Builder - Small Claims?

[Deleted User]

Had a conservatory built along with some other work in September.

Stupidly, we paid the builder at the time even though there were one of two outstanding things. Also, gave him £90 advance on other work we had planned.

Also, a few days after the conservatory was built - two of the glass panels cracked. No idea why.

Since then, its been a nightmare getting him to come back. All we've had is excuses and lies. Hes been back once or twice but still not done the glass.

I've now told him I've had enough and want it sorted. He was supposed to turn up this week but did not and is now ignoring my calls.

I've got signatures off him detailing the payments I made to him.

Seriously wondering whether I get a quote from someone else to fix the glass and send him the bill. Then, if he refuses to take him to small claims court.

Any suggestions?

JohnB47

I had similar problem myself, so my experience may be useful.

We had a guy, local, do our front drive up and part of that was to redo a couple of small walls in the front of our porch. All except the walls were done to a high standard and then the guy asked us to pay the total for the job as he was about to go on holiday and wanted to pay his lads in advance of them doing the walls while he was away. He is (was!) a nice bloke so we paid - big mistake!

The walls never got built. Numerous calls, excuses etc. the months went by. I then warned him I would take him to the small claims court and gave him a deadline to do the work - no response.

Took him through the small claims court - and I have no idea whether he responded to this in any way, and received a judgement against him. This was all done by internet/mail - never went to an actual court. Perhaps that's because he didn't contest it. (The sum involved was £400).

Result? I had to get someone else to do the walls at my cost. Using the small claims process did nothing for me at all. Waste of time in my opinion.

I've read that he would have a black mark against his credit rating because of the judgement but I've no evidence of that and anyway that's little comfort to me.

My advice to you is to keep pestering your builder and hope he'll get fed up with you and do the work.

londonTiger

small claims court will do nothing to actually get your money back, they will just issue a CCJ against the builder. Builder probably wont care about the CCJ they all have a few CCJs against them

[Deleted User]

Hmmm. I guess if builders ignore the CCJ then its a bit of a waste of money.....

[Deleted User]

londonTiger wrote: »

small claims court will do nothing to actually get your money back, they will just issue a CCJ against the builder. Builder probably wont care about the CCJ they all have a few CCJs against them

BUT, if you've got the judgement aren't you then free to send in the bailiffs to make recovery. I know this costs extra again but its added to the bill, isn't it?

vaio

yep, and if you have his bank details than you can get an order which forces his bank to pay the CCJ & costs (assuming he has the cash in the account or any other account with the same bank)

muckybutt

To make things official you have to first notify the builder my mail about the defects and that you want them rectifying, give them a time scale to do these that you set - normally within 14 days.

If they have not responded to your letter then write a letter before action notifying them that if they do not complete the work then you will commence legal proceedings against them - again give them a deadline to respond - 7 days.

After the time has expired then you can safely commence legal action against the builder in the small claims court. We have just been through the process against a builder that has fkd us over with incomplete work, he didn't bother responding to letters etc so we were set to proceed with legal action against him until he started a new company up, it was at that stage we decided it wasn't worth it as it looked like he was going to wind up the side which we hired to do the work.

Good luck !

nickj_2

londonTiger wrote: »

small claims court will do nothing to actually get your money back, they will just issue a CCJ against the builder. Builder probably wont care about the CCJ they all have a few CCJs against them

this is a "slight " exaggeration, i expect for every builder who's had a CCJ, there's a customer who hasn't paid for work that has been carried out and left honest tradesmen out of pocket

ceredigion

londonTiger wrote: »

small claims court will do nothing to actually get your money back, they will just issue a CCJ against the builder. Builder probably wont care about the CCJ they all have a few CCJs against them

:mad: