Why is it so hard to find people that know what they are doing

The same is true of my nearest VW service agent. They couldn't fix a rough idle, after 3 returns, and told me they have to start swapping out parts. But unlike Ford, who will use parts they have in stock as 'test' components, and return them to the warehouse if they don't fix the problem, VW want to charge me for every part they test/try, even if it isn't the one causing the problem.

I'm as capable as they are doing the above, BUT its now getting quite difficult to buy car parts - the market for DIY maintenance on cars has vanished.
 
This thread brings to mind two observations that have stuck with me for a long time:

1. Water always wins.

2.

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Talent chases money and the best hands in the building trades are where the money is—union members who’ve gone through 4 year apprenticeships and work out of the hiring halls or steady for industrial and commercial contractors. You chase the big jobs and the overtime. You want to work 7-12s ideally, 6-10s at least.
 
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I had a similar issue with one of our computer servers. The server was getting a memory error. The log message specified the memory bank the chip was located in. We have a service contract so I called them to send a replacement DIMM and I would install it myself. They insisted since we are under contract they had to send out a tech.

The person who came wasn't an employee of the company, but a third-party contractor they hired for the install. OK, no problem should be an easy fix. However, it wasn't. When he arrived he didn't have any information. Not what the problem was, what chip it was, or where the memory bank was in the server. He started calling people trying to find out. After 15min of him was trying to get the information, I ended up getting online, getting the correct chip from my previous email, looking up the server's manual to see where the chip was located and opening the server so he can insert the chip. He didn't even know how to verify the fix. Man, I wish I could get a gig like that. I won't say who the company is, but they're one of the largest.
 
I don't know, the work I do people love and I'm always in demand and have work coming out of my ears. However I must say I'm not generally working for the common folk in neighborhoods like mine or for me.

The thing is if you want good craft men it cost money and you get what you pay for. Lets say if you called for work from me, you would have to wait and get scheduled in. So if your calling for some work to be done and they can start right away, one needs to question that. If someone is not busy in their trade and they can start immediately there might be a very good reason for it. The same goes for a cheaper price to do the job, how can they be cheaper?
 
I don't know, the work I do people love and I'm always in demand and have work coming out of my ears. However I must say I'm not generally working for the common folk in neighborhoods like mine or for me.

The thing is if you want good craft men it cost money and you get what you pay for. Lets say if you called for work from me, you would have to wait and get scheduled in. So if your calling for some work to be done and they can start right away, one needs to question that. If someone is not busy in their trade and they can start immediately there might be a very good reason for it. The same goes for a cheaper price to do the job, how can they be cheaper?

I wish I could find a contractor in my area that shares your philosophy! I have no problem paying top dollar for top work. Just have a problem paying top dollar for inferior work.
 
Talent chases money and the best hands in the building trades are where the money is—union members who’ve gone through 4 year apprenticeships and work out of the hiring halls or steady for industrial and commercial contractors. You chase the big jobs and the overtime. You want to work 7-12s ideally, 6-10s at least.

Absolutely, as far as talent chasing bucks. I have a brother-in-law with a high school education who has made a very nice living as a (non-union) finish carpenter and cabinet maker for a contractor that builds high end homes, $500,000 and up.
 
I see it quite often when I give a bid on a job. The customer wants the work done, but they want the contractor to work for free.

This was a vaulted ceiling. The walls were wallpapered, now they have been textured. And I also did the floors.

IMG_20180909_174001.jpg
 
and care about what they are doing?

Last year our roof sprung a leak. It is a concrete tile roof. I'm slightly handy around the house but figured rather than worry about if I'd fixed he problem every time it rained I'd pay someone to come out and fix it right the first time. I searched through reviews and found a well rated place that got back to me quickly, I took the day off work, paid them a good chunk of money and it was fixed.... until last night.

My first thought was to call them today and try to figure out when they could get out there and take a look at it and probably end up with them saying it was a new problem that wasn't related to the one they fixed or something like that.

Thinking about how much of a hassle that would be I climbed up on the roof in the rain and found the problem and did a temporary fix to get us through until the rain lets up in a few days and I can seal it right where the water is clearly finding its way through (the 1" section that wasn't properly sealed when they built the house) and trim a couple tiles down by 1/8 to 1/4 so that it actually matches the other side of the area where the water flows fine and doesn't have blockage issues that push the water up into that 1" section missing sealant.

They had cleaned up some blockage and replaced some wood that had rotted but didn't actually address the cause of the problem. Were they somehow less knowledgeable than a person that had only ever been on a roof once before? Were they just lazy? Were they counting on a follow-up repair call? What is wrong with people?

I’m going to try to widen the scope on this one:

What if we (humanity) have lost our appreciation for quality? In my 25+ years as a licensed tradesman, I have witnessed a focus on “driving down the price”.
Labor, materials and skill have been on a decent track of devaluation.

Of course there are some hangers-on of respect for quality... but when was the last time you heard someone say “I don’t care what it costs, I want it accurate, right, the best” etc? .
Yes, some of you will say “I do that” , but I think the majority of us are simply programmed to “price compare”, not “quality compare”.

Us consumers, we the shoppers, the customers, the clients, are to be blamed for this. Our reaction to “rolling back the prices” has resulted in the suppliers of service and products to reply with less and less focus on quality.

Not what anyone wants to hear, but think about it.
 
Of course there are some hangers-on of respect for quality... but when was the last time you heard someone say “I don’t care what it costs, I want it accurate, right, the best” etc? .
Yes, some of you will say “I do that” , but I think the majority of us are simply programmed to “price compare”, not “quality compare”.
And I think what bites us, too, is that we can't see previous work firsthand to compare the quality. Not unless we have visited someone else's house and have seen their work firsthand--word-of-mouth is still the best advertising. So for a lot of us, it's probably up to luck if we end up choosing a contractor who values quality work. A collection of photos only shows us what they can do; it doesn't show the little details up close that make or break a "good job" on a project.
 
Very true, in general we get the quality we are willing to pay for. A lot of people bemoan 'cheap Chinese junk' and then price compare for everything they buy.

What adds to my frustration is I went with a licensed roofer with an actual business rather than some guy that does it as one of many side jobs thinking I'd get better work. When they came out for the estimate they jumped right in popped tiles out and seemed to know exactly what was going on and were even familiar with the same problem on other houses from the same builder.

I know there are good people out there that do excellent work but the trick is finding them and then convincing them to do such a small job. We live in a smaller town about an hour from anything larger and so the people from the bigger town have no interest in driving that far when they can find plenty of work where they are.

My experience is you get two types of people that go into business for themselves those that take pride in their work and want complete control over it and those that can't show up on time or do things to someone else's higher standards.
 
A lot of people bemoan 'cheap Chinese junk' and then price compare for everything they buy.
I've learned not to price-compare to the level of the lowest cost out there (look at the flood of imported junk on Amazon with names we can't even pronounce, which push down the legit brands a few pages), but I do read a lot of reviews and find the best bang for the buck when I can. I don't take all reviews seriously, but if I start seeing trends in a product (the same problem across many of the reviews) then I know it's an issue.

And that makes me think of trying to find trustworthy reviews of service work.

It's just harder with service work to trust reviews as it is so subjective. Three people could get a hot water tank replaced, and let's assume it has the same quality of work on each. One could give five stars because, hey, he has hot water again and there's no leak. Another person could get the same exact repair and complain that the soldering was a little sloppy, the plumber left a mess behind (like maybe he forgot to pick up his empty spool of solder), and the tank has a small dent in it around the back where it can't normally be seen. A third might write a review saying his new tank started leaking after a year and a half.

So who do you trust there? One doesn't care because it's working, and maybe the installation was a little sloppy but he's either ignorant, or doesn't really care since it's out of sight anyway. The second could nitpick everything in life and never be satisifed...or maybe it really was that sloppy. The third could have been a defective unit from the manufacturer that wasn't even a result of the plumber's work.

When ours went out here early last year, I told the landlord that there was a long-established plumbing company up the street from us, since our usual HVAC guy was booked and couldn't get to it. I'm sure the job was expensive, but they did a good job on it and brought everything up to code. When the city inspector arrived, he saw which company did the work, recognized the plumber's name, and told me that they never have a problem with any of the work they have seen from this company.
 
That hit the nail on the head on reviews. A bit like the people that say "It has been a great car, I had to have the transmission replaced at 70,000 miles but aside from that it has been great." and the people that say "I hate this car it always has problems. The mats wore out and the glove compartment had a rattle"

I forgot about several years ago when we had our water heater replaced. The guy showed up around 5 PM and finished just after 10. Everything was so neat and clean on the install. Same thing with the inspection, they walked in, basically looked at who did it and signed off. It wasn't cheap but it was very good work.

A couple years later we were having our shower redone with Corian (don't even get me started on that story) and they said the shower drain pipe needed to be redone from the P-trap up so they could hook their drain to it. My wife called the same plumbing company but couldn't get the same guy. The one they sent out said he'd have to come back with a jack hammer the next day to take out the cement around it. I got home and looked at it and found there was a thin layer of cement around the drain pipe sealing it up to the foundation. One hit with a hammer and it shattered and I dug out and replaced the needed pipe in a couple minutes.
 
People don't do DIY anymore? Sure they do. I know a bunch of people who fix and make their own things. Oh, I suppose we're a self-selected group and probably a small portion of the population. But there are even a lot of young people getting into DIY. I don't think the outlook is quite so bleak.

The race to the bottom on price, and sloppy contractors, is rather bleak though.
 
Building upon what @blhagstrom is talking about -

When Darwinism is circumvented, and the stupid are allowed to procreate at a rate far faster than those who would flourish in a Darwinian world with their higher intellect, this is what you get.

Couple that with a cancerous, feelings-first educational system, a societal disdain for facts and knowledge, and you have the perfect storm.

Sorry, I know that's dreadfully bleak, but I often say that I stand out intellectually (or so say my friends) not because I'm special, or smart, but that the bar is set so incredibly low nowadays.

Can you imagine talking with Thomas Jefferson, or James Madison? Nikolai Tesla, or Karl Marx? Alexander Graham Bell or Michael Faraday??
 
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When Darwinism is circumvented, and the stupid are allowed to procreate at a rate far faster than those who would flourish in a Darwinian world with their higher intellect, this is what you get.</snip>

Not only has it been circumvented it has been reversed. Those that are most fit to take care of their offspring typically reproduce at a much lower rate than those that are not fit. But that is a whole different thread just looking to get me banned.

Couple that with
Participation trophies! The roofers in question did show up and did participate so they get the same trophy as everyone else.
 
Personal perspectives and what they would rather be doing instead....

In a narcissistic world, everything that is done is for ones own personal benefit without benefit to the community because there are no community standards. A sense of accomplishment is a sense of community standards because it’s a reflection for what a person has done for themselves and others at the same time. Pride in what a person does comes from the acknowledgment from others and caring about others in what others go through. If a person doesn’t value others and what they go through in life, why should they care about how well they do anything? So, in a profit driven society all that matters is getting paid as much as possible while doing as little as possible. Without community standards, doctors prescribe opium based pharmaceuticals without a care for the patient which accounts for sixty-six percent of those that died from opium related deaths in this country and Chinese companies shipping opium products to the US legally. Then of course public shootings walk hand in foot as a result of not having value for others.

It’s more than idiocy....


Look at how much money has been invested in foreign markets and the decline of domestic markets and the poverty associated with the situation. Then look at the increase of incarceration and those that think it’s their own damn fault. The subjective reasoning that has taken over society as a whole.

It’s just plain insensitive selfishness....
 
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I'm as capable as they are doing the above, BUT its now getting quite difficult to buy car parts - the market for DIY maintenance on cars has vanished.
I was going to say that I've seen the opposite here where I'm at--I have more sources than ever now to purchase the parts, and more help than at any time in history since I can search online and find out if others have had the same problem, and start my own sleuthing that way.

But then I saw your location. I'm sure it's quite different where you're at. :)
 
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