[Sunflower49]

If you need a tradesman (plumber/plasterer/joiner/electrician) what is it that you have as rules to go about it?
I'm asking because I've recently had a flood. Two and a bit months ago-and the stress of sorting it out, because of tradesmen letting me down and doing shoddy jobs and generally being unprofessional, has caused me far more stress than the practicalities.
For a month I had no hot running water and no boiler (which didn't matter so much in the middle of August but was still a problem), no bathroom floor and no lighting in the house apart from lamps/torches etc.

This is bad enough, but the first guy appointed to fix it booked in three times each time didn't turn up.
When I finally stopped being understanding and got upset-he told me he was a busy man and had to let people down all the time, it's to be expected.

The second one just didn't know what to do and caused a bit of a mess then quoted me an amount of money I thought was far too much (bear in mind I don't know what I am doing!) and was somewhat relieved or at least seemed it, when I said I would get somebody else.
The third one was a boiler repair man and that only, and he did fix the boiler, good experience there.
The third one was a guy I've known twenty years, a friend, which puts another slant on the whole situation obviously, and he 'fixed' the lighting then went to leave after I had paid, and the lights switched off again. Same thing again after he had done something else, they worked, went off again as he was packing his things together.
Me being an ABSOLUTE idiot, told him to keep hold of the payment, and return to do the rest of the job.
Guess what, he didn't turn up to his next appointed booking, or the one after.Left me out of pocket and out of friendship-I was much more upset about the latter!

I don't really know what I am asking here other than I suppose, has anybody got any rules they go by when appointing somebody to do work on their house, and also as far as I'm knowing at this moment and most of my life, people who do these sorts of jobs (I am sure they may be some of them on here!) want to do a good job, and don't want bad reviews and don't want to do a bad job for their customers. Has anybody had any experiences similar?
As for the guy I paid kind of in advance, I know this was the wrong thing to do , I even knew as I was doing it!But I trusted him as a friend. In the end I had no idea what was going on and ended up speaking to his wife, advising her that I needed him to get in touch and come and finish the job, or refund me half of the money!
He was willing to throw a twenty year friendship away (we meet every xmas and speak frequently online, we've lived together in the past and went to the same secondary school) for the sake of a couple of hundred quid. That confuses me, but that's a different subject altogether.
Has anybody else had nightmares with people doing handiwork for them?
I am actually very stressed out, I would even say it's got me down-I've got no lights in my house still after 2 months which isn't ideal as I am in the middle of selling my house! lol