Cowboy plumbers are teaching complete beginners how to pass themselves off as qualified tradesmen in just five days. And they spend much of the crash course showing them how to fleece customers, a Mail on Sunday investigation can reveal.
Organiser Taher Shah boasts he has helped thousands with no experience to rake in hundreds of pounds an hour on emergency call-outs after the £395 ‘training’.
Shah’s crash course devotes half the time passing on ‘golden tips and tricks’ to the fledgling plumbers on how to ‘upsell’, a thinly-disguised euphemism for overcharging.
Teachers instruct them to target gullible British customers rather than Asians who, they claimed, would often haggle.
It is one of several crash courses offered around the UK as unscrupulous operators profit from the nationwide shortage of properly trained plumbers.
The Chartered Institute of Plumbing And Heating Engineering said training should take four years and warned that ‘dangerous’ cowboy courses could create costly damage and lead to serious injuries.
Shah promotes his ‘Plumbers Goldmine Academy’ on TikTok and other social media accounts with tens of thousands of followers – and is often pictured wearing a cowboy hat.
The course claims to provide ‘five years experience in five days’ and says students can earn the cost of the course back on their first job.
An undercover reporter who attended one of his courses, held on an industrial estate in Birmingham, was told by the instructor: ‘You’ll be amazed how easy it is.’
He added: ‘We aren’t focused on the repair and the skill of the plumbing. Plumbing is really easy. Five days is too much. In four days you will learn everything. Fifth day, just repetition.’
He said the course was split 50-50, with half teaching the skills and the rest learning ‘how to get the most money for the skill’.
He explained: ‘There’s a lot of money in plumbing. For the same skill, for the same repair you can ask premium or super, super cheap. What we teach in sales is… some tips and tricks, like how to get paid better.
‘The same job can earn you maybe, let’s say, £50 as a cheap plumber, but it can range up to maybe £1,000, £2,000.’ It depended on who the customer was, he said.
He later told the students, most of whom also had an Asian background, who to target.
‘You want to work for British people. Not for Pakistanis, Afghans, Bangladeshis, Asian, you don’t want to do that. It’s a headache, always headache. They don’t give you money.’
He warned one Urdu-speaking student that if the customer also spoke it they would want a reduction.
‘I’ve had Asians, Pakistanis… they use your religion, Islam, as we have something in common, to get discounts… because they will try everything. But British people, they don’t use that stuff. They’re easier to work with.’
He added: ‘You don’t want to learn the skill and get £50 for a toilet flush… your aim should be way higher. If I go to a job, and if I say £500, it’s because I know first, you have to read the customer. You can’t say £500 to a cheap Asian, they’re going to say ‘No’.
‘You say £500 to someone who could afford it and you think it’s a normal amount for them.’
He said students could set their own prices but if the customer complained, they could pretend to call the ‘team or the office’ and ask if there was any flexibility to get £50 off. But ‘there’s no boss, no office, no manager’.
He explained that the more jobs they did, the better they would get at maximising their takings.
‘While you’re doing your thing, you’re reading the customer, right? You get better and better. Then plumbing is fun.
‘The only thing we think of when we go to jobs is… how much can I earn in this job?’
The courses are taking advantage of a shortage of plumbers. The UK needs at least 70,000 new recruits by 2032, according to the UK Trade Skills Index 2023.
Kevin Wellman, chief executive officer of the Chartered Institute of Plumbing And Heating Engineering, said: ‘Plumbing is a highly skilled profession that cannot be learned properly in a few days.
‘While social media can be a fantastic tool for raising awareness and sharing tips, it is also being used by some rogue trainers to promote fast-track courses that promise beginners can go on emergency call-outs immediately.
‘These types of courses are not recognised qualifications and carry risks both for those undertaking them and for the public.’
He said to learn all the ‘practical skills, theoretical knowledge and adherence to safety standards’ that plumbing involves requires a four-year apprenticeship.
‘Short courses cannot replicate this experience and relying on them may result in poorly executed work, serious injuries or costly damage.
‘Consumers should always check that any plumber they hire is properly qualified and registered.’
A spokesman for the course insisted it was only a ‘basic practical introduction to plumbing’.
‘We do not claim that someone becomes a fully-qualified plumber in five days. We make it very clear that this is only a starting point and that people must continue learning and only take on work they can safely do.
‘If someone tries to do advanced work or anything unsafe, they are removed from our WhatsApp support group. We never teach dishonesty, overcharging or any kind of tricking customers.’
He denied that they urged students to target British customers rather than Asians, saying this was ‘completely false and against our values’.
