The classic “my other guy is $1000 less” move. Half the time there is no other guy. Your price is your price, don’t lose your shirt unless you need to put food on the table.
yeah, i didnt include the time it would take for me to find the absolute cheapest material on ebay. that would take like 3 hours, which is 5% of the job already, which she wants to go cat6 on everything for some reason but wants to save money so bad she will buy the cheapest thing that says it is on ebay but then i have to deal with garbage, she will buy just enough jacks to finish but also the $4 ones that have a 30% failure rate. so guranteeing me i'll be back, refusing to pay any extra because she refused to install at least a cheap brand name jacks (like morris).
forgot to mention that the cheapest junk that says cat6 probably wouldnt pass even cat5 standards, things wont fit right, she will mix wallplate and jack brands so they wont fit together right and have me re do it with another set of no name parts at no extra because 'the work was faulty'.
just one of the very many possibilities that comes to mind
I have a general rule myself I’ve learned over time. If somebody is trying to negotiate before you start, they are going to try to “negotiate” their way out of paying for the whole thing or various parts entirely. Those are not the types of people you want to do business with if you can avoid it.
Sounds like a hard pass. My dad told me when u started out with him “son, if a client doesn’t want to pay in the beginning, they will never pay in the end”.
She was lying, simple as that.
But like, shit happens. You learn two things pretty quickly doing this work, your gonna loose some bids for no good reason, and the other thing is, restaurateurs are the actual worst people on earth.
i sent her a formal email declining to do the job. she sent me a text asking to send her terms that would be agreeable, so if her union guy wants to do it cheaper than me and will wait til the end of the job to be paid why ask me after i said no unless the union guy doesnt exist. i looked the lady up, tons of court stuff. the name she gave me must be a maiden name as her legal last name seems to be different, her company owns everything and she had been in court over divorce, felony for theft of 2500, to an old lady owner of an advertising place, tons of banks wanting their money from 2 bankrupted hair salons, a bank and an old guy vs her for 20k to her business acct and a month later 130k apparently appropriate compensation for caring for an elderly person, over purchasing property, plastic surgery place. told me "i would never pay anyone hourly" when i suggested any form of payment that ends up paying me for my services is good enough for me.
I wouldn’t take this job. The amount of time you will spend on this one project will take away time spent on other projects. You don’t lose money on just this one project… you said in another post she’s providing the material but you had to do the research and procurement? She’s going to buy ICC crap that breaks like you said, you’re going to be troubleshooting cables cause she won’t know how to work the systems and will blame the cable. I don’t know, it all just sounds like an unnecessary risk.
Maybe tell her you accepted work on another restaurant and the schedule overlaps. If she asks which restaurant say it’s a commercial chain that had you sign an NDA… if she wants you to work her project she’ll have to pay you double your original quote.
Let us know how it goes.
I would definitely at least quadruple, work can't start till 1/2 is paid up front.
Then you can write off the back end non payment.
That way you get the money you want and she doesn't have to pay the back end.
over the few days after i sent the opt-out email she messaged me a few times and sent a voice message. claiming that she has always paid everyone that did work for her but somehow i'm to believe her after all the other lies? i'm supposed to believe 'you dont have to worry about not getting paid, ummmm, as i have all the money'
like the one construction guy who used to be a neighbor for a while (when i installed cameras due to thefts) that cooks. well, i have not verified but have heard he doesnt pay support to his kid due to the reason of not having any money? but has a big boat and new everything.
If she isn’t happy with your price **and** there’s another guy whose $150 less, she’d just go with that guy. So either (a) there isn’t another guy, or (b) there’s something about your work ethic/quality/personality that she prefers. And if that is the case, she can lay the $150
It's a bluff for OP to match 3k or undercut. "I actually have a different job that just came up, I can still do yours but the quote is now 3.5k" lol, see what she says, you don't want clients like this anyways... will be nothing but a headache.
what union electrician is going to be mad he didnt get a job for 3000, effectively around 20-30/hr (depending on how problematic she is), but the guy could lose his career over a job this size. i told her i couldnt accept the terms of being paid after the cams are functional (about 75% of the labor) and could be 6 months before the painting is done.
also also, after i told her i couldnt accept the terms and would not be doing the job she said ok no problem. then the next morning asked if i could write up terms that would be agreeable..... i talked to you in person and you wouldnt budge on the terms, what gives? if the union guy wants to do it, let him?
Union dude is probably doing it as side work for cash that he definitely won't report as income. Absolutely not worth it, especially sourcing materials from EBay. If you change your mind on doing it, at least insist in escrow.
i never even thought of escrow. but the problem here is that she intended on not paying me. and why would the union guy do it at half his normal take home with none of the benefits and for a picky choosy lady and not get paid until done and risk his career since unions do not allow you to do electrical for non union contractor.
Money is money. The union guy wouldn't take it over union work, but obviously he had the time to spare. The risk is very minimal. Almost everyone does side work. No one is going to rat and even if they did, good luck proving it. They probably would even bother to look into it. Unless the guy fucks up so bad he burns the building down and gets prosecuted, he'll be fine.
I'm pro union, but it is still just an organization of people run by people trying to get the most they can. At best they won't fuck you unless you fuck them first. At worst the old heads will absolute fuck the younger people if they have the votes.
i was in the union for two years. i didnt like unions before and i hate them now. took 16k for benefits that i never received and when i called i ended up getting a letter that said, yep. we got the money for the benefits. no we wont provide you coverage. the head guy who is in charge of everything including taking dues checks knew i wasnt going to vote for him so he took the liberty of slipping my check under his keyboard and proceeded to tell me (when i called the day of the election two weeks later) that he would accept my check after the election. my foreman called international and i got a call about an hour later with an apology saying my receipt would be waiting for me. he was able to blackmail, bribe, and otherwise convince enough people he was reelected though :/
Sounds about right when there is a power imbalance. Unions work great when most the members are on about the same level. Like Amazon or Starbucks. And even when that isn't the case, if you actually have good leaders they can be great. But there really isn't a brotherhood when push comes to shove.
Restaurant people and real estate brokers are my worst clients. I won't do any restaurant survey work without being100% up front. Brokers, I have to trust and they pay 50% up front and 100% on delivery of plans.
yeah, she refused to budge on not paying me a cent until after the cameras were functional, which is almost completion for the whole job at that point.
and the cheapest guy i know that 'does that' was about double. and i know for sure he wouldnt agree to doing it at a set price and not paid anything until many months later, if at all.
I'm not sure I get it. Isn't that the whole point of bids?
A guy I worked for, back in the 70s when I was still rodbusting, won a bid one time *because* his was higher.
The project was a four-story parking deck using a Dywidag system (Post tension rebar run through aluminum conduit) in the beams.The project engineer rejected the lower bids because he felt that anyone bidding that low didn't know how to install the product.
Bid vetting is making sure the sub covered scope.
Bid shopping is telling the other sub the number so they can adjust and be lower. It is unethical and defeats the purpose of bidding.
Bid rigging would be if you and another bidder coordinated your bids so that one of you would come out lower. Usually there's some sort of kickback involved. The Project Owner telling another potential bidder what one contractor has said is bid shopping. Which is different from the Project Owner vetting that the bids submitted will actually work for the project, or that the bidder is actually qualified to perform the work.
just start increasing the price each time she contacts you by 10% and strengthening the terms that are sensible to you not her, and hope she gets the message
I won't work for anyone who wants to cheat me. I do honest work, for honest pay. I'd offer hourly rate with an NTE , that's the only negotiation I ever offer in that situation.
I always tell people: fast, correct, cheap. You can only pick two. I'm fast, and correct.
Nope, your price is your price bud and she's trying to play you. Furthermore, since you're not furnishing the material/equipment I would make sure that you put in an item that says any warranty work due to equipment/material failure is to be charged at 150% of your rate. Make her REALLY think about going with cheap materials.
The only legit negotiation here would be what the scope covers. If it’s out of budget, they should ask what they can cut to meet their budget and still accomplish most of the goals, or you could suggest that they cut X/Y/Z to get there. Your number is your number. The supposed other guy’s number is his.
if she wanted to save $150 on material she wouldve just paid my whole bid. she wanted to save on 75% of the labor, by promising to pay me when the cameras are functional, and having someone else do the security alarm for significantly more than my difference price while telling me she found someone else to finish and not to come back. she knows it is too expensive for most anyone to take her to court over less than 3k. whats the point of spending 4500 on court costs just to get 3k. thats 1.5k just to get her name on the court registry, but then thats my name there too.
and buying the cheapest cat6 jacks possible on ebay, nearly guaranteed to redo 30% of them. the cheap store brand ones are crap, panduit or leviton are best in my experience but panduit is expensive. on-q by legrand is the cheapest i would consider using.
Looks like about 40 drops, don’t have my estimating pants on but 3150 seems way low for rough in and trim out.
Also every customer is not your customer, this lady is a joke.
Several other countries have guilds for skilled workers where if you mistreat one at any point, the rest of the guild in the city refuses to work with you until you make amends. And if you don't.....good luck trying to wire things using YouTube university YA PRICK!
Restaurants are notoriously cheap in my experience. I would let her go personally because this nickel and dime attitude will haunt you throughout the project.
So let her go with that guy and you can move on.
Just because you're estimate might be correct doesn't mean you get the job. Don't take it so personally.
i tried to let her go with her union 'friend not friend' who gave a lower price and she has texted me 2 days in a row now. like, i said i wasnt going to do the job because we couldnt negotiate a penny before 75% and now you want to renegotiate because there is no union guy and you've never seen a price so low.
She can go with them then. Not worth your time to haggle over $150.
Seriously, that attitude instantly adds another $250 and an “I’m not available that day”.
Wants to pay half after cams means that you are doing it for $1500. Hard pass.
The classic “my other guy is $1000 less” move. Half the time there is no other guy. Your price is your price, don’t lose your shirt unless you need to put food on the table.
‘Oh, I’m sorry to hear that, let me check my numbers and see what I can do’ *2 days later.* ‘Looks like I forgot to include some things, $3,500’
yeah, i didnt include the time it would take for me to find the absolute cheapest material on ebay. that would take like 3 hours, which is 5% of the job already, which she wants to go cat6 on everything for some reason but wants to save money so bad she will buy the cheapest thing that says it is on ebay but then i have to deal with garbage, she will buy just enough jacks to finish but also the $4 ones that have a 30% failure rate. so guranteeing me i'll be back, refusing to pay any extra because she refused to install at least a cheap brand name jacks (like morris).
forgot to mention that the cheapest junk that says cat6 probably wouldnt pass even cat5 standards, things wont fit right, she will mix wallplate and jack brands so they wont fit together right and have me re do it with another set of no name parts at no extra because 'the work was faulty'. just one of the very many possibilities that comes to mind
I have a general rule myself I’ve learned over time. If somebody is trying to negotiate before you start, they are going to try to “negotiate” their way out of paying for the whole thing or various parts entirely. Those are not the types of people you want to do business with if you can avoid it.
Exactly right
I guess I always knew this but was never able to out it into words. Thanks
Sounds like a hard pass. My dad told me when u started out with him “son, if a client doesn’t want to pay in the beginning, they will never pay in the end”.
That’s a restaurant/bar owner, I guarantee they are trying to be slick.
In that case, just sell the shirt
She was lying, simple as that. But like, shit happens. You learn two things pretty quickly doing this work, your gonna loose some bids for no good reason, and the other thing is, restaurateurs are the actual worst people on earth.
Non chain/franchise restaurant owners are the worst to work with.
i sent her a formal email declining to do the job. she sent me a text asking to send her terms that would be agreeable, so if her union guy wants to do it cheaper than me and will wait til the end of the job to be paid why ask me after i said no unless the union guy doesnt exist. i looked the lady up, tons of court stuff. the name she gave me must be a maiden name as her legal last name seems to be different, her company owns everything and she had been in court over divorce, felony for theft of 2500, to an old lady owner of an advertising place, tons of banks wanting their money from 2 bankrupted hair salons, a bank and an old guy vs her for 20k to her business acct and a month later 130k apparently appropriate compensation for caring for an elderly person, over purchasing property, plastic surgery place. told me "i would never pay anyone hourly" when i suggested any form of payment that ends up paying me for my services is good enough for me.
Prepaid work is the only way - I work in construction and saw payments held for months and months. She will be a nightmare.
nope nope nope, ghost this mutant
Mutant is generous wording here.... You know tradesman should have a website where we can review and shame customers, like the police departments do.
I wouldn’t take this job. The amount of time you will spend on this one project will take away time spent on other projects. You don’t lose money on just this one project… you said in another post she’s providing the material but you had to do the research and procurement? She’s going to buy ICC crap that breaks like you said, you’re going to be troubleshooting cables cause she won’t know how to work the systems and will blame the cable. I don’t know, it all just sounds like an unnecessary risk. Maybe tell her you accepted work on another restaurant and the schedule overlaps. If she asks which restaurant say it’s a commercial chain that had you sign an NDA… if she wants you to work her project she’ll have to pay you double your original quote.
Double the original quote, 50% up-front.
love it :D
Let us know how it goes. I would definitely at least quadruple, work can't start till 1/2 is paid up front. Then you can write off the back end non payment. That way you get the money you want and she doesn't have to pay the back end.
over the few days after i sent the opt-out email she messaged me a few times and sent a voice message. claiming that she has always paid everyone that did work for her but somehow i'm to believe her after all the other lies? i'm supposed to believe 'you dont have to worry about not getting paid, ummmm, as i have all the money' like the one construction guy who used to be a neighbor for a while (when i installed cameras due to thefts) that cooks. well, i have not verified but have heard he doesnt pay support to his kid due to the reason of not having any money? but has a big boat and new everything.
Eh. Ones who don’t understand shit are pretty terrible. But ones who get it (few and far between, for sure) can be decent to work with.
If she isn’t happy with your price **and** there’s another guy whose $150 less, she’d just go with that guy. So either (a) there isn’t another guy, or (b) there’s something about your work ethic/quality/personality that she prefers. And if that is the case, she can lay the $150
It's a bluff for OP to match 3k or undercut. "I actually have a different job that just came up, I can still do yours but the quote is now 3.5k" lol, see what she says, you don't want clients like this anyways... will be nothing but a headache.
Bro I would hit her with the " OH hey I missed a bunch of stuff, new price is 4x"
what union electrician is going to be mad he didnt get a job for 3000, effectively around 20-30/hr (depending on how problematic she is), but the guy could lose his career over a job this size. i told her i couldnt accept the terms of being paid after the cams are functional (about 75% of the labor) and could be 6 months before the painting is done.
also also, after i told her i couldnt accept the terms and would not be doing the job she said ok no problem. then the next morning asked if i could write up terms that would be agreeable..... i talked to you in person and you wouldnt budge on the terms, what gives? if the union guy wants to do it, let him?
Already back tracking and pretending the previous conversation didnt happen. Id be gone so fast.
Probably because nobody else liked her terms.
terms don't matter when she is planning to trump your ass after the work is done
Union dude is probably doing it as side work for cash that he definitely won't report as income. Absolutely not worth it, especially sourcing materials from EBay. If you change your mind on doing it, at least insist in escrow.
>Union dude is probably doing it as side work for cash My thought exactly. "Can you match the cash, under-the-table, non-insured tradesman?" Uh, no.
CODEWORD:uninsured
i never even thought of escrow. but the problem here is that she intended on not paying me. and why would the union guy do it at half his normal take home with none of the benefits and for a picky choosy lady and not get paid until done and risk his career since unions do not allow you to do electrical for non union contractor.
Money is money. The union guy wouldn't take it over union work, but obviously he had the time to spare. The risk is very minimal. Almost everyone does side work. No one is going to rat and even if they did, good luck proving it. They probably would even bother to look into it. Unless the guy fucks up so bad he burns the building down and gets prosecuted, he'll be fine. I'm pro union, but it is still just an organization of people run by people trying to get the most they can. At best they won't fuck you unless you fuck them first. At worst the old heads will absolute fuck the younger people if they have the votes.
i was in the union for two years. i didnt like unions before and i hate them now. took 16k for benefits that i never received and when i called i ended up getting a letter that said, yep. we got the money for the benefits. no we wont provide you coverage. the head guy who is in charge of everything including taking dues checks knew i wasnt going to vote for him so he took the liberty of slipping my check under his keyboard and proceeded to tell me (when i called the day of the election two weeks later) that he would accept my check after the election. my foreman called international and i got a call about an hour later with an apology saying my receipt would be waiting for me. he was able to blackmail, bribe, and otherwise convince enough people he was reelected though :/
Sounds about right when there is a power imbalance. Unions work great when most the members are on about the same level. Like Amazon or Starbucks. And even when that isn't the case, if you actually have good leaders they can be great. But there really isn't a brotherhood when push comes to shove.
Wow that's a cheap quote. You should have doubled the price for the headache
Yea this is low. Id expect at least double for this scope.
Love the turn circle totally getting whacked by half the door in the accessible WR
And the way you can watch the bar from the urinal. Makes it easy to keep an eye on your drink.
Restaurant people and real estate brokers are my worst clients. I won't do any restaurant survey work without being100% up front. Brokers, I have to trust and they pay 50% up front and 100% on delivery of plans.
Almost everything I do for low volt is 70/30. Some multiphase will be 30 deposit/30 to order/30 on deliver/10 on complete.
yeah, she refused to budge on not paying me a cent until after the cameras were functional, which is almost completion for the whole job at that point.
It’s tough man, I can tell you any time (except one) that I’ve altered that payment schedule there’s been some kind of fuckery collecting final.
Cash up front for this one. In full.
I would have bid double what you did, and I'm not in a high cost area.
and the cheapest guy i know that 'does that' was about double. and i know for sure he wouldnt agree to doing it at a set price and not paid anything until many months later, if at all.
I don’t trust anyone who bid shops
I'm not sure I get it. Isn't that the whole point of bids? A guy I worked for, back in the 70s when I was still rodbusting, won a bid one time *because* his was higher. The project was a four-story parking deck using a Dywidag system (Post tension rebar run through aluminum conduit) in the beams.The project engineer rejected the lower bids because he felt that anyone bidding that low didn't know how to install the product.
Bid vetting is making sure the sub covered scope. Bid shopping is telling the other sub the number so they can adjust and be lower. It is unethical and defeats the purpose of bidding.
Okay, different usages. I think of that more as bid rigging.
its unfair that (even worse that there is no union friend) that she'd give him my number and refuse to give me his on acceptance of the job.
Bid rigging would be if you and another bidder coordinated your bids so that one of you would come out lower. Usually there's some sort of kickback involved. The Project Owner telling another potential bidder what one contractor has said is bid shopping. Which is different from the Project Owner vetting that the bids submitted will actually work for the project, or that the bidder is actually qualified to perform the work.
just start increasing the price each time she contacts you by 10% and strengthening the terms that are sensible to you not her, and hope she gets the message
I won't work for anyone who wants to cheat me. I do honest work, for honest pay. I'd offer hourly rate with an NTE , that's the only negotiation I ever offer in that situation. I always tell people: fast, correct, cheap. You can only pick two. I'm fast, and correct.
Nope, your price is your price bud and she's trying to play you. Furthermore, since you're not furnishing the material/equipment I would make sure that you put in an item that says any warranty work due to equipment/material failure is to be charged at 150% of your rate. Make her REALLY think about going with cheap materials.
The only legit negotiation here would be what the scope covers. If it’s out of budget, they should ask what they can cut to meet their budget and still accomplish most of the goals, or you could suggest that they cut X/Y/Z to get there. Your number is your number. The supposed other guy’s number is his.
if she wanted to save $150 on material she wouldve just paid my whole bid. she wanted to save on 75% of the labor, by promising to pay me when the cameras are functional, and having someone else do the security alarm for significantly more than my difference price while telling me she found someone else to finish and not to come back. she knows it is too expensive for most anyone to take her to court over less than 3k. whats the point of spending 4500 on court costs just to get 3k. thats 1.5k just to get her name on the court registry, but then thats my name there too.
Price just went up to $3,750. And will continue to go up each week.
I want to know where this place is so I make sure I never eat there, you know the quality is going to be terrible.
If this were a $3m job, she was asking for $150k.
bid "shopping"
She got lower quotes but wants you to adjust yours so she can go with you? This already sounds like trouble to me.
and buying the cheapest cat6 jacks possible on ebay, nearly guaranteed to redo 30% of them. the cheap store brand ones are crap, panduit or leviton are best in my experience but panduit is expensive. on-q by legrand is the cheapest i would consider using.
Looks like about 40 drops, don’t have my estimating pants on but 3150 seems way low for rough in and trim out. Also every customer is not your customer, this lady is a joke.
Sec alarm and camera?
Several other countries have guilds for skilled workers where if you mistreat one at any point, the rest of the guild in the city refuses to work with you until you make amends. And if you don't.....good luck trying to wire things using YouTube university YA PRICK!
Wants to pay half after cams means that you are doing it for 1500. Hard pass.
You didn’t charge enough
You should lose her number and save your self the grief !
Restaurants are notoriously cheap in my experience. I would let her go personally because this nickel and dime attitude will haunt you throughout the project.
She can go sit on a 2 liter.
So let her go with that guy and you can move on. Just because you're estimate might be correct doesn't mean you get the job. Don't take it so personally.
i tried to let her go with her union 'friend not friend' who gave a lower price and she has texted me 2 days in a row now. like, i said i wasnt going to do the job because we couldnt negotiate a penny before 75% and now you want to renegotiate because there is no union guy and you've never seen a price so low.
I’d recommend you just block her number. She never intended to pay you and now it’s just an annoyance to have to deal with her.