When someone else gets the work..

[eggsarascal]

22 hours ago, Mark Bolam said:

I used to back in the day.

One Parish Council said their policy was to go for the middle quote of 3, and I was the lowest! (I guarantee I wouldn’t be now!).

 

It’s tough working to a spec like the OP had.

Most of my work now is repeat customers or referral, so if I get a call from a random involving the phrase ‘cutting back’ it sets the alarm bells off.

At least half the time they don’t own the trees for a start.

 

Domestics are usually ‘Sorry, we went with a cheaper quote’.

Fair enough, everyone likes money.

 

One that sticks in my mind I quoted £2k on (conny removals) and lost out to a £300 quote.

I had 2 days in mind for me, the lads and decent kit, but these boys took 4 days with 2 of them.

Exactly the same spec, low stumps, tidy site.

 

You can’t worry about it too much.

Prices and standards high and charge on!

 

 

4 days for 2 blokes at £300?, the country's gone mad.

[peatff]

1 hour ago, eggsarascal said:

4 days for 2 blokes at £300?, the country's gone mad.

To be fair they were getting their dole as well though

[eggsarascal]

7 minutes ago, peatff said:

To be fair they were getting their dole as well though

You'd want to be, wouldn't ya?

[William Clifford]

21 hours ago, oldwoodcutter said:

Of course it can go against the grain when you see the nice little earner you’ve priced up has been done by someone else.
I occasionally mutter crack on to myself when I drive by one, but it’s always going to happen.
It may have been done worse than your own standards, or better come to that, but you will almost certainly have done the same to other tree companies in your area, more than likely without even knowing it.
I generally try and be philosophical, and look forward around the corner to when I do hit that big pay day again

Hi Woodcutter,

 

It’s not about losing a ‘nice little earner’. It wasn’t even that to be fair, just a standard job. It’s that a Parish Council is having work done to the standards in the photos. I’m sure we’ve all questioned what homeowners have decided they want doing or what they have had door knockers do over sensible advice, but isn’t it different for a Parish Council to be promoting such work?

 

Of course, you win some and lose some, fair play and if it’s done to a decent standard and the person can live off of the money it brings in then that’s right.

 

Not so long ago (different PC) I was asked to quote for a row of 5? Over mature, spreading Acer trees in a school playing field. A tree report had been done by a highways firm (trees in a play field, not near a highway). The report seemed tick box generated and open to interpretation. With the height estimate of the tree and the “reduce by between X and X meters”, I thought the trees could easily get screwed here. You could end up with a 10ft trunk or a couple of meters off the top. The work was being advised because of structural weaknesses, poor unions etc. The trees are in very public view and also within a conservation area. I’m not sure if they were TPO’d. I spoke to the lady who wrote the report and we had a discussion where I asked if it would be acceptable to reduce the problem areas, insert Cobra bracing in other places and minimise the reduction where it wasn’t needed. Her words - “if you can do that, that would be wonderful”.

 

The field and trees are owned half school, half PC. I was informed the head teacher would be at the PC meeting so went along. The head teacher wasn’t there, but I relayed everything in an email later. I made it clear that I wasn’t shopping for work – that I would drop out the process if they wanted, but that those trees could easily get permanently ruined and be a long-term expense if the work wasn’t carried out correctly. They asked me what I thought of some work they had had done on the village green and I told them it was (from a glance), good. That it is not often tree work is done that well. I ended up putting in a quote low enough that I would have been happy enough for someone else to do it if it was done to a good standard. I wanted the work to be done well, be it by myself or someone else, but with the report as it was, I wanted to do the work to make sure. I would really have struggled to fit it in time wise but could have made it happen. So, my quote was at its bare minimum and (detailed) conversation with PC had been had on the importance of not screwing up the mature trees on their first reduction. What do I look at every time I drive by? Tops chopped off any old how, rips, stubs, branches cut part way through and left to fall off without even tidying the ends up, random long branches extending from the crowns, and worse of the worse major deadwood, some a few inches diameter and a good few meters long, still in the tree! Some have even been reduced to this length! Who reduces major deadwood over a children’s playing area but leaves it in the tree? It’s not good enough. On top of that they have of course instantly put out a mass of regrowth that in my opinion will now need periodic maintenance to keep the weight off these reduced branches, as well as the other problems topping and regrowth brings. I told a councillor the work is diabolical and have left them to it. It shouldn’t be happening though.

 

I’m not looking for a big pay day – and I wouldn’t expect to get one off a job like the one shown in the pictures, it’s about the trees. They’re not that special a group of trees, but there is no sense in f***ing them up and creating more work / cost in the long term to save what couldn’t have been more than a couple of hundred quid in the short term.

 

Sorry for all the writing!

[Dan Maynard]

No need to be sorry for the rant, that sounds infuriating - to have taken so much trouble to explain and then have the trees wrecked is bad stewardship on the part of the council.

[WesD]

On 06/01/2020 at 23:43, Gary Prentice said:

A fellow contractor I used to know was regularly being asked to quote for a particular company, only to be just undercut by another firm. Realising that the competition wasn't even bothering to visit sites to tender, he finally submitted a price for a few hundred quid on a £2-3K job. 

 

He never got asked to tender for another job

I priced for a new build firm (well known) a few times and cottoned on I was part of the we need 3 quotes gang, they asked me to quote another job I flatly said no, oh why not ? Well I’m quoting to tick your boxes and never get a job and the last job I underpriced on purpose to test this theory still to no avail! Please can you quote this job we are in a pickle and you never know ..... I did and I quoted it as any other, low and behold I got the job, 5 trees out but only 3 stumps to be ground out? I phoned the QS and asked if he was sure, I’m already there and the other 2 stumps I’d grind for the same price, no he says the job spec is the job spec. 
 

Anyhow job done paid in full then back to status quo, 3rd quote tough shit, I stopped quoting, months later I get a phone call, we have a snag on the only job you have done for us, you didn’t grind a stump out, I send them there drawings and more importantly the shit drawing I demanded (on the day of doing the job when I said I’d grind them all) from QS to confirm which 3 of the 5 stumps they want out with his signature on, oh ok well you have done this job we need you to go back tomorrow to grind this 1 stump “you sure only 1 shall I just grind both of them?” No just this 1 stump. Oh ok I charged them two thirds the whole of the original job, they signed it off and PAID, never got asked to quote again though!

 

 

[kevinjohnsonmbe]

My funniest experience was, after quoting a job for a neighbouring PC - they’d had the survey done by someone else - a mate in that village told me there were clowns on site doing the work.  No TM, road closed at school run time, massive Oak limbs being dropped onto tarmac. 
 

Odd I thought, mate knows his trees, if he said Oak it’ll definitely  be Oak. But the spec was for a Beech reduction...
 

I drove by later and stopped to have a look. There was a car there with the boot open being loaded with logs by a lady. 
 

She saw me looking at the tree and the dented tarmac and asked if I’d come to check the work. 
 

No Madame, just a passing interest. She couldn’t help but gush about how great the PC was and that her husband was the Chairman...

 

She wasn’t quite so perky when I showed her an e-copy of the survey, told her they’d cut the wrong f*cking tree, filled all the gullies with wood chip, dented the tarmac AND been caught by Cornwall councils TM police (that alone was a f*cking miracle since they rarely leave the office!)

 

Oh, how I laughed!  
 

Mate from that village always said the same, they’d ask him to quote but it was always the same chimp that got the job. 
 

He wouldn’t, and I certainly wouldn’t, even bother reading an email from them again. Muppets!

[Kent Arboreal]

We quoted a few of these but never got them. Craziest was a shit ton of work here there and everywhere around the village. 5 firms quoted for it. Four of us quoted between 17k and 22k. Our quote was 18k by the way. The contract went to the fifth quote of 2.5k. Never knew if they managed to do it all. If they did they were on about ten quid a day.

 

Never bother quoting PCs any more. Only one I ever won I misread the spec and barely broke even. Fuck that. The building firms are as bad as others have already mentioned. I’m pretty sure a lot of them are just looking for a muppet who’ll cut down TPO’d trees so they can get on with a project without any ballache or liability for doing it.

 

Had one this week ask us to tender for a polished concrete floor. Wouldn’t even know where to begin doing that. But more to the point why would anyone think we would?!

[IronMike]

A pal of mine approached me about coming to look at an “emergency” job that needed doing. We both sacrificed a half day to go look as it is a 2 hour drive away. Got there, checked it out, happy days. It would have been a days work for my machine and another mates digger with shear on, a long day but a day nonetheless. 500m of Hawthorn hedge to come out next to a canal, with no heavy plant allowed on embankment. So my mate put his price in and then got told the EA are going to do it. And they’ve said it’ll take them a week. Brilliant lads, well done! It’s an emergency we were told, it must get done immediately we were told, time is of the essence we were told. Ok, we’ll let someone take a week to do it rather than a day. Genius!

[Gary Prentice]

17 hours ago, Kent Arboreal said:

I’m pretty sure a lot of them are just looking for a muppet who’ll cut down TPO’d trees so they can get on with a project without any ballache or liability for doing it.

Shouldn't make any difference. The offence would be that they 'allowed' the TPO contravention, the only way that they could wiggle out of a prosecution would be if the paper trail showed that the contractors had taken trees down that they hadn't instructed them to. 

 

A planning officer once said that they always go after the owner initially for allowing the deed, the contractor for doing it (as they should know better).

 

Only time they might consider not doing the owner would be if it was some doddery OAP, who probably had no idea that trees could actually be protected.

Edited January 9, 2020 by Gary Prentice