As a landlord of 8 years, I've experienced my fair share of tradesmen who are reliable and professional as well as tradesmen who are unreliable, unprofessional and a waste of time and money.
Unfortunately, Chris does not fall into the first group.
First, getting him to actually attend the property was like herding cats. The tenants waited in for a no-show from Chris on more than one occasion, and all I got from him was silly excuses - and not a single apology.
Normally I'm able to provide tradesmen with the contact details of tenants for them to get in touch and arrange mutually convenient times. I'm a busy guy, so what I like to do is make the initial call, provide the necessary contact details and pay the bill when the work is done. With Chris this didn't seem to be possible because he seemed to be unable to manage any of this himself, so I had to step in and arbitrate between him and the tenants like some kind of parent or guardian.
Given how ridiculous it is to have to manage someone in this way, I would normally have moved on to someone else without a second thought. But I was more patient with Chris than I normally would have been because it seems there's a real shortage of decent electricians in Manchester - most of those I called either didn't answer their phone or didn't reply to voicemail and two electricians before Chris had failed to turn up. So when Chris assured me that he would go, I gave him another chance despite the management overhead he required.
Eventually Chris turned up. To his credit he resolved the original issues at the property without too much fuss (apart from an excess of phone calls that made me begin to question whether I should have just done the work myself) but then he called to say he'd identified a separate issue that was diagnosed by the lights in the hallway maintaining a faint glow when they were turned off. I asked him to investigate and eventually when he came back with a diagnosis, I asked him to fix it. Chris gave me two options - cheap and nasty or a proper fix that would resolve the issue properly. I chose the latter because I wanted a proper job.
Chris billed me for the work and explained what he had done. I paid the same day like the good customer that I am.
A few weeks later though, the problem returned. On Sunday I got in touch with Chris who promised to get in touch with the tenants the next day.
Chris didn't text or call the tenants like he said he would and half way through the week when I questioned him on it he claimed to have taken down the tenants' number incorrectly. Throughout the rest of the week though, when the tenants (who by now were tired of waiting and were trying to contact him instead) called and text, he failed to answer or reply.
So on the morning of the following Saturday I text Chris to find out exactly what was preventing him from conversing with the tenants. No reply all day. So I text again in the evening to which he did reply and said he wasn't happy about being contacted so late!
If Chris had bothered to reply to the text I sent in the morning then there wouldn't have been a later one but that point seemed to pass him by. He then provided me with one of the most amazing excuses I have ever heard for not getting back to me sooner. By now I was tired of the games.
I reminded Chris that we all lead busy lives but that we still have to fulfil our obligations. I pointed out that part and parcel of being a responsible adult - not to mention a tradesman who relies on paying customers to make their living - is to do the things we say we will. If we say we'll call or text some tenants to arrange an appointment, we're expected to do so. And if we say we'll be at a certain place at a certain time, we're expected to be there. And if we do fail to do as we promised for whatever reason, we don't just come up with ridiculous excuses: we take responsibility for our actions and we apologise to our customer for letting them down. Because their time is just as important as our own.
But Chris wasn't interested and then flat-out refused to either fix the problem properly or provide any kind of refund to pay for getting the problem fixed by someone else. He "wasn't interested".
After spending so much time managing Chris with kid gloves, and after giving him so many opportunities to contact the tenants and then to get his backside down to the property as promised, this really felt like a slap in the face.
I'm afraid the conclusion here is that I wouldn't even trust Chris to change a light bulb. read more
