Booking an electrician, plumber, carpenter for handyman services is not a very tough task if you plan to do periodic maintenance at your home or workplace. It becomes a little more harrowing task if you call a handyman service company that provides electrical, plumbing and carpentry related services to fix a leaked tap or to repair a door knob without knowing if they have services in your localities or not. The handyman might not get interested if he has to travel all the way from one end of the city to another for petty repairs issues for which he can hardly charge you a couple of hundred rupees.
The odd jobs such as a leaky faucet in your guest bathroom, the bathroom door that gets jammed stuck (especially due to change in season). These are jobs for generalists, who have a way with a brush, a saw, a screwdriver and a hammer. They might do some light electrical or plumbing work. But they generally jack of all trades type.
How to find Electricians, Plumber, Carpenter in India
The best way is through personal recommendations from your friends or relatives. Or else you can search them over the internet, go through their profiles and choose a suitable one. You can also get lead of a good handyman from a local hardware store; there you can get genuine and skilled technicians. If you don’t want to take the headache of talking to them one b y one over phone, then you simply put your enquiry here at get quotes for handyman service.
Make a to-do list before calling electrician, plumber and carpenter
Make sure to have a lot of work bundled up for your handyman. Compile a to-do list which will depend on the priorities. When trying to decide what to do and when, look at both seasonality and urgency. For seasonal maintenance work such as installing or servicing your AC before summer, fixing your room heater before winter etc, are there items on your list that need to be completed ASAP or you risk damage to your home or yourself, such as a leaky roof, broken pipes?
While making the list of your priority tasks there are certain things that you must consider, like setting a schedule and deadline. Consider elements that might interrupt the work, such as guests coming over to your place for a visit or your house made might face difficulty while cleaning her daily chores. You have to take care of these aspects before assigning your work to the handyman service.
Negotiate with them
After you explain everything to the handyman, they should be able to give you an estimated quote for their services. They should state every thing in detail like how much time they require to complete the project, scope of the project, how the final product will work etc. The price will be based on these factors. Projects can further expand or change as they go along, but any work that requires an extra investment from your side in the middle of the project which was not agreed earlier have to be communicated with you before starting something like that.
Get everything in writing
Like every other service providers, you should insist on writing every thing before finalizing the deals with them. Clarify all the details like how they are going to take their wages, generally there are two ways, hourly rate or a daily wage, the deadlines of the projects to be done by the handyman within a stipulated date, the materials guaranteed of a certain quality (most of them tend to cheat you by buying cheap materials and quoting you high prices for them), Any promises or guarantees that your handyman offers, must be properly given in writing for you or else you will not left with any option of recourse, if the project go awry.
Stay alert while the work is going on
Even if you have managed to find a suitable handyman for your project, do not leave every thing entirely upon them, and stay involved yourself. Just make sure that you keep close watch to what they are working upon, or you can ask one of your family members to do so. On several cases they try to make a lot of excuses for not working till the stipulated time they have been assigned to, either they say that the material (paint, sand, cement or any such material) being finished that is required to continue the work any further or other such excuses, they do it deliberately, by not making proper arrangement of these materials. These pity issues can be dealt with if you pay close attention to them while the work is going on.
DIY vs. Hiring a handyman service
My dad told me a story when I was a kid. Once a cruiser ship was about to set on a voyage, when suddenly something happened and it refused to start its engines, the ship was filled with engineers and technicians, but no one was able to find what’s wrong with it. Then they called a handyman to find and fix the error, then a guy came and after enquiring about the problem, he took a small hammer and rammed on something, the ship engine started with a growl. Every one on board was stunned by this, they are astonished that by the collective effort of all the technicians and engineers they were not able to fix it and this little guy have done this in minutes. But when he was asked about the fees for his surface he said 20K $, they crew said “although you have done a splendid job, but why would we give you this much hefty amount for such a pity repairing job (since he fixed it very easily). Then the handyman replied, every one knows “how” to repair stuffs but still you guys couldn’t manage to fix it. On the other hand I knew “Where” to fix, hence I have pulled it nicely, and that makes me a deserving candidate for getting a fees of 20K $. Then they gave it to him.
The reason for stating this example is; when you are in a dilemma about fixing something on your own which you are not confident about then you can draw inspiration from this story and leave the work to the experts.
