jrannis
Senior Member
- Location
- Fort Lauderdale/ Miami
Moonlighter
Moonlighter
Nice term for unlicensed contractor!!
Moonlighter
Nice term for unlicensed contractor!!
Service Upgrade Estimate
- Thread starter TomDx
- Start date
- Status
petersonra
Senior Member
- Location
- Northern illinois
- Occupation
- engineer
Since he specifically mentioned unlicensed contractors AND moonlighters, I figured they must be different. Usually moonlighters refers to someone working a sdie job to make extar money. Around here a lot of tradesman have side businesses doing small jobs on their own. Often the contractors they work for feed them the very small jobs they don't want to handle themselves because it is not worth it to them to get involved in a $500 job.
Tom just wants to find the lowballer.
Tom just wants to find the lowballer.
Go for the lowball estimate, you get what you pay for.
Don't negotiate on labor, because if he drops his price on labor he will have to cut corners to make money.
If you want a better deal, it will have to be made value engineering the materials.
There is NO problem with properly installed Aluminum service conductors.
There is one discount you can get.
I would worry about the weight of copper is installed overhead. BTW, who has ever installed copper overhead? That sounds crazy, on the wallet, and in a winter storm.
Whats wrong with paying part upfront?
Tom just wants to find the lowballer.
Go for the lowball estimate, you get what you pay for.
Don't negotiate on labor, because if he drops his price on labor he will have to cut corners to make money.
If you want a better deal, it will have to be made value engineering the materials.
There is NO problem with properly installed Aluminum service conductors.
There is one discount you can get.
I would worry about the weight of copper is installed overhead. BTW, who has ever installed copper overhead? That sounds crazy, on the wallet, and in a winter storm.
Whats wrong with paying part upfront?
growler
Senior Member
- Location
- Atlanta,GA
petersonra said:
When you say side business do you mean a legitimate business or someone working for cash under the table? It's Ok to run a part time business but that's not what I see at all. I see guys that have been doing electrical work for all of two years and they assume the are qualified to work on their own so they tell friends and relatives to spread the word.
petersonra
Senior Member
- Location
- Northern illinois
- Occupation
- engineer
growler said:
I would not want to deal with someone who is not competent. I am less concerned about whether the guy is paying all his taxes or not. I would have no way of knowing whether he is paying the prescribed amount of taxes regardless of payment method. Most of the guys I have used that work this way I have paid by check.
The problem I have with moonlighters are when they start a job but won't finish it. They work for some ridiculous low rate and then when they won't come back and finish the job I get called in by the homeower who expects me to do it at the same ridiculous low rate.petersonra said:
I bid on a home remodel job awhile back and never got it. Six months later the homeowner calls and says he as a few small items he would like to get an estimate on. I go over there and see the whole house has been rewired and all that left is to intall a few receptacles, hang some lights, install some breakers etc.
I ask who did the electrical and he tells me he found someone to do it for $45 per hour. He said the guy works for a licensed contractor and does these jobs on the side. I asked him why he doesn't have this guy come back and finish the job. He tells me he can't get a hold of the guy anymore. The guy won't answer his phone or return his calls.
I give him a price to finish the job and he gets upset because he thinks I'm taking advatage of him since the other guy was so much cheaper.
On another job the customer just had his basement finished in a home worth close to a million dollars. All that was left was to hang a few ceiling fans and some light fixtures. He hired a moonlighter because the guy was cheap.
I figured the guy must have been a industrial electrician or something. The workmanship was very good but the guy didn't seem to know residential wiring.
He didn't wire in any smoke detectors, the entire kitchen was on one 15amp circuit, the garage, laundry room, utility room and bathroom were all on one circuit. Also there was a GFCI receptacle at every outlet. These were wired in series so if you tripped the bathroom GFCI, which was at the end of the circuit, you had to rest all the other GFCI receptacles in the correct order begining with the ones in the garage, then the utility room, then the laundry room before you could reset the bathroom GFCI. The kitchen had GFCI receptacles at every outlet as well and were wired the same way.
I asked the homeowner why he didn't have the guy who did the wiring come back and finish it. He said the guy got sent out of state by his company to work on a project. Again the homeowner expects me to do this job for this guys low rates.
On yet another job the electrician, if he really was an electrician, ran romex under the carpet to an island, buried splices without boxes behind the sheetrock and a few other things. I don't buy this guy was an electrician let alone a licensed contractor as he was passing himself off as. He was doing this job for a general contractor who was also a poor contractor. The whole basement was a mess.
Often these guys will tell the homeowner that they're licensed. In reallity they have a journyman license but not a contractors license. It's illegal to work without a contractors license even for side jobs in this state. They also don't have the required insurance but they don't tell the homowner that.
So I guess what I'm trying to say is if you're going to moonlight please charge a decent amount, finish your jobs and if you don't have any experience in the type of work you'll be doing learn how to do it correctly before you do it.
Other than that I don't have a problem with moonlighters.
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growler
Senior Member
- Location
- Atlanta,GA
petersonra said:
Was that check made out to an individual or commercial account? If it was to an individual it was cashed at the liquor store.
You may not care about taxes but that is part of the cost of doing business. The people that don't pay taxes don't keep records and normally don't have insurance ( the insurance companies kind of like for you to keep records ).
Eveyone that doesn't pay taxes puts more of a burden on those that do.
Not only that but it's the law.
growler
Senior Member
- Location
- Atlanta,GA
aline said:
I ran into a situation similar to this a few months back. A general contractor hired side job workers to do the electrical on a house because he didn't want to get the correct permits. He pays them and then learns how screwed up the job is. He can't do anything because the guys are working under the table so he tries to go after the contractor that they work for during normal working hours. The EC that they work for is doing a bigger legitimate job for him at the time. Then the EC gets so mad that he walks off the job leaving the contractor in a bad situation ( he's not going to be held responsible for the side work some of his guys are doing ).
When you start breaking the law you just open up a whole different can of worms. Now the only people that can make any money are lawyers.
- Location
- Massachusetts
emahler said:we don't need to follow no stinkin' laws...it's our right to make a better life by any means necessary...don't you agree
Now lets be careful how we frame this discussion.
Not every 'moonlighter' ignores the laws.
There are people who 'moonlight' without breaking any laws.
- Location
- Massachusetts
emahler said:
Thats cool....
I just felt otherwise and have seen this happen before here.
electricguy61
Senior Member
aline said:
Got a call from a previous customer for whom I had done a lot of small jobs. I quoted them for a badly needed new service (something I'd actually make some profit installing). She now wants a whole house fan installed. I asked about the service upgrade and her response was "Oh, that already been done. My husband got a guy he plays hockey with to
do it".
Guess what my comment was.............................................
"Maybe you should have your husbands buddy do the fan for you"
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emahler said:
$10 for the peach ....just ate the last piece
for breakfast........and juice ~ How's this...called PS at noon today for an outage that was reported to me on Friday...power back on by 1:00PM (all arranging done over phone, I didn't have meter number; pole number; block/lot; customer name AND even the wrong address LOL)....the "lineman" said MY connection was wrong ??? wouldn't it have blow up when I crossed legs ? ....and how did the job have 220 power for a week with wrong connections ???
petersonra
Senior Member
- Location
- Northern illinois
- Occupation
- engineer
growler said:Was that check made out to an individual or commercial account? If it was to an individual it was cashed at the liquor store.
You may not care about taxes but that is part of the cost of doing business. The people that don't pay taxes don't keep records and normally don't have insurance ( the insurance companies kind of like for you to keep records ).
Eveyone that doesn't pay taxes puts more of a burden on those that do.
Not only that but it's the law.
I think I made the check out to them, but that does not mean they paid no taxes on it. There is no law says you have to have a DBA to have a legit business. There are plenty of larger contractors cheating on their taxes. Is it my responsibility to investigate them to see if they paid taxes on the personal use of their company owned truck? Or the light fixtures the company bought and charged off to a job, but that ended up in his living room?
How many times have you driven down the road and seen a contractors truck pulling his bass boat to the lake? Do you worry about whether he is accounting for the personal use of that truck properly? I don't. Its just not my problem.
petersonra
Senior Member
- Location
- Northern illinois
- Occupation
- engineer
emahler said:
Can't say I ever had that happen to me.
Just for the sake of argument suppose it did happen. Just how would one know that the individual in question was not legit? Are you pledging never to buy something at a second hand store, a pawn shop, a flea market or eBay just because there is some chance it might not be completely on the up and up??
growler
Senior Member
- Location
- Atlanta,GA
petersonra said:
That's a legitimate business expense. Just put the company name on the boat and it's advertising.
Or you can say that you are checking out some work down at the docks and you need to get a better perspective ( easier to see from the water ).
It's the company picnic and no one else showed up ( to bad they didn't know about it ).
Better yet, buy a commercial fishing license and write the whole trip off as a loss.
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