Dodgy tradie trend happening in Austraila

There’s a grim tradie reality that is sweeping Australia and it often ends with people in tears.

Despite working as a tradie for more than a decade, Steven Sousamlis has only been asked to show his contractor license three times.

It is a reality that bothers him.

As far as the 28-year-old builder is concerned, every time you employ a tradie, no matter how minor the job, you should ask to see their license and make sure it is up to date.

There is a dodgy trend of unlicensed tradies faking it while working on people’s houses, and the consequences are often disastrous.

Tradie online marketplace, Hipages, revealed research that found that 29 per cent of tradies missed out on jobs due to unlicensed and underqualified competitors.

Over 36 per cent of a tradies have been asked to complete remediation work from construction cowboys.

“There’s a shortage of licensed good quality tradesmen. I have noticed that there are unlicensed tradies faking it until they make it,” Mr Sousamlis told news.com.au.

“There’s a lot of unlicensed cowboys running around and ruining it for the majority. We see a lot of people using fake licenses in other people’s names.”

Steven Sousamlis, 28, has worked as a tradie for over a decade. Picture: iStock

There’s a trend of construction cowboys. Picture: iStock

He explained it is “so important” to check your contractor’s license, but most people don’t even know they are meant to.

The result of not checking is that people end up with botched renovations jobs.

“People get ripped off and get crappy jobs done,” Mr Sousamlis said.

One of the main reasons the builder knows so much about the common oversight is that he is often employed to come and fix someone else’s dodgy work.

“We had a funny job come in two weeks ago. It was an elderly person, and he’d basically employed someone to renovate his bathroom; they’d taken the money and left it unfinished. So he had it pay twice for us to fix it,” he said.

Mr Sousamlis knows so much about it is because he is often employed to come and fix someone else’s dodgy work. Picture: iStock

Mr Sousamlis explained that it is ‘so important’ to check your contractor’s license. Picture: Supplied

Mr Sousamlis said isn’t uncommon for people to be forced to spend more than double the cost of a standard renovation; fixing someone’s dodgy work is extra work.

“Unfortunately, we have to rip it all out and start again. For the safety of us and the customer,” he said.

People also get quite emotional about being ripped off, as more times than not they’ve poured their life savings into renovations and are devastated to find out they’ve been ripped off.

By the time Mr Sousamlis is on the scene he is dealing with unhappy customers who are reeling from the experience, and knowing they are going to have to fork out at least double to fix the damage.

“I’ve had people cry in front of me. It is usually quite awkward. I sit there and try and comfort them. I always do the right thing because I couldn’t sleep at night if I didn’t,” he said.

It isn’t uncommon for people to spend more than double the cost of a standard renovation. Fixing someone’s dodgy work is extra work. Picture: iStock

It is one of the reasons Mr Sousamlis doesn’t use popular apps where people can employ tradespeople by getting them to quote jobs and compete with each other to land the client in real-time.

“I refuse to use the apps. I think it is just a race to the bottom. The cheapest quote wins, so how do you compete?” he explained.

The builder said that a bathroom renovation generally costs about $20,000 these days because of labour and material costs, but he has seen people bid about $9000 for a full bathroom renovation, and he can’t work out how they are affording to do the work for that amount.

He said it is depressing because he wants to the “right thing” and has just seen one too many times hardworking Aussies being screwed over by unlicensed tradies.

Specialist tradies need to be licensed. A license is typically credit card-sized and should display the contractor’s or the business’ name, registered address, license number, and expiry date.

It should also detail any restrictions so it will indicate what kind of work the tradie is qualified to do.

In NSW, you must have a building licence to do any residential building work valued at more than $5000.

According to Services NSW, you should be able to search for a tradie’s license online to confirm it is genuine. If you can’t find it, you can contact NSW Fair Trading to confirm the details of the tradie.