How much did you say?

The cost to supply and fit a new kitchen mixer tap is £144.00.

How much did you say???

£144.00

Are you an "executive" plumber or does the tap come with bells and an inbuilt stereo?

Are you taking the mickey, Love?

Absolutely not. Merely making a polite enquiry.....

Well, that was the conversation in my head anyway. There was also some imagery involving a deep fat fryer and some fried meat balls.  So, Readers, what do you reckon? Is £144.00 legit? Now, the request was for a basic tap so the bulk of the amount would be labour. I'm also assuming that like 95% of the workman who have ever come to my house the preference would be for a "cash" payment.

So, I just watched this video;




So how much time for an experienced plumber to replace the sink with no unexpected problems arising? Shall we be generous and say an hour and put a price tag of £44.00 on the tap? So that's £100 an hour for labour. Sure, he's got about 10 mins travel time and petrol costs but I still reckon that's a healthy profit.

Hmm. What do you Readers say? Am I being unrealistic? Do you think £144.00 a fair price?

Now bearing in mind not long ago I replaced the screen on Master Ben's ipod myself at the cost of about £10  (Apple have a standard repair price of £106.44 for a 16GB 2nd generation ipod touch) I can't help feeling a little sceptical about some of the charges these workman come up with. Yep, and I've had many of them at my house over the years. The bad news for them is that it doesn't take much brains to work out how much things cost and add reasonable labour costs. Finding a reliable, honest and fair minded workman is like finding gold dust. You know, I don't mind paying for a job done well and, more importantly, for a workman that keeps to his promises but I do feel sometimes they look at me and think I'm an easy target.

As they say, there's no honour amongst thieves.