“We all know enough about deficit financing to know that tomorrow never comes...”

Modern house with solar panels for energy storage.

The roofer descended the ladder shaking his head. It’s bad up there, he said. If you want everything fixed, it will be $6000-odd. We gasped. But, he added, if you just want me to tackle the leak that’s giving you the problem today, it will be $2800. Great, let’s just do that part, we said.

Later, I wondered why we were so happy to pay $2800 for a few hours work until I remembered Economics 101. The roofer had – knowingly or not - employed the principle of framing. That is, he presented us with the prospect of a large cost first and then gave us the option of a much smaller cost. This made the second quote look like a bargain, so much so that we didn’t bother getting another quote. We just wanted to pay the cheaper bill.

His quoting practice also played on the idea that people will discount future losses. Sure, we might have to pay $3200 in the future but by then, we might have moved house, we might have died, the roof fairy might have visited. We all know enough about deficit financing to know that tomorrow never comes.

Quoting for jobs is an exercise in economics. During the decades that we have lived under a dodgy roof, tradies have employed different tactics in their negotiations and most of them belong to behavioural economics, whether they realised it or not. Let’s do Economics 101 from the school of the rooftop.

Take the tradie who arrived wearing a cowboy hat, hardly spent any time on the roof but peered in the house a lot. You might think he was casing the joint – certainly the cowboy image wasn’t inspiring -– but I suspect he was employing discriminatory pricing. I bet he would adjust his quote depending on how wealthy the household appeared and how desperate we were and while I was flattered by his quote, I wasn’t tempted.

Another quote was from a painter, who was mopping up after roof work. He arrived within 30 minutes of us posting the job online. He was super keen, cheap and he could get a painter in today. He was on sale and the countdown clock on this sale was ticking. Who doesn’t love a sale? Halfway through the job, he adopted drip pricing. A third coat of paint wasn’t in the quote. Cleaning up the glass wasn’t in the quote. But he made one mistake when he boasted about his great online reviews. I may not know much about scummy roofs but I’m good at scathing reviews.

One quote from an earlier period stumped me. The roofer said he knew what was causing the leak and it would cost $2500-odd to fix but he wouldn’t tell me what needed fixing. “If I told you, you might fix it yourself,” he said. Well, I replied, if you think it’s so simple that I can fix it, why does it cost $2500?

For years, I marvelled at the gumption of someone charging for a service when they refused to disclose what that service was. Then, last year, Qantas did something similar when it declared that it didn’t sell customers tickets to flights, it just sold them a “bundle of rights”.

Sitting here today, awaiting the return of the roofer who “almost” fixed the latest leak, I’m tempted to call back the builder who said that he doesn’t repair roofs, he would only build a new roof. But I’ve sunk so much money into this roof, how could I justify a total rebuild?

That’s called the sunk costs fallacy, but this roof has been home to so many fallacies, what’s one more?

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