Hourly rates feel transparent. They’re not. They’re the most expensive way to pay for property maintenance, in practice.
The hourly rate problem
A £50/hour plumber sounds cheap. But:
- The job takes 90 minutes because the contractor is doing other small tasks while on site (which they’d otherwise have charged separately)
- The contractor talks for 20 minutes about your “interesting boiler” before starting — that’s billable
- Material markup is hidden inside the labour hours
- There’s no incentive to fix the problem efficiently
The fixed call-out alternative
£60 daytime call-out fee + the contractor’s quote for the work. Three things happen:
- The contractor is incentivised to do the job quickly so they can move to the next one
- The quote is a single number — you can compare it across contractors
- The agent knows the total cost before work starts
Where fixed call-out fails
Unforeseen work. The plumber turns up to fix a tap, opens the wall and finds a leak that needs an hour more. Two responses:
- Good contractor: stops, calls the agent, quotes the extra work, gets verbal approval, then continues
- Bad contractor: does the extra work and bills it anyway
The good contractor still wins on fixed call-out — they’re efficient on the original scope and quote fairly for additional work. The bad contractor loses you as a client within 3 jobs.
Vellogy’s model
We charge a fixed £60 daytime, £120 out-of-hours call-out, plus the contractor’s quote for the work. We add a 5% admin margin on top. That’s it. The agent knows the cost upfront (call-out + estimate), the contractor gets paid for the work, Vellogy gets paid for the dispatch.
When hourly makes sense
Open-ended fault-finding. “Something is making a noise but I don’t know what.” For these, agree a maximum cap (“up to 2 hours, then stop and quote”) so the contractor doesn’t disappear for 8 hours on a fishing expedition.
Quick conversion
Track your last 10 jobs paid hourly. Add up the labour hours and the total bill. Calculate the average effective hourly rate. Then ask 2-3 contractors for fixed quotes on similar work. You’ll save 20-40%.