Is This Fair?

[khaleesi]

A "friend" of mine has come to stay with me for a few days to help me prepare my house to sell. One of the jobs is to paint the uprises for the stairs for £30, which we thought would take a few hours to do. As he's done it much quicker (40 minutes) do you think it would be fair of me to suggest that he only get paid £15 for it? He is not currently working and is only doing about 5 hours of work a day for me

[Eleena]

Is it a good job he's done K?

[Eleena]

Are you talking about the sides of the stairs that meet the wall & a bit on the stair itself?

[Eleena]

A mutually, re-reading your post, he's doing other stuff for you too. Yes I think 30.00 is very fair.

[Eleena]

Should have read ... actually!

[Jackdaw33]

I agree with Eleena. If I called out a decorator it would cost a lot more than £30 for 40 minutes' work. Be grateful that he did the job so quickly.

[Xeronema]

I concur, it's better to pay what was 'quoted' rather than risk losing the help - not sure if that would happen however it's definitely something I'd take into consideration!

In future it might be easier to pay your friend about hourly rate. The only downside is that they may work slower.

[Jackdaw33]

Why is the word "friend" in inverted commas?

[waterboatman]

The agreed rate is a fair one. Try and halve it and you probably won't see him again. The fact that he did the job quickly and well, shows that he is a man worth his pay.

[nailit]

Good God. I cant believe how tight some people can be. As Jackdaw pointed out it would cost a lot more to call a decorator out.
'I did a bit of cash in hand' decorating for someone once who was desperate to get some painting finished asap. I worked through the night to get the job done and help them out and was exhausted come daybreak. They then tried to pay me less than agreed because it was done quicker than expected. A year later (in a new property) they asked me again to help. I think they heard a few swear words they had never heard before that day...

[Old_Geezer]

If the rate for the whole job was agreed I don't see how one can justify reducing it afterwards. You thought it was worth £30 to you prior to being done, didn't you ? I'm assuming it was a job well done. So you're ahead of the game to boot. Consider that a plus.

[ummmm]

Pay the agreed amount. Don't punish your 'friend' for being a fast worker.

[Georgiesmum]

Noooooooo. Pay up the agreed amount. It would be very unfair to pay him any less simply because he works faster than expected.

[pastafreak]

Pay the agreed amount. You're paying for the job...not by the hour.
Would you want to be penalised for doing a quicker job?

[khaleesi]

The reason i put friend in quotation marks is because he is an ex that owes me a lot of money, and doing jobs for me is the only way he can pay me back. As he is a heavy weed smoker i do have to pay him something so he can fund his habit otherwise he will not help me. We have tried him being paid by the day, but nothing gets done. So this time we thought it would be better for him to be paid by the job based on how long it will take him. Ovbulessly we really overestimated the time for this job, hence i posted the question. Reading all the responses it's really upsetting to see that this is the type of the world we live in. If i were being paid by a friend to do something based on how long it takes and i did it much quicker than expected i would be more than happy to accept less, And *** me, if i were to charge him the going rate for taxis, payday loans and solicitor services he would owe me an extra 10k. @NAIL IT, i completely agree that your friend shouldn't have tried to pay you less, as like you said you worked non-stop to get the job done, and i am guessing that it still took you the same amount of time that you thought it would. However, i don't think it's fair for you to compare the two as you are talking about the time at which you completed the job, i am talking about how long it actually took in actual hours.
And no, he didn't do a good job as he didn't sand it down prior to painting.

[mikey4444]

5 hours work, for £15 ! That is an awful lot less than minimum wage !

Don't be so stingy !

[tonyav]

And no, he didn't do a good job as he didn't sand it down prior to painting.

Exactly why it didn't take him very long then, khaleesi.
I'd get him to sand them down and repaint them before I'd pay him.

[-Talbot-]

Try reading the OP again, mikey

[khaleesi]

i've ended up redoing it myself tony. I wish i had done it myself from the begining now, i was just really worried about getting paint on the carpet.

@ mikey, please can you make sure that you read and fully understand a person's post before you make detrimental comments about them