The Cheapest Quote on the List Is Rarely the Cheapest Job: A Cautionary Tale

The £29 Special

We got the call last spring. A couple in Walsall had hired a bloke off a Facebook group to clear their gutters for £29. He turned up, spent twenty minutes on the roofline, took his money and left. Three weeks later, a damp patch bloomed on the bedroom ceiling.

When we came out to look, we found the story told time and again: he'd knocked a joint loose getting off the ladder and never noticed, the outlet into the downpipe was packed solid with compressed moss — pushed there rather than removed — and the rear run had been untouched entirely. Water had been pouring down the cavity wall behind the render. The repair bill, once the plasterer and decorator had done their bit? Just over £2,000. The £29 clean had cost them roughly £70 per minute of work.

Why Cut-Price Gutter Work Goes Wrong

The maths of gutter cleaning is simple. A proper job needs public liability insurance, a decent ladder or tower, training, and the time to actually flush the system and check the joints. If someone's charging £29, something has to give — and it's usually all of the above.

The commonest failures we're called in to fix:

• Joints knocked out of alignment. A ladder leant directly against guttering will crack or dislodge it in a heartbeat. Cheap operators lean, they don't stand off.
• Debris shoved rather than cleared. Moss pushed towards the outlet vanishes from view — until the next downpour, when it blocks solid.
• No flush, no test. A gutter can look clear and still leak like a sieve. A bucket of water down the run reveals misaligned brackets in seconds. The cowboys never bother.
• No insurance. If their ladder goes through your conservatory roof — or worse, through them — you may find your own home insurance dragged into it.

Red Flags Before You Book

You don't need to know a swan neck from a running outlet to filter out the rogues. Ask three questions:

1. Are you insured, and can you show me? A genuine trader will happily produce a certificate. Evasion here is your answer.
2. Will you flush the system and check the joints? If the reply is just "I'll clear the leaves", they're not inspecting anything.
3. How will you access the gutters? "Leaning the ladder on the guttering" is a no. Look for stand-offs, a tower, or a van-mounted system.

And trust your gut on the quote itself. If one price is a third of the others, ask yourself what's missing. It's never the profit margin — it's the insurance, the training or the time.

What a Fair Price Actually Buys

A properly quoted gutter clean in most of the UK sits somewhere between £60 and £150 for a typical semi, depending on height and access. For that, you should expect the full run cleared by hand, all downpipes flushed and tested, joints and brackets inspected, and photographs of anything that needs attention — before any repair quote appears.

We'd rather lose a job to a fair competitor than win one by quoting daft money and cutting corners. The £29 operators do the whole trade a disservice, and they do your house a great deal worse.

The Bottom Line

Your guttering is the quiet workhorse keeping rain out of your walls, your foundations and your mortgage valuation. Pay someone a fair wage to look after it properly, and it'll cost you less over the decade than one botched bargain. The cheapest quote on the list is rarely the cheapest job — it's just the one with the bill deferred.