David Savery at dses.uk details some of the trials and tribulations of a day in the life of an electrical industry superhero.
Something I’ve noticed whilst perusing the articles within this venerable publication is that they generally have a positively cheery ‘feelgood’ spin. I hate that!
The call came in regarding a tripping RCD early enough to wake me, and although I hadn’t worked for this client before I apparently came recommended. So far, so promising, except my caller wants to know over the phone how much it will cost to rectify the fault, and at this chilly hour where the birds are still singing and the wife has hot-dogged herself up in all the quilt, I’m simply not in any position to say. I mean, I’m still in my Ben10 pyjamas here with bloodshot eyes and a Skol hangover to boot.
Anyway, I figure I can at least ballpark it by giving him my standard rate to throw an hour at it, my schedule being fluid enough to accommodate a short-order job at the start of that day. By sixty minutes in, I ought to have some idea of what the fault may be and what needs doing at least to temporarily stabilise the RCD for the healthy circuits before I mooch over to the job my Filofax has me booked out for.
With my wider-awake colleague having driven us to site, there’s no offer of a cuppa for me to wash down my paracetamol, instead the client little more than grunts whilst pointing me at the understairs cupboard which is chock full of camping equipment that’s burying the consumer unit. After digging out tent poles, sleeping bags and, for some reason, not one, or two, but three butane cookers, I get to a very yellowed and ill-maintained CU to find four circuits hanging off the RCD.
Some testing quickly indicates only one has insulation resistance readings between live parts and earth likely to be giving the RCD the kind of hangover my dry-swallow Anadin is failing to fight off. The circuit is labelled “outside lights” and it’s raining, so my running outside results in both a quick soaking and the eyeballing of a budget-brand floodlight holding enough water to keep a goldfish happy. It’s a result – and we’re less than thirty minutes on the job!
Yet, instead of looking happy that we’ve quickly and efficiently diagnosed the problem, my client looks aghast and exclaims: “That was quick! I hope you’re not charging the full call-out fee just for that!”
“Just for that??” Well… yes mate, I will be charging in full… exactly for that! I politely explain that when it comes to fault finding, he’s paying for my expertise and not the mere physical time on-site.
Just because someone with less training and experience who happens to be armed with an Aldi middle-aisle multimeter instead of a calibrated MFT could, perhaps, charge the same amount to take three times as long to figure it out doesn’t make them better value for money.
If I made it look easy, it’s precisely because he hired the right guy first time! Besides, I’m scheduled to be earning elsewhere, so I don’t want to be out of pocket there having sacked them off for an hour to act as the good Samaritan here.
I happen to have a replacement floodlight on the van and was able to offer a swap-out there-and-then, achieving not only fault diagnosis but also full fault elimination and a timely restoration of functionality! The price of the new luminaire itself? Well, we’re looking at the best part of £40 with VAT.
The gentleman puffs air into his cheeks and grabs a copy of a well-thumbed popular DIY chain catalogue he has to hand. Apparently, this high-street hawker is punting LED floodlights for as little as £15.
Obviously, it’s a no-brand short-warranty thing compared to my van stock of Timeguard and Ovia gear and it looks very much like the sorry soggy affair I just wrenched off his wall to restore sanity to his RCD, but he seems to figure it’s all the same and I’m obviously robbing him for a tidy mark-up which he presumes is all going into my pocket to blow behind the bar of the Hungry Horse’s happy hour.
I explain through a winning false smile that it’s not like-for-like quality and that every link in the supply chain adds their own mark-up. I admit mine isn’t cost price, but then my van stock has been sourced from my trusted wholesaler and delivered to his door, so I’m now the first port of call for any warranty issue if it fails once slapped to the side of his semi-detached.
If he wishes, he can trundle out to the DIY store himself to buy their bargain-bucket luminaire and I’ll bolt it into place without any guarantee of my own. It’ll be a forty-minute round trip for him however, and I can’t imagine his ’22 plate Range Rover is cheap to run.
A crossed facial expression proves he’s processing the maths and that it all sounds like too much effort; his own time and the diesel his luxury tractor slurps obviously being more valuable in his mind than the wear-and-tear on me and my old Transit. With that, he swiftly backtracks and goes with my model.
Little over an hour from our first turning up, we’re back on the van, back on plan, and heading to the job we’re supposed to be at – the job we’ve lost money on because we’re now clocking-in late with a grim feeling our efforts haven’t been appropriately appreciated!
The invoice is swiftly issued. After a few weeks… and a few payment reminders… he kindly gets around to settling in full. He also leaves a review praising the speedy service. In fact, his review has no criticism whatsoever: “David and his colleague quickly diagnosed the issue and resolved it. I couldn’t be happier and can’t recommend them enough.”
That said, his rating is four-and-a-half stars whereas all prior reviews on that platform have been the full five, meaning my previously perfect grade is lost and now aggregates at four-point-something… forever. Cheers mate!
A few months later, I’m again awoken from my hazy slumber by my mobile reporting an incoming call from this guy. I let it roll to voicemail where he asks if I’m interested in quoting for new electrical work. Sometimes you’re simply better off not bothering, so I stab at ‘3’ to delete the message before it even ends and roll over in bed to get on with my hangover and recurring, yet fitful, dream of becoming an invincible superhero called “ARC FLASH”.
Yeah! There’s laserbeam eyes, shot deflecting cuffs, a slow-motion bullet-time (sort of like The Matrix, only I thought of it first), a purple outfit with cape, mask and logo and… oh, never mind. I’m fifty and it’s probably never going to happen now anyway, so just forget I mentioned it!
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