, yeah, reword that house, but they didn't want to redecorate so they didn't do the switch drops. And the switch drops is what causes disruption to the paper, to the plastering work. And that means you've gotta get a plaster around and skim me over and redecorate basically, they didn't wanna do it.

Cuz that's obviously another thing that I want to do. So they don't get it done. A lot of people don't get the switch drops done. You can tell straight away if you take one switch off, there you go. Two cars, it's rubber cabling. It didn't happen. So with these little telltale signs, I normally go in there and say, look, I'll turn it for a visit.

I'll give you a visual inspection first. That's gonna be the best bet. Rather than booking me in for a full day to do an E I C R. Then we'll do a visual inspection if you are unsure of what the property's condition is. Cause normally if you look at the board, you can say, yeah, no R c D mate, straightaway.

New board. That's gonna cost you 750 quid minimum. Depends on what size of the house is, depends what the rest of the house is like. But yeah, so the visual inspection is be, uh, a good idea to give customers to start with cuz then you are not in it for, well, the E I C R will you cost, say you give 'em a 350 pound bill for the E I C R if it doesn't say satisfactory.

They'll be reluctant to pay. If it un unsatisfactory there, then no one, I don't think anyone gives a monks about what has failed on. Normally they just want the E I C R to, to, um, to rent that property out. So really you wanna give 'em a bit of a visual inspection and say, look mate, this is gonna fail, but if it fails drastically and you need to rewire or something like that, then maybe let 'em know beforehand.

You don't waste your time and their time. There's been landlords in the. Who've paid three electricians to test the same property. Each electrician, they've failed a property with different faults, but yet I was getting called up to see if I would put a pass on it. Well, you've had three electricians test that property and they've showed you the faults already.

I think he was just hoping that maybe someone one day will pass it, just cause that's all he needed to rent it out to legally rent it out. If you think of it, Like an mo t if you get a dodgy mo t for your motor, cuz I know you can get hold of them quite easily. You can just pay a little bit extra for that mot without having to turn up to the garage to, without having to get someone to check your car over.

Well, what is the actual point in an mo t? It's to make sure that your car is safe to use on the road. It's pretty good thing, really. Especially if it's your friends or your daughters or your kids or your wife. Then you want them to drive around in a safe car. If it's not safe to be on the road, then it maybe you shouldn't have mot could you.

If you think about it, it's not just their safety. It's if them brakes are no good and you can't stop and you hit someone else. It'll ruin your life if you actually hit, I don't know whether you hit a person or maybe, or anything happens, it's not worth doing. So that's exactly the same with what an E I C R is on a property.

It's an mot and this E I C R is detailing the fault that are probably dangerous for you to be able to put a tenant in that property. Cause you are basically renting that property to them as an asset. So you are gonna be respons. But as soon as you put satisfactory on that certificate, the electrical installation of that property is my responsibility.

So I won't do it. And I recommend that no one does do it. No one gives away the easy RRCs. Like, don't, I've never, never heard of it, to be honest with you, that people just giving it out without turned up to the property. But imagine if you did, like if anything happened in that. I can guarantee that that buck is gonna stop back at you.

Who gave that certificate? Certificate. Cause your name's gonna be written on it and you are gonna be dragged up in court when they say that maybe someone had out of fire. And what if someone gets injured? That's the worst thing. Someone gets injured. You can, you can basically get sued and put in prison.

So yeah, these, these ERs ICRs, make sure you go into detail with them. If they fail, they fail. There's nothing you can do to someone that's got a pay to get that work done. But working as an electrician, you get offered all sorts of jobs like this. Like, yeah mate, I'll give you some cash. Like if sometime to cash is meant to be a deal breaker.

Oh yes, we're gonna have some cash in my pocket, but what about the future?

Is that cash that you offering me gonna cover my mortgage payments over the next five years that I might spend in prison? If there's a fault on that property? Nah. So you turn it down and the customer goes back to Google and to find someone who will. Pass that or give them an E I C R for a cut of a hundred quid, whatever they wanna bung in their pocket.

And the crazy thing is that they'll always find someone as well. There will be somebody out there that will think, yeah, I'll do that for a quick buck. And it's dangerous. It's crazy, but it's the world we live in. And I think it's tough to say whether a commercial, domestic or industrial customers are better to work for.

Like, who's better than the rest? , you can't really tell because they're all completely different. You'll find that, I find that the bigger the job is in a commercial or industrial, the more money the company will want to. I experienced this in a, in commercial premises. It was this guy was building a studio and I was asked to give him a quote for the lighting and the power.

It was a good size with grid ceilings, and it had all the 600 or 600 L e D panels. It was gonna be a beautiful job. I thought, yeah, I'd be great with emergency fittings and exit signs and smoke detectors. I'll give him the quote for the lot. But unfortunately it wasn't meant to be. I never got the job cuz the customer thought that I was a ripoff.

Well the quote was quite a lot I reckon cause there was a lot of work going in there. There was a lot of lights and a lot of sockets and it was all gonna be a metal conduit. It's, it's sometimes nice. We can do a nice, neat job where I thought that I'd look good, but he didn't want to go with me. He did, however, go with one of my friends that I knew, a friend that wasn't fully qualifi.

But he did have good knowledge of electrics cuz he helped me out on some jobs from time to time. But surprise, surprise, when they had a problem. Who'd they call? No, it was not the Ghostbusters, it was me. And when I called round to have a little look. The studio. Yeah it did. It looked amazing. It had lovely lights and all the grid ceiling.

The sockets were beautifully nice and straight. Exactly like I would've done. There's still conduit. But unfortunately the lights wouldn't stay on. They dimmed down by the end of the line. The cable was too small, basically, and that was more likely getting warm in that grid ceiling. But the circuits, they couldn't handle the load that the equipment that they had that were plugged in, in the sockets, they couldn't handle the load.

It was popping the fuse. It wasn't separated. They didn't know where was what was being plugged in. It's just these little things that I think electrician would know so they'd know how to do it properly. They didn't have any emergency light fittings that I know by regulation. You've gotta write an exit sign or an emergency exit sign or emergency exit fitting ins just to make sure people know where it is.

If the electric goes off like a fail safe and some smoke alarms, maybe it was a, a studio with lights in there. So I thought it would be a good idea to put smoke detectors in there. Yet there wasn't any. It looked great, but it just wasn't. And this was a perfect example that when you get a cheap quote, maybe question it because you can end up paying double in the long run.

It always ends up being, yet they wouldn't know what they were doing. They had to call in someone that actually knew what they were doing and ended up charging them a fortune. So it happens all the time again, but it's such as. And I think that some of these electricians that actually do this, they go out there and they say, yep, I can put that light up for under quid.

And then they go around there and say, right, it needs a new board and it needs a new wire to basically put it up and hang a bow. , we, we haven't got anything to fit it to, so they might need to take the ceiling down and make more damage and that a hundred pound job might turn into maybe a grand and these sort of electricians that end up charging a grand for maybe a hundred pound job that the customer originally thought these sort of electricians are giving the tradesmen a bad name.

I think these electricians are giving electricians a bad name. This is why customers. Oh, electricians are a rip off cuz some of them actually are, but I suppose you can do away with the customer and just be a subie subcontract people because then you don't have to worry about the customer. You are just worrying about the boss in effect.

Because my experience is working as a subcontractor, electrician is that subies are normally bought in to get the job done, to give it a push, or sometimes maybe just to turn up and stand around to be like a body on site. If you're a sparky, listen to this and you've been a subby over your years as an electrician, you'll know that it's either go, go, go, or you just hang around for materials to turn up.

But as a subby, there is a big, long chain of people involved, but you are at the end. So if anything goes wrong, you are the one that gets it in the neck, cuz you've got the main customer, you've got the main contractor and the project manager, and then the agency, and then there's you as a subby. Everyone below that customer is making a cut.

They're making a cut out of your hourly rate of being there actually being on site, cuz maybe the customer probably is paying sort of around 50 pound an hour for an electrician to turn up. Yep. By the time it gets to you, you get sort of 18 pound 20 j i b rate. I've hooked on so many sites where if there's any problems, it'll always be the sub or the electrician down at the end of it, that'll get the blame.

It's how it works. It's the bottom, it's the bottom feeder. I think in a way, if the materials aren't there yet, we see a list. Electrician's fault. They're not installed, but we haven't even got the materials like. It's a nightmare. So this is why I don't do subbing, to be honest with you, but I know you can have good money and you as a subie, you can just jump on from job to job.

There's, there's plenty of jobs around, especially if you live down London way, you can have. You can have a job, a different job for a different Com company every week if you wanted to. For me, I personally enjoy the domestic side of being an electrician cuz you deal directly with the customer most of the time and there's no one else taking the cut out of what, what you are providing, the service, what you are providing for them.

But you do of course, get some nightmare customers at times, but you also get single women who take quite an interest in you at times as well. Because I personally think that my customer relation skills, yeah, they're, they're quite good. Only because I like to talk and I can chat away having a cup of tea with maybe a customer about my life or I can chat to 'em about anything really.

I can sit and talk forever, as you may as well see from this. But I think maybe me being a chatter box comes across maybe a bit too friendly, maybe at. Because there was this one job once I was working in a property where the lady had split up from her husband and she'd got the house and, uh, a good settlement from the divorce.

So she decided to have the house completely changed to get rid of that guy out of her hair, whatever she was planning to do. I don't know, but there was me a painter and a deck, a plumber in. Just basically changing things. The, the things weren't actually old or there weren't anything fault with them.

She just wanted them to look different, which was fine. I was changing light sockets and switches just to obviously let her know that you could have USB ones. So she was upgrading them. She was spending money like water. So what, she just got a divorce. She was more than welcome to the, but to be fair, , there was nothing wrong with the old one.

She didn't need to do that. But as the customer wants, the customer gets, that's my motto in a way. So I did exactly what I was asked. But she was also a clever lady because she booked the whole week off while we were there doing all the work, and there was all three of us in there working away all day, and we had cups of tea and a biscuit all day.

, it was a good atmosphere, really. It was a good job, and she was really happy, but it wasn't until one day that , I was the only one left. I stayed a bit later to maybe get some jobs done. I used to, I've ripped all the sockets off, so I wanted to get all them sockets put back on, nice and neat and tidy.

But everyone else had left and it was just sort of me and the customer. It was a lovely day. So I didn't think it'd be unusual for the customer to be wandering around in like a bikini and underwear in a way sort of thing, cuz I just, I didn't feel comfortable in a way. I just looked away and cracked on with what I was doing, but shocked me a cup of tea and me saying, yeah, I'll have a cup of tea.

I don't mind that. So I said, And it was over the cup of tea and the biscuits that it all went a bit weird wrong, to be honest. I think it maybe had something to do with the wine that the customer was having because, well, it was a week off. Why wouldn't she have a glass of wine fair play to her? It wasn't until she sort of got a bit, bit too close in a way, and then started say, Hey, why don't you try this wine?

The sort of penny dropped. So I thought, damn, how the hell am I gonna get outta this one? I had a mouth full of chocolate biscuits and a, a hot cup of tea in my hand. I couldn't sort of shove her away or anything, so I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Trying to move away a little bit, saying I think that why might have gone to your head this evening, darling.

Sorry. Like, I'm gonna have to, um, get up and go get, get, get the fuck outta there, basically. But the tough thing is as well, that I hadn't been paid from the job yet, so I didn't want to upset the poor girl. So I had to go in early the next day when she was obviously sober. And say, um, yeah, let's, let's just keep this like professional.

Maybe I don't want anything else to sort of happen. It was funny. Maybe had a glass of wine and she just blamed it on the wine. She was fine, and it turns out that she weren't that picky, to be honest, because the plumber liked the wine, which was good on him because she was more his age. I haven't seen that plumber in a while, so I'd like to know how that scenario turned out.

It'd be funny to find. So with every job you do, whether it be commercial, industrial, or domestic, the Custo customer will always be different. As long as you say professional, document your quote to the highest detail , that's a big one as well. Document it to the highest detail to let them know exactly what you're gonna do and then stick to the price that you.

Don't ever change sort of thing. When someone comes back a lot of the time they go, yes, I uh, got the same job done for 50% less. Yeah, but you are ringing me to tell me that. What is the point of you doing that? You're trying it on, you're trying to knock me down. That's all. What the customer is more likely trying to do.

They're trying to get a cheaper quote outta you. Because you did a good job, because you sounded like you knew what you were talking about because you're registered because you're a good electrician. You turned up maybe neat and tidy, like sometimes a customer wants the best, but for the cheapest price.

So stay professional and you'll attract the right customers into your business, and it'll make your business bigger, better, and stronger over time. Just like the toolbox talks for electricians podcast has attracted. And don't worry, I'm not gonna get in any underwear and start sitting on your lap. I'm going, su going to suggest that you give this podcast a review, whatever platform you're listing on, give it a quick review and I'll appreciate that massively.

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