Tradies are super-busy or not interested?

Not sure whether anyone is in the same boat...
We are in Brisbane and we noted ever since the New Year, tradies are very hard to get.
They are either all booked-out and require long turnaround time, or simply unavailable, or they couldnt turn-up and didnt reschedule, or took ages to respond, and this is the best: they've done the job and hasnt billed for over one week!

By Tradies I mean gardener, normal cleaner, high-pressure cleaner, AirCon Technician, Garage Door Technician, you name it. It's rather bizarre dont you think?
Fine with Plumber so far because our current guy is an angel.
Thought I read before it's partly due to Covid, Job-Keeper & Job-Seeker or something like that. But really?

 

I'm in the same boat.
My carpenter promised to start the decking job in Jan, but whenever I rang, he was too busy to pick up my calls. Thereafter, his text reply was "sorry. very busy. start your job in Feb."
Scheduled for the shade sail guy to start job too, but he said he couldn't because he fell sick from over-work.

 

Yeah, and if they can be bothered, quotes are much higher than usual.

 

I suspect super busy ... I know, in our area, in August our demolisher was already booked out to the following February

 

I am in Brisbane and have had similar issues with various tradies since last year. Even those that have been reliable in the past can be hard to even get a response from. I think COVID and working from home has probably gotten a lot of people keen to sort out smaller and bigger jobs. The building grant has made it even crazier!

I tried to arrange a quote with several local builders who seem to get good recommendations, from about November last year. Nearly all of them said they didn't even have time to drop by to have a look to quote until March!

 

We are also finding this in Sydney, and I need trades constantly! Luckily we have good relationships with ones that we use weekly and can rely on, but anything new and complicated is like a full time job trying to constantly chase them.

 

Sounds like nothings changed, about 12 years ago I was talking to property owners at the Gold Coast who said it was a big problem getting maintenance done then. And that it would be a great business for any one who wanted to do property maintenance. Had the same problem replacing a bent lift arm for a tilt a door a month ago in Mildura, said they had had about 60 calls just that day and couldnt look at it for weeks, wanted $350 to do it. Only had to unscrew 4 tech screws and 2 nuts to replace it, so did it myself in half an hour. Also left messages for some-one to replace some doors etc, no response in 3 months.

 

I have a painting company in brisbane and we are so insanely busy, think of all the new home owner grants. I’m getting calls from builders I haven’t heard from in 5 years.

 

Yes, it took, 3 months to get an oven installed on one of my business's