Unhappy with roofing work (Payment advice needed)

CaptainDismay_2

Hi,

This is my first post on the forum, so I apologise if this is in the wrong place. Please move it if so.

I’ve recently had some roofing work done on my house, and my partner and I are very unsatisfied with the service we’ve received. Essentially what I’m asking is do I have a legal obligation to pay the fee quoted to us at the start of the work or am I in a position to be able to renegotiate?

No payment has yet been made, and no contract was ever signed. There was only a verbal agreement over the phone for the quote we received.

Not knowing a thing about roofs, I can’t comment on the quality of the work itself, only the service provided.

The job:

Remove tiles, remove battens, remove existing felt, add new breathable membrane, add new roofing battens, relay existing roof tiles along with some new vented tiles.

My complaints:

I was told the job would take about three days. Currently it’s been ongoing for five weeks. I recognise there will have been inevitable delays due to the weather recently, but five weeks seems a ridiculous amount of time, especially since most of the work was completed on the first day.

The roofers messed up and forgot to add the vented tiles when retiling. We were told they would correct this after the first weekend. A week later nothing had been done, so I rang the director and was told we didn’t need the vents because of the breathable membrane. This seemed like a convenient get out clause for their mistake. I did some research on the net and the majority of sites I found said even with breathable membrane it’s best to still have vented tiles. Also every other quote we received specially mentioned vented tiles. I phoned the next day and said we did in fact want the vents. I was told this would be fixed the next day. A week later I phoned because nothing had been done. I was told this would be fixed the next day. The next day nothing happened. Then when I phoned I was told the tiles had been ordered but the wrong ones delivered (again, convenient). I was told the work should take place the following week. It’s now two weeks later and the roofers have still not been back.

My final complaint is the amount of chasing I’ve done. I’ve easily phoned 15+ times only to be told I would be phoned back later the same day, or the next morning. I’ve received a call about 3, maybe 4 times. I am constantly chasing. At times it’s felt like the main guy is purposefully ignoring our calls.

My partner and I chose a company who gave us a dearer quote than most, under the naive impression this meant we were paying for higher quality work/service. We don’t feel we’ve received it and now feel aggrieved to pay the quoted price.

Can anything be done or renegotiated? Or do I have to grin and bear it and pay (once the job is actually completed of course)?

Many thanks for any advice or help you can give.

Steve_xx

If you feel that the work is substandard you ought to not to settle the bill until things are put right, ie you get what you discussed before the work commenced.

The problem here is that there is nothing written down by the sound of it?

Also, you are continuing to phone the company and this will make for further difficulty later on should you need to take legal action. What you ought to be doing is writing to them, detailing your expectations, and keeping copies of the correspondence between you.

NeverEnough

Oh dear, sorry to hear you are being messed about by another lot of shyster builders - it has striking similarities to the situation we found ourselves in a few years - neither we, nor the house , have recovered since!! We also employed a "reputable" firm which were not the cheapest by a long way, to reroof our property. The job was meant to be completed in 10 working days - included some brickwork repair as well. The company owners jollied off to Bulgaria for the summer hols and were not contactable and their subcontracted flunkies arrived on site for all of about 2-3 days, did an appalling job, and vanished, having left collateral damage (numerous broken windows) plus all the rubble and debris behind. End result, we had to get a different builder in to remedy the unfinished bits and fix the mess, part of the ceiling was damaged and leaked, still not repaired years later.

I refused to pay until the job was complete, so the builder put his company into liquidation and handed the debt on to the administrators, who commenced legal proceedings for the FULL AMOUNT QUOTED even though they had done less than half of the work. Due to the costs involved, Small Claims was not an option and I managed to use the Legal Cover on our Home Insurance Policy to provide a solicitor for us.

The case went to arbitration in the end and I still ended up paying over the odds, although a lot less than what was quoted, for the poor work that had already been finished. Its never been completely remedied, either......and I am left feeling that trades are just a bunch of shysters, given out experiences overthe years. Luckily I had not paid up front and there was a fair amount of correspondence.

It would be your word against theirs, without a written contract, and they will milk the fact they are "waiting for materials, out of our control" to explain away their summer jollies. We had an independent building surveyor compile a report for us on the work already done, its value and what the rest of the work needed would cost, after sending a Final Response to their demand for full payment, stating that as they had not even remotely completed the work, we were withholding payment until the job was satisfactorily completed.

southcoastrgi

not all trades are shysters as you put it, yes there are a lot of cowboys out there & alot of good guys too but sometimes it's hard finding the good ones if you have no recommendations to go by, this is the problem with getting nothing in writing the company can say what they want & also invoice what they want ie if you don't have a writen quote they could say no sorry that price was an estimate & the job is £££ more, write to them & put down all the points you aren't happy with & give them a fixed time scale (something like two weeks) to finish the work to your satifaction or you will be employing another company to do the work & take the cost of that off of their invoice, send it reg delievery so you have a record of them recieving it, emails & phone calls can go amiss & if it went to court you have no proof that they recieved them.

Hintza

We have just completed our new build with slate roof and all I can say is thank god there is not a vented tile in sight.

Leif

What southcoastrgi said.

Steve_xx wrote: »

If you feel that the work is substandard you ought to not to settle the bill until things are put right, ie you get what you discussed before the work commenced.

The problem here is that there is nothing written down by the sound of it?

Also, you are continuing to phone the company and this will make for further difficulty later on should you need to take legal action. What you ought to be doing is writing to them, detailing your expectations, and keeping copies of the correspondence between you.

Yes, send a letter by recorded delivery so you have proof they have received the letter. State what you were promised, state what you have received, and why you are unhappy. Give them a fixed time to finish e.g. 14 days. State that you will get someone else in if they do not do the work, and you will deduct the cost of the remedial/finishing work from the original quote. They might get a move on.

Also, phone citizens advice, consumer direct, or whatever they are called this month. Do this first, they are more reliable than strangers online.

builder_mediation

Unfortunately, chasing poor workmanship and resolving builder / client disputes is what i do every day. As you state your first problem is you did not sign a contract stating the work required and the timescale involved. However, you do have a verbal contract with regard to the quote. You need to write to the builder concerned detailing out your grievances with photographic evidence of anything that is wrong with the work carried out. You could also get quotes to complete the work and suggest to your builder that you will pay him for the work he has done so far and that you will have someone else finish the job unless he agrees in writing to complete the work in a fixed timescale.
Unfortunately, many roofing companies have struggled this year due to the poor weather conditions and yours will not be the only roof work they are trying to complete. This cannot be used as an excuse as they have obviously overstretched themselves.
Good luck