Traditional Painter FAQ

Decorating quotes are free, even for insurance purposes?

I received this email about an insurance quote for some decorating work. It is fairly typical.

Good morning,
 
We require a quotation if possible for an insurance claim we are making after a radiator leaked in one of our bedrooms and caused a brown patch on the ceiling below. Is this something you could help us with?
 
We are in -------, my contact no is -------
 
Many thanks,

Sometimes a similar request comes via a phonecall too.

This is my standard response

Thanks for contacting me.

I could call round tomorrow on my way home from work, to take measurements and make some suggestions for dealing with the water damage.

For insurance quotes, I do charge a fee of £55, which is payable when I come to assess the job. If I am awarded the work, I will of course refund the £55.

Let me know how this sounds. I could also come Monday before 11am if that is more convenient.

Kind regards

Andy

Not a dicky bird of a response. That is fairly standard.

You say all quotes are free

Ordinarily, quotations are not charged for upfront, so like the NHS, they are free at the point of delivery.

So for 99% of prospective customers, quotes are free and without obligation, the price is the price they pay, good open business, as you would expect.

Insurance quotes are a different animal

Insurance quotes are very different though. I would happily do insurance related work, I have done plenty in the past , with no issues. (I work for the client, they pay me, and they do whatever they need to do to get compensated by their insurance company.) That is how it should be, I believe, fair to all parties.

However, I have also had issues with people who abuse insurance companies (poor babies, I know but they have mums too) and manipulate tradesmen, for their own end.

Disingenuous enquiries

You like to think that when you are approached to do work, there is a semblance of a chance that the enquirer might actually award you the work if you correctly explain the value of your service, and behave in a courteous business-like manner! (Most of the competiton aren't like that.)

However, insurance quotes should raise alarm bells, and you should have a strategy to deal with what is probably coming your way - usually silence or at best a polite rejection, and more money out of pocket.

Working on the simple numbers game: insurance companies usually require 3 quotes to submit a claim, so 66% of all time spent on quoting for insurance claims results in zero work for the companies submitting prices.

You could say that is business, throw enough bread on the water and one will bite. Personally, Im not a gambler, Im a decorator! What I can tell you, though, (even if I were happy with a 1 in 3 chance of a return on a level playing field) often times, there is no level playing field. Enquirers have absolutely no intention of using most of the tradesmen they have contacted to submit a quote.

Some just need 2  pieces of official paperwork so they can make sure their mate knows the right price to submit to the insurance company to get the job.(I have seen that)

Other claimants get the insurance money off the back of 3 legitimate quotes, but never even have the repairs done

The ethics of those sorts is not my business, until they approach me, the tradesmen to provide quotes.

So, for better or worse, I have no qualms asking for payment of my time to submit an official and realistic insurance quote. If I am awarded the job, the quote money is knocked off the final bill. If they are pulling a fast one, then the least they can do is compensate the tradesmen who unwittingly enabled their hustle!

What's wrong with painters bending the rules with insurance claims?

Some folks think its OK for the insurance company to pay for a complete revamp of a space that has just one water stain the size of a 10p (I have seen that. Head of security at a major chain store was trying to pull that one! Told me it was money for old rope for me to repaint something that didn't need painting. What was my problem?!

My problem was, that a) I had done a lot of work for him in the past and never ripped him off, and b) I'm not so dumb as to think there is something for nothing.

Anyone in that position, should be aware of it too, before feeling too clever...Where the claim is too small to raise a flag for an appraiser to pitch up, it probably goes unnoticed, but picture the scene where the insurance appraiser does turn up, looks at the tiny stain, looks at YOUR OFFICIAL SIGNED QUOTE for several hundred pounds... do the maths!

I remember a contractor who said he wanted a sheet of my mate's official headed notepaper which he would use to submit a quote to an insurance company. The idea was to make sure my mate's "quote"  would be high enough to lose the job, so he, the contractor, could get the work.

If that wasn't bad enough...

A month later my mate gets a call out the blue from an official sounding gent. Clueless what the guy was on about, he ended up realising that the dumb contractor had copied and pasted his own quote verbatim onto my mate's headed notepaper, and just changed the numbers! I don't know what happened, but it wasn't good for any party involved, and a few bridges burnt.

What is your take, or experience?

paint colour shades change in different light

I can't tell you how many times I have seen this reaction to placing the same colour sample on 2 different walls.

"Oh, it's a different colour."

Correct.

Colours are a function of light. And premium paint like Little Greene acrylic matt, jammed full of pigment, exaggerates the effect of changing light on a surface. This is what makes good paint interesting and exciting, and what makes colour choice so difficult for many homeowners and house painters.
After explaining that paint changes colour, depending on the time of day, I have known clients literally stare at the colour samples on their 4 walls, morning, noon and night, enjoying a visual experience that before they would have likened to watching grass grow.

btw Grass isn't green as such, it is just a material that absorbs all natural light except green & yellow. If the source of light were unnatural, grass would not look green!

I paint a lot of kitchen cabinets and very often, clients feel that to make everything clean and light, they have to go white and light. This is actually counter-intuitive and greatly reduces the impact of a hand-painted kitchen, which is probably the biggest single biggest (and most expensive) decorative feature you can have in your home.

If the walls are white, and I place a weak yellow neutral on a kitchen cupboard door bathed in sunlight, the door looks washed out. It is a hopeless colour combination for a kitchen that you want to look sunny and cheery during the day.
However, if I paint the walls surrounding the cabinet in a strong lilac-grey, mysteriously the weaker yellow neutral gains in strength, reclaims its fun sun look, and the walls and cabinets complement and bring out the best in each other - your kitchen is airy and the cabinets are now a genuine feature without screaming at you.

None of this is a mystery to a true colour expert, like Ingrid from Lilou Interiors.
If you can set aside £45 in your budget, ask Ingrid for a paint colour palette that works in all lights. Go online and book her in before your next decorating project drives you to climbing walls full of £3 paint samples that don't seem to quite work for your room in any light.

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