Getting overcharged for half a job and now getting thrreatening debt letters.

punts

Hello everyone.

My first post on here as im having a bit of trouble finding the information i need. I have a problem with a plumber trying to charge me 2600 for basically ripping a bathroom out 14 months ago. Sorry for the long text but here goes.

The story goes that me and my sister who used to own 50% each of a house together (she now owns 100%) and 14 months ago we were in a position to fit a new bathroom. We had done all of our research and also had a number of quotes from plumbers just for the fitting of a bathroom (we were supplying all the big bits such as tiles, bath, sink etc and the majority of the materials)

We decided to go with a local plumber based on the quote he had given us and the fact that he was from the same village where we grew up in and was known to the family.

The plumber came and basically in a period of 2 weeks got his girl apprentice to rip out the bathroom and ran a couple of pipes in for the sink. During this time i was away from home but regulary rang up the plumber to check if he needed anything and to check the status of the work, at no point was there a hold up due to materilas or problems etc.

When i returned after 2 weeks its was obvious that i had been told a pack of lies and being quite handy myself i could tell that there was no more than 3 days work at a push completed. All that was left was an empty shell and a few pipes ran in. When i arrived home the plumber was nowhere to be seen and rang him up to see where he was and why it wasnt anywhere near completed. We got told that he had had a lot of boiler breakdown callouts and that he would be finishing it within the week!!!!!!! We stated that it shouldn’t really matter if he had callouts as we were paying him to do our bathroom and had agreed on a time frame. We think he was still doing as many callout as possible and using our bathroom to fill in the times when he had no other work on because he would be making a hell of a lot more money on callouts.

We gave him the benefit of the doubt and decided that we wouldnt be able to get a replacement plumber on short notice especially around xmas. Day after day came and went and he would turn up every now and again for sometimes a couple of hours, sometimes only half an hour before making his excuses and going again. This went on for the rest of the weeks until my sister snapped at him and burst into tears saying that he had promised us a bathroom before xmas and we that we hadnt even had a toilet for 3 weeks. This seemed to do the trick and he spent a few hours late one night temporarily putting in a toilet.

We thought we were getting somewhere and he might actually see how much the lack of a bathroom mixed in with the mess and dust and hassle was really affecting us but no!!!!!!!!!!!! Things still continued down the same track and no more work was done, and over xmas we had to make do with a half plumbed in toilet and only the ensuite shower in one of the rooms upstairs which was far from ideal as at this time both myself and my sister were living in the house.

After getting totally frustrated and realising that nothing was going to change in his work rate we decided to get someone else in to finish the job, this person was a friend of the family who was booked up all before Christmas which was why we didn’t choose him in the first place. The new plumber came round and eyed up the job and gave us a quote just for his labour and made an estimate of all the materials that we would sill require. Happy with the quote and his estimate that the job would be fully completed within the next 2 weeks we decided to book the new plumber and promptly phoned the old one to tell him that we had been forced to find a new plumber and to collect his tools from our property. It then took almost a full week for him to collect his tools.

The work was successfully completed by the new plumber within the time frame and to a very high standard and we were ecstatic by his work. The total cost of additional materials and his labout to fit the bathroom, tile, grout, paint and do all the electrics came to a little over 2000 pounds – this also included additional labour cost for him as he had to remove nearly all the pipework initially installed as it was done to a poor standard and it was also not rebated enough into the walls which would have thrown all the tiling to pot.

A period of about 9 months went by without hearing anything of the original plumber and we thought we had heard the last of him and that he had realised that he had done hardly any work, messed us about, left us without a bathroom over christamas and had his apprentice girl do most of the work anyway. We thought he had accepted his wrong doing and was going to leave us alone. One morning however we received a bill for 2600 pounds demanding full payment within 7 days followed almost immedietly by another demand for full payment.
We (perhaps stupidly) chose to ignore this letter and saw it only as a threat and could not believe how unashamed someone could be to do basically next to nothing and then demand extortionate amount of money for it.

Just last week we have now received a letter from some debt collection agency who are basically threatening that we require to pay the full amount of 2600 to the plumber within 7 days otherwise court proceedings could be instructed on us without any further warnings.

So the question and the information that I am looking for is really what do I do or what can I do?

I can get a full report from the plumber who came in and fixed the job and completed the work for 2000 pounds but I am sure that this would not be enough.

Basically this plumber is trying to bill me for work that he has not done, I have never signed anything to him agreeing on a price for any work.

All your help and comments will be appreciated.

goRt

Let them initiate court proceedings, the contract will be required and proof need from the plumber that his work was good and should be paid for.
You'll get plenty of chance to state your case, the debt will only be proven in court.
I assume this will be the small claims court, in which case the fees from the debt agency prior to the court case cannot be passed on to you

Ignore until court papers appear, then contact us for further advice

punts

Thanks gort i was hoping that this might be the case but always reassuring to hear it from someone else.
Is this the general concensus then with other people on these forums aswell?

MrsTinks

I'd be cantancerous enough to present him with a bill for the time it took the other plumber to make good the mess left by pumber 1

Is there any contract? Would the second plumber be willing to give you a statement about the condition of the bathroom when he was called in and the amount of work he believed had been done and the standard it had been done to?

punts

Mrs Tine, the thought had crossed my mind, i ws going to present him with a bill for the amount of time that his tools were at my house and change him storage fees. My sister suggested sueing him for the hassle and stress he has caused especially over christmas.

It would not be a problem getting a letter off the second plumber, he is a long time family friend and I went to his wedding the other month.

There was never any contract between us and the plumber and I have never signed anything agreeing to anything

Good to hear your comments

DVardysShadow

Your weak point may be proving the time scales for all of this and the opportunities given to the plumber to complete. Not said to provoke an argument, but to get you to look at what you do have available as evidence.

Basically, if you do have to tip someone off a job, you need either to prove that their performance and behaviour was so grossly unreasonable that you were right to dismiss them immediately, or you have to prove that they were given a fair and reasonable opportunity to put it right. Sister bursting into tears does not cut it as evidence. A letter recording progress to date and an ultimatum to get the job finished or be sacked would do the job.

You need to go back to the plumber and the agency and make it plain that you dispute the bill. But you may have to accept thathis work did have some value.

paulofessex

I think it will need careful wording on any court papers regarding counter claim seeing as alas in hindsight no photos were taken at various stage of the plumbers non work.

g_attrill

I would agree with the others - you have a few things you will need to prove:

- What work he actually completed
- What wasn't to a good enough standard
- So what was, and what you think you should be paying for


Obviously him billing the full amount means he either believes he completed the whole job, or that he thinks the whole amount is due even though he didn't do it. As far as I know even if he is successful in claiming that he was entitled to finish the job (ie. you can't prove any deadlines, and he claims that you were happy for him to go to other jobs as required), he would only be entitled to loss of profits and wasted materials. If he carried on working and didn't have any wasted time I can't see that he would have any losses.

Either way, you should compile a detailed timeline of what happened when, and any calls made or letters sent.

unhappy_with_ecar

There is an over riding principle in court proceedings that parties should do all they can to avoid going to court in the first place. Essentially it means that they should talk to each other. It would be sensible to write to the agency who have written to you and dispute the debt, stating that the plumber never did the work for you and that should they pursue this debt you will counterclaim for costs over and above those that you would have had to pay the original plumber. So if the first one was going to charge you 2000 and you ended up paying 2600 to the second one, you are perfectly entitled to claim the 600 from the first plumber. If the second plumber had to rip out all of the original plumbers work, what work did he actually do that had any value. In reality nothing, if he does pursue the matter, certainly counter claim but beaware there are filing fees with the court. Don't be too worried about costs because these are fixed at the levels you are talking about in this case. I'd also state that any work completed was unsatisfactory and had to be redone, that he failed to fulfil the obligations of the contract between the parties (yes it was verbal but any reasonable person would expect the work to be completed in a reasonable amount of time) and that you feel it appropriate that you should bring the case to the attention of the local trading standards if this matter persists.
He'll give up eventually.

redlady_1

Did you ever receive a bill from plumber No 1 before the £2k bill turned up? What does he claim to have done? Have you picked up the phone and asked him what the hell he is playing at? Not to mention a quick word with the Trading Standards?

punts

wow, thanks to everyone for their time and the replies.

I have a sort of itemised bill from plumber number 1 but when you add up all of the materials and so called time spent on the job i cant seem to work out how it all makes up the grand total.

As far as time frames i know the exact date that he started the work and the ezact date that we got the new plumber in, i can get a full report of plumber number 2 detailing the work which was done and also the substandard work which was already present.

In was wary of speaking to him on the phone as there is no way of recording the conversation and the outcome although i have been seriously tempted to give him a piece of my mind although this may not solve much.

I wouldnt counter claim it was merely a thought that he was so cheeky to even bill us for that amount in the first place that we could be so cheeky to claim for the misery and storage of his equipment etc.

unhappy with ecar :- your comments seemt o make sense and i certainly think that a well worded letter is a must and as you said i think that even though a verbal contract existed i think that anyone would understand that the work wasnt completed in a reasonable time especially coming up to christmas and leaving someone without a bathroom for 3 weeks.
What power and authority do the local trading standards have though in this case and how could they be useful apart from just using them as a threatening tool.

Thanks again all