WITHIN THE DOMINION.

Northern Advocate, 21 April 1915, Page 5

WITHIN THE DOMINION.

EXORBITANT CHARGES.

ATTRIBUTED TO PLUMBERS. *

(Press. Association)

AUCKLAND, April 21

In a case at the Magistrate's Court involving a dispute in respect to certain building contracts, it was stated that prumbers charged from fifty to seventy per cent, upon material and that builders got ten per cent, on material. Mr-Kettle, S.M: Do I "understand that when a plumber is doing a £10 job, for-which the material costs £'V he is entitled to charge seventy per cent upon that £3?

Witness: From fifty per cent, upwards. There is a scale drawn up by the Master Plumbers' Association providing for a range of 50 to 70 per cent. Wirneymen plumbers' charges are Is 7d per hour, but a master plumber charges for his services 2s Gd.per hour. While the workmen get 12s Sd per day the people pay his employer 20s.

Mr Hall-Skelton: Xo wonder that plumbers' bills' are notorious.

The magistrate said that these percentages were evidently a custom oi' the trade." He was not expressing any opinion upon the matter as far as the present case was concerned. It was perhaps a matter for the Chamber- of .Commerce, or it might come under the heading of Secret Commissions, but he was of opinion that a contractor should disclose in his account what he actually paid for the goods as well as what he charged; otherwise a proprietor had the right to assume that he was being charged the actual prices paid.