protect deposit if contractors go bust?

abieng

Does anyone have any advice? We are doing up our house and putting in a small extension and glazing at the back, which is costing a lot of money. We have a main contractor, and he has subcontracted glazing specialists for this.

They have gone bust, taking our huge deposit - more than £10k - with them. The next subcontractor has just done the same thing. Yep - 2 glazing contractors going out of business and taking our deposit within 2 months.

Is there any way to insure against losing our deposit if this happens the next time (nothing found after some websearches and phone-calls) - the delays are costing us a lot as we can't live there until its done, and the main contractor is understandably unhappy to take on another glazing company himself having had to swallow the losses twice now.

dacouch

Pay the deposit by credit card or finance

Hintza

And chose your company with care (very difficult I know).

When we built our house a couple of years ago we lost one window company (fortunately no deposit paid), one flooring company £350 gone and a second flooring company after the job was done.

ThumbRemote

I presume, from your description, that the main contractor is covering the losses from both companies.

If so, why would you be getting involved? It's the main contractors job to handle all this. Don't get involved, don't pay subcontractors yourself, keep well out of it.

And a small extension requiring a 10k deposit on glazing? Doesn't sound that small!

InsideInsurance

Paying by regulated credit, eg a credit card, will make the lender jointly liable assuming the total bill isnt going to exceed £30,000 but given the deposit alone is £10k I am guessing it may?

As others have said, you should only contract with the contractor so the sub contractors are their concern and not yours. If you are contracting with each company directly then your creating problems for yourself.

In theory you could use an escrow service to protect the monies but that assumes that the builder doesnt actually require any of the funds to actually complete the work. Whilst some are potentially sitting on mountains of cash you have already seen that some are not in a good financial state and so couldnt afford to do the job without monies up front

vaio

A builder giving cash up front to a sub contractor? who then goes bust? twice?

My suspicion buds are in over-drive

comeandgo

If you have paid your main contractor for the work and materials then it is his loss, not yours.