It is increasingly common for customers to be surprised by the high cost of a home repair. At first glance, changing a part, fixing a faucet or unclogging a pipe may seem expensive, but professionals in the sector insist that the price not only reflects the time spent, but also the experience, tools and conditions in which the work is carried out.
This is how he defends it Santi Villafruela, a 37-year-old self-employed plumber with more than two decades of experience in the sector, in an interview for NewsWorkin which he claims the value of the profession and explains why many of his budgets, although they may seem high, reflect the experience and responsibility that comes with the work he performs.
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“There are jobs that are more expensive and others that are cheaper,” he explains. “It is not the same to unclog a house and charge 400 or 500 euros for staying two or three hoursbut I’m touching other people’s shit,” Santi justifies about the type of tasks that are often not valued. “Anyone you tell to put their hand in that, even if it’s with gloves, for 100 euros it wouldn’t seem like much,” he adds.
He defends that years of experience also pay off
The professional, convinced that the final price of the service provided not only reflects the time spent, defends that the knowledge accumulated after years of experience also has its own value.
“When I arrive at a house without hot water and I know immediately which part needs to be replaced, they tell me: ‘It only took you ten minutes and you charge me 200 euros?’“, says Santi, based on experiences he has had. However, he explains that although the price may seem high, “to know that, I have been in the trade for 20 years,” he adds, because “maybe someone else with less experience will come along who, instead of taking 10 minutes, takes an hour.”
“It’s like a mechanic who tightens a screw; what you pay for is not the screw, but knowing which one to tighten. And that must be valued.”
A job that is not valued
Santi regrets that part of the problem lies in the lack of social appreciation of manual trades. “I go to many houses where they tell me that I am expensive, they call someone else and then they call me again because they have left it worse. In the end, what is cheap is expensive,” he says, emphasizing that, in these types of cases, he even has to charge more because it costs him more to undo what the previous professional has done than to do it from scratch.
However, the plumber is clear about it, and knows that although some jobs cost more than the client expects, the price is fair if it reflects the experience, the effort and the guarantee that the problem will be well resolved from the beginning. Thus, with more than a thousand active clients, Santi claims the value of his work and the training behind each service.