Deep thoughts on Chinese repairman fixing your water pipes

I Fix everything myself. My landlord loves me. I used to operate my own repair and maintenance business. :sunglasses: It’s much cheaper to just buy the tools and materials.

You could probably make a killing doing legit-style repair work in Taiwan. Start with all the foreigners living up around Xin Beitou whose light fixtures and switches no longer work because of corrosion from the sulphur-spring air, then work your way across Yangmingshan setting up legit 3-prong grounded plugs for people’s entertainment and computer equipment.

Now, there might be some sort of local “licensing” for such services, but it’s not like any of the jackasses fixing stuff pay attention to that. Just call yourself a “consultant” and tell the homeowners it’s double the price if they want to watch.

You’d probably make TWD 500,000 a week once word of mouth got around. :smiley:

[quote]but it’s not like any of the jackasses fixing stuff pay attention to that.[/quote] :saywhat:

I like the idea of “consultant”, sounds prestigious. :slight_smile: You never know. Maybe I need to start with adding a signature to my profile. :sunglasses:


“Everything is broken”

Jackasses purely refers to the rank-and-file, hit-it-with-a-wrench-until-it-comes-loose, leave-it-disconnected-and-oozing repair guys prevalent in Taiwan. If they don’t bother with any professional licensing, I am not sure how much sense it makes for a premium-quality “consultant” to do so. :slight_smile:

So, this begs the question:
How much would we be willing to pay for safe quality work?

NTD 750, 1000, 1500, 2000 per hour???

I think a poll ought to be set up for this.

If it’s a foreigner we want him to do it for free, as a gesture to a fellow expat. :laughing: :smiling_imp:

It’s like I have a soup kitchen for poor foreigners, they can come and eat a bowl of soup and do the dishes afterward. ohyeah, I’ll throw in a piece of deliciuos bread for the very poor foreigner. :wink:

At least at a soup kitchen for foreigners the dishes would be washed. Have you seen what ridiculous cold-water/no-soap stuff goes on at a lot of Taiwanese restaurants?

Are you sure I wash my dishes? Didn’t have a needy foreigner yet, so nobody did my dishes, they are waiting.

I can fix dishwashers too FYI. :raspberry:

Can you fix my dog?

MFG, it’s been two days I’m trying to think of something witty to reply but I got nothing for you. I build dog houses too. The last one I made was a beauty. I used pine for the outside finition and I even put on a cedar roof. Something funny about this one though…I built it in my shop back home and never thought about the size of it. When I fiinished building it, I realized that the door frame was too small to get the frigging thing out. I had to take appart the door frame and part of the wall to get it out. :unamused:

As for a poll, it would be nice to know what people would be willing to pay but to be honest, I have other plans. Just thoughts at this point but it is something that is available in Tapei but not here in Kaohsiung.

There are a lot of business opportunities down south and the easy part is all one has to do is look at what Tapei has and look for the same service in Kaohsiung. Often, it’s just not available down here.

There’s definitely a need for high-quality repair/installation, etc. services in Taiwan. Probably a good business could be set up in which an experienced (and demanding) boss could accumulate some like-minded people in the trades to build up a decent-sized company with the financial stability to be able to guarantee its work.

Aside from fixing up people’s homes from scratch, such a company could probably get decent work on a referral basis from the sort of B&Q-style stores that offer installation.

Unlike the current situation in which you never know whether somebody knows their trade, I think many customers (foreign and even some local) would be willing to pay a premium for plumbing and electric lines that work, drains that are actually located in the lowest point in a room’s floor, etc.

The dog house sounds cool. Do you have a photo you can put up?