45% of us wait five days for a tradesperson

New research from Fair Fix, the boiler engineer experts, reveals that almost a quarter of people who have requested a call-out from a tradesperson in the past year have waited more than six working days, and in some cases more than a month, before they arrived, time that might be better used climbing Everest, or sailing to New York City.

Fair Fix commissioned a survey of 1,609 members of the UK population to find out how long they have had to wait for service or tradespeople – such as gas engineers, roadside assistance, or plumbers – to arrive at their home after a call-out was requested. Based on the responses provided, Fair Fix has also looked at other ways people could be spending the time they’re being made to wait.

The survey reveals that 36% of the UK population has had to call out a service or tradesperson in the past year.

66% of call outs were made to professional tradespeople such as boiler engineers, plumbers, or electricians; 19% called for roadside assistance; and 15% have had to call a private healthcare professional.

When asked how long they then had to wait between making the request and the professional arriving at their home, 14% said between 1-2 hours; 18% said 3-24 hours; and 45% between 1-5 working days.

A further 13% waited between six working days and two weeks; 6% waited for up to a month; and 4% waited for more than a month.

Better ways to spend your time
If you’re waiting more than 24 hours for a tradesperson to arrive, it can start to feel like there are better things you could be doing with your time, and you’re right.

If you’re waiting for 1-5 days, or three days as an average, you could take and complete a cooking course to wow your friends and family. It also takes three days to fly to the moon…but that might be a bit of a reach for now.

If you’re having to wait 1-2 weeks, or an average of 10 days, you could instead complete a tour of Western Europe, stopping off in London, Paris, the Black Forest of Germany, and the ancient buildings of Rome.

If you’re waiting a month for a call out, that’s an amount of time in which you could sail from Southampton to New York City, cruise up to Canada, and then return home again.

Founder of Fair Fix, Tyrone Ekrem, commented:

“The idea that you could have an unexpected emergency in the home, such as a broken boiler, or a failed gas supply, and it might take days or even weeks for someone to come and fix it is unacceptable. During winter, and for families with young children, it’s quite a frightening thought to be stuck without heating or hot water for such a long period of time.

The truth is that there is no excuse for it taking so long to respond to a call out, not with all of the modern technology we now have at our fingertips. That’s why we at Fair Fix give our clients the freedom to choose their own time slot, often on the same day, and then enable them to track the engineer via their smartphone, just like we all do with taxis.”