Quotes from hell

pamplem0use

So we're doing extensive renovations on a house we've bought.
I don't think I've got a leg to stand on with the legality (or otherwise) of these quotes, but I'd like to know whether I'm right to be annoyed.
The total works add up to £50,000 when the project manager was told we had about 30k to play with. He, unfortunately, knew we had additional money to use if necessary.
We've been beset by inaccurate quotes. At meetings we've repeatedly been given quotes to find other spurious charges being added on at a later date.
For instance, we were given a verbal quote for the supply and fit of new windows. A month down the line we get an invoice on with additional amounts of £90 to fill the skips with the old windows (plus the actual skip cost, which I have no issue with), £110 for removing the old windows, £249 for window boards, and £180 for window tape, £250 for making good. I was probably incredibly naive but when you get the addition of £900+ vat for each job it certainly adds up and I think I'm understandably furious.

Tr1pp

ok, it will be more helpful to know the scale of works being carried out, is it a full refurb of the entire property, how many rooms, whats being done in each room, electrics redone, location??

hard to say if your getting taken for a ride if we dont know whats being done. However if you made it clear you had 30k then :

1) the project manager is not doing his best to get you a good deal
2) your asking for too much an need to talk to him about where you can scale back to cut costs

pamplem0use

Thanks Tr1pp. I think our main issue is that (1) we asked at the start of the process whether this was a reasonable budget, he said it was. It includes rewiring, majority of the house skimming, new bathroom, some works on chimney, five new windows.
My main issue is less with hiw much it's costing, but the fact that we specifically asked for quotes, e.g. for fitting the bathroom. We were told £1600 + £900 tiling (plus all bathroom fittings), but when it's come down to it miscellaneous extras (e.g. removing old bathroom at £600, aquaboard at £400) add up to another £2000. We were given no reason to expect this!

pamplem0use

We're home counties.

Nile

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SJshah

What we have noticed is that with any sort of building work, many extra costs pop up from no where all the time. These are usually material costs and costs for unforseen circumstances.

If you're having to pay extra for things that are obviously needed (like a skip, removing windows before putting in new ones, window boards and tape) then your project manager is not doing his job.

What you should do is ask for a written quotation before they start on a job and make sure they have agreed to charging no more than that.

Tr1pp

Agree with SJshash

Im no expert in all matter building but when aqua board is taked on as an unforseen extra and not in the initial quote then something is a miss, 600 to remove you existing bathroom suite (which they will no doubt sell on) seems like a joke.

you could consider buying the materials yourself then you can control the spend and not get ripped off.

southcoastrgi

what you need to do is look carefully at your contract, where the prices a "quote or an estimate" ? a quote is a fixed price unless something really un-expected happens & if it does then whoever gave the quote should come to you & detail the extras involved before going ahead, an estimate is a estimate of the time & cost of the job & this often goes up, if it's a quote then all of the things you have detailed should have been taken into account at the time of the quote & not be an extra, if it went to court then IMO they would lose as these things should have already been taken into account, if it turns out to be an estimate then you don't really have a leg to stand on IMO.

Steve_the_fitter

600 to rip the bathroom out? 400 to aquaboard?, i thinks its easy to know if these need doing before the quote was done. id be furious if i had a project man. organising this for me. only heard one side of the story but looks like he is taking you for a ride.

jcb208

Your being well stiched up I woud get shot of him,Its not an extra to rip a bathroom out before fitting a new one its part of the job,and
£600 is a joke its a couple of hours work at most

bonsaitreej

I'd seriously consider taking legal advice, and at the very least contacting trading standards about these cowboys. An extra £20-30,000 is a hell of a lot of money. You may be able to re-coup some of it. You'll never know unless you try, and if you don't take a stand they may well do this to others too.