We have our oven professionally-cleaned by a national company and it costs £90. My wife thought it quite a lot. They do great job,though. She looked locally and on social media and one chap was highly recommended. £50 ..a special. offer.It's normally £60. We made an appointment for last Monday. It got to 4.00pm and he called saying he couldn't make it.He wanted to come between 5.00-6.00pm. We eat at 5.30pm..so..no. He arranged to come yesterday and came at 1145 am. Seemed in a rush. He opened the oven door and then said he couldn't do it because he didn't know how to take the door off on this model. He'd cleaned 8000 ovens in however long and had only come across four of our particular make and described himself as a 'perfectionist' and needed to take off the door to get behind the hinges, which is what the other service people did, so he'd need to go on a training course
. And what rare oven do we have ? A Neff electric fan oven. He could come back after two months post the 'training course'. And what rare oven do we have ? A Neff electric fan oven.
He does have very good reviews locally and we think he's taken on too much. He was very hurried as he left. Obviously up against time for his next job. All he had to do was to say he's very busy and could we wait a couple of weeks. Obviously, so busy it's a couple of months. I'm more annoyed that he thought we'd believe that than not getting the oven cleaned this week.
I do get naffed off with tradesmen bar a couple of exceptions. We had a 12" drop from the hallway to the front door step and it needed lifting. That's the maximum that building regs allow.
Three weeks ago they put large grey stones, with a bevelled edge around the half-moon shape step ..the step is of the same red bricks as the drive..block-paving.. and they did a good job but we had to ask that grey cement be put in the spaces between some of these large stones. That is being done this weekend. However, next door's step is the same, of course, so the lady said she'd like hers doing as well so they did it the same day as they did ours.. They ran up against time , 4.30pm finish on a Friday, and didn't do a very good job so we called them on behalf of the lady who is on her own. Well,fair play to the boss,he actually admitted they'd rushed it and should have come back to do it another day. They'll sort our neighbour's step tomorrow when they come to do our cementing and fit a new manhole cover in our side passage. The current one 'wobbles' when we walk over it and it's made of cement,really heavy so I won't do it myself and they'll take it away,too. The new tone they left when they did the step is aluminium and very light.
It's just how trades people work. They give a day and time and sometimes don't turn up. When they do I tell them that we don't have a problem if they can't make it but,for goodness sake just give us a call. When we had the fencing renewed I said I wanted 6' high panels the full length..ie patio/garden . Along our patio there is a 6" drop to the side passgae of our neighbour and they didn't allow for that. I told my neighbour I could see his bald head when he was on his patio. I insisted they put it right which they did. It involved four 6' x 6' panels plus the concrete posts.