Opinions needed about electrical works

magfo

Hi

We had a new kitchen installed in October last year following an extension to our existing kitchen. Our kitchen company supplied a sub contractor to fit the kitchen for us and we paid them a 'dry' fit price for this service.

We were very aware that we would have extra costs to bear which would be billed directly by the contractor as we required some electrical outlets to be moved, and some new supply for plinth lights.

The contractor came to visit us when the extension was finished and we were ready to get the order in for the new kitchen. He filled out a form 'guide to supplementary works' which would roughly list all the items that will be done when they come to fit the kitchen. This included the fact that we had plinth lights and cupboard lights to be connected, a second oven which would need connecting and the supply moved a little and a few other electrical sockets that required to be moved.

One of the items on this form was 'move exisiting' in reference to electrical sockets. The price for this £45 (from memory, I will have to check). He roughly counted how many we believed would need to be moved and put a total price in that box. He then wrote a few notes in a box at the bottom, which now, don't mean much at all, but from memory was to do with the cost of replacing any old sockets we had, this price was £20 each and £10 exra if we'd wanted chrome ones.

He made a point of telling us that this was all just a guide and that it wasn't set in stone and that they wont know exact costs until the workmen start and see what needs to be done.

Once the kitchen was finished, the electrician had made quite a lovely mess of our walls from moving the existing sockets/supplies and I had asked when they would send a plasterer to fix this. I asked many times, the elctrician himself, the joiner, the contractor (boss) and even our kitchen company, if they would be sending a plasterer. We waited about 2 weeks before one showed up, but only after me harking on at him. I kept saying, I assume you will send a plasterer, I never requested him to supply a plasterer. I believed that the plasterers work would be included in the cost of 'moving exisiting socket/supply' as after all, who would move a socket and then leave a big hole for you to fix yourself?

Anyway, 3 months passed and we finally got the invoice form the contractor at the beginning of Feb. It details - electrical work £.... and plastering £..... and then has a list of electrical items - not individually priced and not really in a language that we understood. We were fizzing as we did not believe we should pay for the plastering as a seperate thing, I believe it should have been included in the £45 per socket price. We wrote a letter and asked for him to give us a detailed breakdown of the invoice and to explain items in 'laymen' terms.

Finally after almost another 3 months wait, he has replied with a letter. He states that the plastering was always an extra item as per the 'supplementary guide to works' and lists a load of sockets/switches that were worked on - still no individual prices.

As far as the plastering goes, we check the form and there is a heading of plastering, which says all plastering will be quoted seperately prior to works - is this the plastering we had, or a different type of plastering? And why were we not informed of the price?

For the electrical works, there are a couple of the items we know they didn't even touch, such as 'immersion switch' this has never been touched by him nor the builders who did the extension, it is just the same switch in the same place. And there are likely others too which we need to investigate.

My husband checked our supplementary guide, which he had to sign a copy of it - even though 'this means basically nothing' and when he added up the estimates that were on this form, they happen to come to exactly the same amount as he has charged for electrical work on the invoice. However, they don't tally up with the items. It is bizarre!

Can anyone comment on the plastering issue to start with - should the cost of moving the socket in clude the patching of the holes made?
And also, what should be our next step as far as breaking down the electrical works costs? We firmly don't believe we should be paying almost £1000 in total for half (the other half was ealt with by the building contractor) of our kitchen electrics being moved around a bit.

So sorry for the very long post, I hope some people can comment and point me in the right direction.

Thanks

shaun_from_Africa

Whenever I've had electrical work carried out that involved moving or installing wall sockets, there was always a separate charge for the plastering work.
This is because it's easy to knock a hole in a wall and chase out a channel for the conduit and any electrician should be able to do this.

Plastering however is a totally different skill and although many people could make a reasonable job of a small area, getting a good finish over a large area is much harder.

Saying that, I think that due to the price that you were charged to move the sockets and replace any old ones, this should have included all of the work as what you were quoted was way over the top.
£45 to do a simple job of moving a socket is very expensive (unless the move was from one side of a large room to another) and £20 to replace any old plastic sockets is taking the ****.
A switched double socket can be bought for £2 to £2.50 if purchased retail, and a trade buyer would pay far less.

Even a good quality switched double chrome wall socket would only cost about £8.

magfo

Thank you very much for your reply it was very helpful.

I was kind of thinking along the same lines, £45 just to move a socket seems a bit steep, therefore we had expected that was the whole job, plastering included. We are not sure, but it also appears that he has charged the £20 on top of that, but as I said because he hasn't detailed anything at all, we are stumped where the figure came from.

The fact that the amount he has invoiced for electrical works comes to exactly the same as what we signed on the form - despite us not having all the work he listed, seems a bit too suspicious.

We are going to approach the kitchen company next as the supplementary form has their logo on the top of it so they are the ones that decide what's on the form. Hopefully they will confirm whether the plastering is included in £45 or not. We did ask them previously while we were waiting for the plasterer to come and the sales guys seems to agree with us, but we'll have to discuss it fuller with a manager and possibly even head office.

Any advice on how to approach a problem like this when we do go back to the contractor? Do we need to ask again for a more detailed breakdown of each electrical item, or do we just decide what we think it should have cost and send a cheque for that amount?

What rights do we have here and who do we need to approach?

Thanks

bod1467

"all plastering will be quoted seperately prior to works"

If that's in writing, and they have implemented the works without providing a prior cost then (IMHO) you can legitimately reject this part of the invoice as they have not conformed to (their own) contract terms.

magfo

Thanks to you both.

I think the main points we have to go back with are -

The charge of £45 to move a socket is very expensive for just electrical works so would appear to include the plastering.

The plastering was never quoted seperately as per stated on the signed form.

The contractor never actually pointed out that there would be a plastering charge to consider once the electrics were moved, despite this being on the form, he didn't even point out that it would be a further cost - leadingus to believe that the £45 covered everything.


I think we will write another letter to the contractor asking for a proper price breakdown of the items he is charging us for - as he has still only given us a list of items and no price or even explanation as to what he did with those items. And we know for a fact he didn't touch our immersion switch or electrics, but yet this is listed! He states that there are 5 double sockets somewhere - there is 1 above worktop, only thing we can think is there are others behind the plinths for the plinth lights, but the installation of the plinth lights had it's own charge (£29 for each set if I remember rightly - of which there were 8).

There's certainly something fishy going on, for starters he took 3 months to invoice us, and then another 3 months to reply to our letter. Surely if his sums were calculated from something then he could have provided us a breakdown straight away. But there is the fact that the amount he has charged is exactly the same as is on the supplementary guide - but yet the items don't match. I am sure that one of the prices he wrote on this form was for extra sockets/switches so that we could match the new half of kitchen with old half - we never took him up on it as this would be £20 each and decided if we were that bothered, we'd go and get our own. But if he wrote this on the form, how has he managed to charge us for it. We think he has just charged exactly the same as we signed for that amount and he possibly thinks that has him covered. But we never signed for any plastering costs!

Anyone else got any advice on this - it is really helping us to get all sides of the argument, just to know how to approach it.

Thanks

paddyrg

Looking at this from the contractor's viewpoint for a second...

You agreed a rough schedule of works which they used as the basis for an estimate
They made it clear plastering was a separate cost
They did the work
They charged you bang on the nail what you had agreed as an estimate (not more like they easily could have)
You badgered them for a plasterer
They provided one
They charged you for one.

Is the cost of moving a socket £45? Depends how you measure it. It is part of a days callout plus petrol plus replacement socket, extra wire, plus soft costs of expertise, insurance, etc etc. If it was the only thing on the list, it would probably have added up to more or less the same as a full day's work. Replacement sockets may cost a fiver or tenner or whatever each, but that is not to say you can ge t someone to come and replace a single socket incl parts and making good for £20. The final invoice is the total cost of the job, the job was to do things on the list, the list had a price you agreed.

As for the cost of the plastering, it sounds like you asked them to provide someone, whether or not you agreed a price. If you didn't shop around, you pay the price of the person you contracted.

Or am I misunderstanding?

magfo

I see where you are coming from and some of your points are fair enough.

However, no he did not make us aware that plastering was an extra cost at the beginning. The form has a section for plastering works but he did not point it out to us to say that it would be something extra on top of the electrical works - hence the reason why we never expected it to be more than the £45.

I didn't badger him for a plasterer, I asked many times if the job would be finished by a plasterer. I asked the joiner and electrician who both seemed a bit sketchy about it and said to speak to the boss. I couldn't get hold of him after a lot of attempts to call and text his mobile - he never returned my calls. And finally the time I spoke to someone, it was his wife as he was away for a weekend. I left messages and texts all asking if a plasterer finishes the job - not so much badgering for one to come, just wanting clarification as we were starting at this point to get suspiscious.

Then one turns up and just does the work. No mention of a quote for the work, just does the work - so we now think we were right to think it is included as no extra cost has been mentioned.

I also see what you are saying about him charging what we agreed, but from what he has listed he did - it does not tally with what is on the form, therefore there is a discrepency. We were also told that it was only a guide - so therefore the price could go up, or down, and as the items on the form don't agree to his list of electrical works on his invoice, I find it a bit suspiscious that the price would be exactly the same. It would have been less odd if the price was more.

There was also a lot more work than just moving a single socket, the elctrician was there to do other bits and bobs with electrical supply for the oven and the plinth lights, so he wasn't only called out for a small job.

I do take all your points and will discuss with my husband, but I think it's difficult for me to explain every single step of this process and every single conversation we had, so therefore it's maybe not as clean cut as you suggest. You have given me another point of view - perhaps that of our contractor, but there are 2 sides to every story and I guess we just need to clarify if we were mislead or not.

Thanks for your reply.

paddyrg

magfo wrote: »

I also see what you are saying about him charging what we agreed, but from what he has listed he did - it does not tally with what is on the form, therefore there is a discrepency. We were also told that it was only a guide - so therefore the price could go up, or down, and as the items on the form don't agree to his list of electrical works on his invoice, I find it a bit suspiscious that the price would be exactly the same. It would have been less odd if the price was more.

There was also a lot more work than just moving a single socket, the elctrician was there to do other bits and bobs with electrical supply for the oven and the plinth lights, so he wasn't only called out for a small job.

Obviously I wasn't party to any of the conversations, so of course was just playing devil's advocate!

I very much understand about the other bits and bobs, what I meant was that it just isn't possible to really attribute specific exact prices to the works done on the day - so maybe when they did the initial estimate they used figures which typically helped them estimate the amount of work involved. It could be that the odds and ends you effectively got for free as you paid for a sparks to be on site for the day, not for the individual jobs.

Maybe it was a brilliant estimate, or maybe they discounted the odds and ends to round down to what you agreed, as a kindness. I just don't know. I don't find it sinister though. Personally I see it as you agreed a price for a spark to be on site and do some work including some extras, you paid what you agreed.

The plasterer is a separate issue. Whilst they may not have drawn your attention to 'plasterers extra', neither did they say 'plastering included', both sides assumed differently.