"
dont you think it is worth a couple of hours of your time to get to know any contractor you are thinking of doing business with"
Definitely, but I think that's a different issue. If my budget is, say, £1K and the minimum quote I'm going to get is, say, £10K, it would be better that we both saved each other the effort.
Conversely, speaking for myself, if the job is > £10K I would pay one, or several if necessary, people a "consultancy fee" to come out and give advice - rather than them giving that advice as part of a markup on the job - I would do this more particularly with pioneering things, such as green-tech, because there are lots of opinions, different experiences, and knowledge is not yet universal
"
if you really dont like the approach, you have nothing to lose by telling them to sling their hook"
In my experience getting them to sling their hook is not as easy as you imply, and once I discover that I'm confronted with a "Hard sell" I resent the fact that they are in my house, possibly holding a grudge, possibly casing-the-joint, and so on. Thus I choose to avoid that scenario.
A local builder / trades-person, would probably come via word of mouth, so I would be more comfortable with them. All the "green lawn" people (in my earlier example) I've seen are national adverts, I don't know of any friends using them, and thus have no recommended suppliers. I'm completely turned off calling
any of them to come and "just quote" because I suspect I'll waste time doing the "hard sell" (and quite possibly their cost is completely different to my budget) so
none of them have had the opportunity for my business.
If I was not on this forum, and just "Joe Public", I'm not sure what my view would be on Green-Tech trades; I don't have any friends who have installed anything, that I know of, who could give me a recommendation, I expect I would be doing the same as the "Green lawn" project - nothing!.
Actually ... I
do have a view now that I remember it, sorry but it was a while ago and I had forgotten.
I got a cold-call from a national-name at just the time I was first thinking about it and I had them round, then their site survey and engineering people, probably 6 hours on site in total, and it took a long time to then get rid of them completely. They told me I could have everything I wanted for £5K, there is no way, with what I know now, that that would have made any useful contribution to DHW + CH, in my specific case, so they were incompetent and would have been useless had I have given them my business.
Here's a link to what was probably my first post on this forum:
http://www.navitron.org.uk/forum/index.php/topic,1302.msg8853.html#msg8853So I think qualified* ball park figures are useful
* for example I think something like this would be helpful:
"Tank type A, roof accessible and no more than B metres from tank = £2,000 - £3,000
Tank type B, roof accessible and more than B metres from tank = £3,000 - £5,000
Replace existing Tank type A with Thermal Store type C generally add £1,000 - £1,500
Moderately poor roof access add £1,000
If you are on Housing benefit, age > 65, ... then you are likely to qualify for a grant of £DDD
Likely savings are between £150 and £250 p.a. - 2 occupants towards the lower end, 4 or more towards the upper end"
Then anyone with a budget of only £1,000 will not waste their and your time, similarly anyone who thought it was going to cost £10,000, and that they couldn't afford, it can phone you straight away!
