Honestly I’m not sure if it hasn’t always been like this.
The business model of some trades is to assume that they won’t be getting much repeat business, possibly because of pressures on cash flow etc, therefore they cut corners.
We’ve used a lot of trades of the years and almost without fail the best are almost always 30% more expensive. But we use them every time we have a job for them
There’s also the fact that the vast majority aren’t adept at running businesses. The amount of times we’ve been waving money under tradesmen’s noses because we needed something done asap, and they’ve not even responded blows my mind.
What really mashes my spuds is tradesmen who openly brag about not paying taxes for 10 years, which leads to all of us paying more.