It shows that over half of UK tradespeople have attended a call-out in the last year to find that the customer was not home and in more than a third of these cases the customer failed to turn up at all.
The survey discovered that within the last year, nearly one in five (18%) of tradespeople had completed jobs, only to find customers did not have funds to pay them. Customers have come up with creative solutions to avoid paying their bills, just over one in 10 said that customers had tried to pay their bill with goods and services, with one in 25 propositioning the worker in lieu of pay.
The research also outlined tradespeople’s most frivolous callouts, including a carpenter being called to a property where he had recently fitted a new door and told the lock did not work, only to find that the customer was using her old key.
Jazz Gakhal, head of Direct Line for Business, said that it is a shame that some people do not respect hardworking tradesmen enough to be on time at an appointment. That said, tradespeople should also be aware that working in a customer’s house provides a number of unique risks and challenges. "For example, many of the tradespeople we surveyed were blamed for damaged property after a call out. Tradespeople must ensure that they are adequately protected through careful work, managing customer expectations and investigating the benefits of purchasing public liability insurance.”
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