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Hattie Hasan: Founder and CEO of Stopcocks Women Plumbers answers one of the questions she gets asked the most; ‘What’s so different about women plumbers?’

Hattie with James Caan

Hattie Hasan with James Caan

Its strange really because what almost always happens when someone asks this question is that they go right on to answer it themselves.

Having at first said, ‘There isn’t really any difference is there? Plumbing is plumbing after all and you can either do it or you can’t.’ The person then thinks for a moment and realises that plumbing is something which brings the plumber into their home and they personally have to deal with the plumber.

At Stopcocks Women Plumbers we provide what we call The Stopcocks Solution. We do this by ‘plumbing like a girl’.

Yes, we’re reclaiming the term. Far from indicating running around squealing and flapping our arms in the air, this describes an approach our customers prefer by far.

The Stopcocks Solution means that we approach you, your home and your plumbing problems holistically.

We recognise that having something break in your home can be stressful, we realise that even planned plumbing work is disruptive and messy and we do everything to limit the effects of this.

The prospective customer who is in the act of answering their own question runs through what this probably means.

‘I’d prefer someone who actually turns up and who turns up on time (or lets me know if they’re delayed)’ and we do respect your time. We know you have probably taken time off work to be there to let us in, even if you work from home, you’ve had to make sure you don’t have meetings and cannot be available for work.

‘I’d prefer someone who cleans up after themselves and doesn’t walk across my carpet in muddy boots’ we respect our customers homes. We get how frustrating it is when tradespeople leave a big mess. Even when they work messily. A huge part of the disruption of having work done is the fact that many tradespeople just aren’t respectful of our homes. It happens to us too and we don’t like it any more than anyone else. We keep our customers homes as clean as we can and we clear up as we go along minimising the mess and disruption as much as possible.

‘I’d really prefer it if I’m not patronised, or if they don’t just look straight past me when they’re explaining, I don’t like being treated as if I don’t have a brain.’ This happens to our male as well as our female customers. No one likes being talked down to and it really isn’t necessary. We explain as we go along and try to keep it clear. We’ll talk to the person we’re dealing with, not whoever is standing behind them.

‘It seems really sexist to say this, but I just think women won’t rip me off, that they’d be more trustworthy.’ Of course we can’t guarantee that all women will be more trustworthy, but we have a fair pricing policy and a very strict Code of Conduct regarding behaviour. We won’t rip you off and if things change in a way that will affect the price, we’ll talk through the implications of the various courses of action before proceeding.

We also randomly call up customers for feedback, which gives a great opportunity to find out exactly how our plumbers have behaved in people’s houses. We love doing that job as we get such positive feedback.

Plumbing like a girl means that when we walk into someone’s house, we don’t just look for the plumbing that needs fixing, we take on board the level of stress needing plumbing can have and we do everything we can to keep that to a minimum.

We know what it feels like when the boot is on the other foot. We don’t like it and we won’t do it to you.