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Quote/Invoice confusion
Comments
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Furts, it wasn't a travelling contractor. It was a local trader. Not sure what you mean by they don't need 'such hassle'. Surely if a trader is dishonest, they should be called out on it? Unfortunately for us, we chose someone who was well-established and with a lot of experience in what he does. We did actually speak to another trader who came into to give us a quote for finishing the job, who said he was notorious for it. In my view, a trader like that should be exposed, if possible. It does a great disservice to other honest tradesmen.
I couldn't say if the person is a criminal, to be honest. I believe he is engaged in illegal activities, but without proof, it's an accusation that can't be made. That's the reason I'm trying to find out about how he invoices. If it's illegal, he could be reported for it.
We sued hm to try to get a partial refund for what we had paid him because he walked off the job and had done unnecessary work that was allowing him to inflate the costs. There were no legal costs, just a modest the court fee. The small claims court is for suing for refunds etc without incurring legal costs. A solicitor is not required, however he decided to use one, while we were advised by trading standards not to use one, which on hindsight was poor advice as I was no match for an experienced and aggressive solicitor.0 -
Comeandgo, thanks for your comment. No, I wouldn't imagine they would be charged, otherwise HMRC would be doing nothing else. I'm more interested in ensuring that this trader is forced to comply with requirements so that other people don't fall foul of what he did to us.0
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Furts, it wasn't a travelling contractor. It was a local trader. Not sure what you mean by they don't need 'such hassle'. .
Genuine contractors do not want the hassle of court action. They want to be running a business instead of this. The fact that it was heading to court, and was going to be contested, is a sign of what type of person you were up against. Hence you were always up against a clever/criminal type mind, and the chances of victory was not overwhelming
You want to expose the person, which is fine by me. I do wonder if it would be better to put this all behind and move on in life.
Dubious individuals/businesses exist everywhere, so my approach to life is to avoid them. I leave it to others to fight battles on exposing folks. Who is to say what is the best approach? I reflect and think had the driveway work been commissioned with a different mindset this whole sorry saga would not have occurred. This approach would mean contact with the dubious contractor would have been avoided.0 -
Thanks, Furts. Yes, I think we were up against someone who was very experienced in what he did and probably had never been challenged on it in the way that we tried to challenge him. His lies were so blatant it was really difficult to just ignore without trying to do something. We don't actually regret going to court, despite the outcome, because we had also reported him to a professional body that he is a member of and that complaint will stay on file, so even for that it was worth it.
We have, for the most part, just put it behind us as we simply don't have enough proof. It's only the aspect of his invoices that I'm trying to see if we can report. I did actually find out yesterday that they should have a unique refernce number. We have definite proof that his don't, which means he can produce false invoices (which he did to us) or potentially make cash payments 'disappear'. I am of the opinion that these things are worth reporting if possible. Even if not enough proof on one occasion, should he be challenged again, at least there is some sort of record and perhaps, one day, he will be caught out.
I'm not sure what you mean when you talk about avoiding dubious businesses and having taken a different mindset and approach. If I'm following you right, you might think we knew in advance that he had dodgy practices? We didn't. He has a website that looks perfectly professional and he appeared professional and trustworthy. We really couldn't have known in advance what he had planned to do.0 -
I am struggling to understand why producing false quotes and invoices derailed your claim. Surely these would have been included in the evidence/witness statement giving you the chance to question them and provide contradictory evidence.
"To answer your last question, we sued him for partial refund of the deposit paid because we found out he had duplicated costs, unreasonably inflated costs, and subcontracted unnecessary work (which we were to pay him directly for and he inflated the actual cost). He counterclaimed for labour, materials and subcontracted work he claimed to have carried out. The materials were essential materials which he did not specify on the first invoice but which he had said were included. He lied about the hours of work he had done (again we had no proof that he was off site much of the time)."
I cannot help feeling this could have been a case of the claimant/plaintiff simply failing to produce sufficient evidence to support their claim. Also doesn't the defendant have to notify the court that they will have a solicitor in attendance so you were forewarned that you were up against a legal professional?
This small claims process is very new to me so I am trying to fill in the gaps in my knowledge. My case was against a serial fraudster who lied through his teeth throughout the hearing but my evidence was cast iron. I was also very impressed with the Judge who managed to keep the case focused on the facts and the written evidence submitted by both parties which makes it very difficult to lie. Not a process I would ever want to repeat though, hugely time consuming and very stressful. Plus I am highly unlikely to ever receive the monies owed in the judgement.0 -
Similar to teneighty, i have been up against characters in the small Claims Court. These individuals lied and misled the general court procedures. The Judge asked many probing questions, and there was a small heap of background papers. The Judge knew who he was up against, and I knew what I was up against. It was stressful, time consuming and not something i am eager to repeat. However, I won the case because I had a well documented/logical approach and could give accurate answers to the myriad of questions fielded in my direction.
With all this in mind, I too wonder why OP lost their case. The logical answer is the Judge believed the contractor was telling the truth, and OP had misjudged details of what work was done to the drive. This may well be a wrong conclusion, but it is the conclusion reached by the legal system.0 -
Furts and [FONT="]Teneighty, I'll answer your questions in one reply. Some of it is included elsewhere in the thread and but I'll try to pull it together here, so this is very long, but it kind of wraps things up on my queries. [/FONT]
Firstly, this wasn't a case of us misjudging the details of the job but rather of inexperience of accepting vague quotes, which allowed him to duplicate costs and bamboozle us about aspects of the work. He gave us a quote in early August 2016, which did not include a VAT amount as he had said he would not charge VAT. This quote was agreed and work commenced. After a couple hours work, enough to cause a mess and hazard for my elderly father, he almost doubled the price and gave us a written 'quote/invoice' (that's how it was titled), which also did not include a VAT. For eg, one of the 'additional' costs on this invoice was to replace the gullies, which he had told us was included in the first quote but which he hadn't itemised, so he then added this again to the second, claiming he hadn't seen them when he costed the job (how does someone in that field of work not see the only two gullies in a standard semi driveway?). He also hadn't told us upfront that he would be adding costs for use of his own digger, so this was added also. In any case, we thought it would be more hassle to start to contract another company and agreed. He guaranteed this as the final cost and we paid a cash deposit. He didn't give us a receipt. When he increased the price again (another £3k+), we queried it, and he walked off the job indignant, saying he was an honest person and a Christian and that we didn't trust him (we knew this was an act and saw it again from his performance in court).
Next morning, he phoned asking to come back to finish the job. I phoned him back so that I could record the call as I wanted to make sure we got some acknowledgement for the cash deposit, which I got. Because we knew for sure he had told some lies, we said no, that our trust in him was gone. He said we owed him more money and we said we needed to first look into his costs but we would pay him for valid costs. We subsequently asked him several times to send an invoice for what he thought we owed him and a receipt for the deposit paid, but he didn't send either.
It was difficult for us to estimate what costs were valid and it would be impossible to list all the various elements of the work here, but, apart from the lies that we knew for sure he had told us, we were suspicious of other costs. For instance, he said he needed to subcontract a company to jet clean an underground sewer pipe that he said was blocked with stones and rubble and since this was needed it would be a good idea to get a camera check for any damage. He told us both aspects had been done, but the company confirmed that the pipe wasn't jet cleaned as it wasn't blocked and the camera check was done because it was optional (not necessary but optional). Other costs were harder for us to gage. For example, he was charging us approx £200 for hire of each skip when the cost to him was £130. I don't know if this is considered a reasonable mark-up for him making a 2-minute phone call, but it seemed steep to us. The skip company also said there were always problems when he ordered skips and his normal practice was to ask them to log the skips as being delivered to a different address from where they were actually needed. He asked the company to record the skips delivered to my dad's house as being delivered to his own yard instead. I don't know how this benefits him, but because of our enquiries, the company said that on this occasion they refused him. This probably isn't very important overall, but I think it is an indication that he wasn't behaving in a very honest or 'Christian' manner.
We got two new quotes from different companies to complete the work and asked them for an estimation of how much it would have cost if they had done it from the very start. They both came in at around the same figure. (One of these traders knew our guy and said he was 'notorious' for doing what he did with us.) We then made an estimation of what we felt he should refund us and notified him that it was our intent to lodge a small claims case. He then sent a new invoice via his solicitor in Jan 2017 for what he claimed we still owed him.
So in addition to the initial quote, that was two invoices we received, one at the time of the job in Aug 2016 and the other via his solicitor in Jan 2017. Ten days ahead of the court date (in May), he produced two additional invoices, via his solicitor, which he falsely claimed to have given us back in Aug. One was identical to the invoice he gave us in Aug, except with VAT added, and the other was a invoice he claimed to have given us on the day he walked off the job in Aug, also with VAT added. This was the first we had seen these documents. I (naively, as it turns out), felt that we had evidence that indicate that these invoices were false. I had submitted to the court the taped phone conversation I had in which I had continually referred only to the two documents he had given us in Aug (the quote and quote/invoice), which did not include VAT. During the call I repeatedly referred to 'both the invoices you gave us' and said they didn't include VAT. I hoped that the judge, having listened to the call, would question why he never once corrected me to say, as he was now claiming nine months later, that he had given us two other invoices that had listed VAT amounts.
Of course, I did attempt to reiterate all of this on the day, but quite frankly, his solicitor set the approach for the entire proceedings. I had (again naively) presumed that the judge would have read all of the documentation, which she clearly had not. I realised this when I mentioned the call I had taped and she hadn't been aware of it. This meant she missed a lot of the subtleties that would have potentially made her question his credibility. He swore on the bible he had given the two false invoices to us back in Aug and it was my word against his. (This is where I can see why serial numbers on invoices are very important. It is highly unlikely that he could have produced false documents so much later if they had serial numbers.) He also swore that he hadn't increased the price to more than £6k and, again, I pointed out to the judge that I had mentioned this figure to him in the recorded message and he hadn't denied it. She simply ignored this also.
We did, of course, know that he would have a solicitor and had taken advice from Trading Standards on this and were advised not to get one as it can annoy judges on small claims cases. We had the mistaken impression that the judge would have a more proactive role in questioning both parties but she really just sat back and left it to each side to cross-examine the other. His solicitor, being experienced, obviously had the upper hand. He went first and by the time it was my turn, the judge was irate with the length of time the case was taking and stopped me half way through and just made the judgement.
Obviously having cast iron evidence is best, but it's not always possible and in these cases it goes on probability of who is telling the truth. In our case we did not have cast iron evidence but we felt we had some good indicators of his lies and many enough contradictions in his changing version of events. I included every single piece of information that I felt relevant, but it required the judge to carefully read the documentation and listen to the phone recording to pick up the subtleties of the case. For example, I submitted the job card from the company he contracted to jet clean the sewer pipe, which distinctly stated it was not required and the judge simply said that she thought it was fair enough for him to get the company out. He claimed that we never asked him to do any digging at all, no digging out a base, not replacement of gullies, just to lift the old flags and tarmac over the top of it as quick as possible, but the judge didn't think it strange that as soon as he had lifted the old flags we would suddenly agree to the price almost doubling to dig out a base and replace gullies. I couldn't get the skip company to give me a statement on his request to log the skips as having been used at another address but I did submit all the email correspondence which showed that they didn't deny it. Again, either the judge didn't read it or it she didn't consider it important.
So, yes, obviously I didn't do a good job at presenting our case, but this case was based on probability of who was telling the truth and really required the judge to read all of our documentation, which she clearly hadn't. She ultimately accepted his word on many aspects without any proof, while saying she couldn't award our costs because we didn't have enough proof. His solicitor's cross-examination of me really set the tone - he focused very much on, was his client there, did he do A, B and C, rather than was A, B and C required or whether his quote and invoice were detailed enough. This is what the judge made her decision on.
The judge was very hostile to us from the start and I think it was because she felt I had submitted too much information. The first thing she did was to angrily wave one of the documents I had submitted, saying "why have I got your phone bill?", to which I replied, "to prove I made certain calls". She did call the trader out on a couple of things. For example, he had insisted under oath that he started earlier on the first day than he had, forgetting that I had written proof of that he didn't (the phone bill, which proved I hadn't phoned him to tell him to start the work until later than he claimed). She called him out on that and asked him why he didn't keep a log of his work hours but then she allowed him the costs of the hours he claimed to have worked on the others days, which were false. She also told him he should have had an invoice for hire of a digger from a subcontractor, but awarded him some of the cost, without any proof that he actually hired it at all, which I suspect he did not as he had his own digger. Apart from that, she just let us cross-examine each other and I was nowhere near a match for an experienced solicitor. If we had known in advance that this was how small claims worked, we would, of course, have got a solicitor, but there is nothing in the guidance to indicate that it works like that.
If I had known in advance that the trader's invoices should have had unique serial numbers, or if the judge had known this or at least listened to the taped call, I think it would have cast enough doubt on his credibility to make the judge question him more and catch him out on a few key things. Unfortunately I didn't know in advance and the judge didn't pick up on it. The consumer advice body that advised us afterwards said they also didn't know and were stunned at the decision.
So, yes, while it would appear that we made a weak case, this is only partially true. The consumer body was not as clued in as had thought and advised us poorly and the judge you get on the day is also a very important factor. The whole point of a small claims court is that ordinary people are not supposed to need solicitors (the cost of which very often exceeds or at least greatly impacts on the amount being recovered). Our hearing was like something out of an American drama (for example, when his solicitor asked me questions and I tried to answer, he would repeatedly say, 'Yes or no, just answer the question', and the judge kept out of it). I had not been prepared for this and was completely out of my depth and the consumer body says they now need to review the advice they give to people that they don't need solicitors in small claims cases.
So, hopefully that sheds a bit more light on things. It was just a case of a very dishonest person knowing to go in with a solicitor, who spoke for him. The case is done and dusted, an expensive but valuable lesson for us in dealing with traders in the future. All I was seeking from the forum was clarification on the aspect of his invoices as this is the one thing potentially than we can still report him for, and I think I've got my clarification on that now. Thanks to everyone who contributed their opinions and experiences, greatly appreciate all your time.0 -
Fwiw, you did include too much info. The point is to keep things to the point
His solicitor will have done that. I suspect you really could have done with some help in putting your case together and taking out what is irrelevant.
The skips are irrelevant. What time he arrived is irrelevant. The time you made a phonecall is irrelevant when there is no content. Even the serial numbers are irrelevant. I could doctor any one of my invoices now if I wanted to and print it off. It will stay with the correct number in my system but no one is going to be forensically examining an accounts system to check that everything tallies. In fact, I could skip the accounts system altogether and just use Word.
What is relevant here is what work he did and what value it held if you felt that you had paid too much for the work on site. You've told us so much and yet we're still a little bit in the dark as to what the crux is as we're filtering through all the other stuff.
I do feel for you. I absolutely believe you were taken for a ride and I believe everything you say, it's just that you weren't able to organise what you did have in a way that made it easy to understand. I guess you know now to seek help if you ever end uo near a court again.Everything that is supposed to be in heaven is already here on earth.
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Doozergirl, I obviously didn't present it to the court the way I've done here, it was more to the point but still it was quite a lot of info. The crux of our case, according to the consumer advice body (which is a government dept), was that he breached his contract by continually increasing prices when it was a simple enough job that a professional should have had experience enough to roughly cost (considering his costs increased from just over £2k to more than £7k). Also, that much of the work he did and subcontracted was unnecessary, that he unnecessarily subcontracted work and dragged the work he was doing, Also his quotes/invoices were vague and he was behaving dishonestly. He denied in court that he had increased the price to £k. Because we knew of his propensity to lie, I included as much info as possible with regard to his dishonesty (including the skips as he is definitely doing something wrong here) - that's why I felt the detail important because we had no concrete proof of anything, just a lot of indicators. The phone calls actually were very relevant (there were only 3), as without them the judge probably would also have believed him that he worked all day at our property on a specific date whereas he only worked 2 hours (the phone list proved that I hadn't called him that day until later than he claimed). So while generally, yes, just to the point details is best, in this case it wasn't that simple because we had no concrete proof. The judge obviously didn't want to trail through our information, she just wanted concrete proof. She wasn't interested in trying to find out if he had deliberately dragged out the work and done unnecessary work. She did hit on a couple of contradictions in his case but didn't push on them and without having listened to our telephone call, she missed a lot. Not sure if another judge would have looked at our information in more detail beforehand, who's to know?
I personally (although I'm clearly inexperienced) don't think the serial numbers are irrelevant. The judge paid close attention to the invoices we had included from the contractor who actually finished the job, so I think if she had known that invoices should have a serial number or if I had known, that might have stumped them in court. It's worrying if, as you state, traders can easily doctor invoices.
Yes, we were taken for a ride by a very dishonest trader who seems very experienced in covering his tracks and very willing and able to lie under oath. We also were badly advised by the consumer body and were naive ourselves to how small claims courts work. It wasn't my intention to rake through the case here, I was really just focused on getting info about the invoices, but as people were asking questions about the case, I was trying to answer. The case is well behind us and we've learned some good lessons for the future. Thanks0 -
Thank you for the full and detailed posts, I find it very interesting and I am sure others will learn from it. I have come to the conclusion from my recent experience that the small claims/moneyclaim system is not the cheap and easy access to the courts that it is supposed to be (unless you are lucky and the defendant does not offer a defence). Also Citizens Advice is not all it is cracked up to be, I believe a lot of the people are just volunteers and even some of their published advice is highly questionable.
It is a travesty that these dodgy tradesmen manage to run rings around the system, I have seen it first hand how cunning and manipulative a professional fraudster can be. It is a sad fact of life these days that there are a lot of dodgy characters out there, especially in certain trades so it is so important to have a clear and full written record.
Fraudsters love doing business verbally and informally as it doesn't leave a trail and can be changed/denied later. We have seen so many posts on here with similar stories and even a lot of good builders aren't too good at the paperwork but it is up to the customer to make sure they keep a written record, issue a letter of intent at the outset, confirm instructions in writing and confirm any verbal agreements in writing (email is fine) just keep a written record.0
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