Originally Posted by Lee Reynolds
NOPE, totally disagree. When i price for work, i get a firm price of suppliers, then add my labour ...and thats what i/we charge. IF more materials are needed after...ie extra work then the customer gets charged accordingly.
You have obviosuly either
Spoke to the wrong people about how builders work...
Used the wrong builders in the past and are tying the lot with the same brush...
Made your own conclusions basd upon what youve seen on rogue traders

Lee, I'm sorry but my understanding of how the 'trade' operate in any field, not just building, is that they buy their materials for 'trade' price, then sell on at either a 'retail' price of a discounted version of.
Are you saying that's not the case?
So, what's the point of a 'trade' price then?
It's great if what you are saying it true, but we (APT) for example don't sell to our customers at our buy-in price even if we are charging labour to fit the item, I make no secret of that and I just figured that is the same across all industries. We do discount our products in certain circumstances, but never sell for cost. It's just not business sense to do so.