Do I have to pay more than 50% up front for landscaping work?

Tesstickle

Hi, I'm having a bit of landscaping done in my garden and the company have asked that I pay £1,500 before work commences. The total quoted price is £2,700. I feel a bit uneasy paying that kind of money before any work is done, can anyone advise?

bod1467

If that's their term of engagement then you either pay it or find another contractor whose terms you like better.

Or you negotiate a reduced initial payment and phased payment milestones.

Hintza

I wouldn't be keen unless I had decent references about the company.

SailorSam

I think it's reasonable to ask for something, but as an upfront i wouldn't want to pay much more than 10% and then 2 or 3 payments as they go along, and hold back 10% at the end until you're happy with the work.

InsideInsurance

Tesstickle wrote: »

Hi, I'm having a bit of landscaping done in my garden and the company have asked that I pay £1,500 before work commences. The total quoted price is £2,700. I feel a bit uneasy paying that kind of money before any work is done, can anyone advise?

Are there materials involved? Presumably the £2,700 is labour and materials? It would be fairly common to charge 50% of labour and 100% of materials up front which would mean that the total was more than 50% of the total bill.

You either negotiate or chose another company. You could suggest inserting a mid way through payment but would need to define the criteria for its release which may or may not be easy depending on what you are having done and how easy its to say when ABC are complete but EFG dont have to be.

browneyedbazzi

InsideInsurance wrote: »

Are there materials involved? Presumably the £2,700 is labour and materials? It would be fairly common to charge 50% of labour and 100% of materials up front which would mean that the total was more than 50% of the total bill.

You either negotiate or chose another company. You could suggest inserting a mid way through payment but would need to define the criteria for its release which may or may not be easy depending on what you are having done and how easy its to say when ABC are complete but EFG dont have to be.

I disagree with the content of the first paragraph above. Decent reputable traders doing this sort of work will not usually ask for material costs up front - they will purchase materials on account with suppliers for a job and then pay the account once they have completed the job and received payment from a customer, or buy from funds they have on hand. A deposit up front maybe, but that should not be of the magnitude described.

I would not contract with a trader who asked for a large sum of money up front. Get some quotes from alternative traders and check references!

InsideInsurance

browneyedbazzi wrote: »

I disagree with the content of the first paragraph above. Decent reputable traders doing this sort of work will not usually ask for material costs up front - they will purchase materials on account with suppliers for a job and then pay the account once they have completed the job and received payment from a customer

I did say its fairly common not that all do it.

A lot depends on the size of the company, the job, the cost of materials required, if they are able to source the materials from their usual suppliers with whom they have accounts or not etc.

Chap at work recently had his worktops replaced with some fancy marble stuff they got from Italy. Got an odd job type guy to do it who they've used many times before for fairly straightforward tasks and he always does a good job. He did most the work and got a mate to do the gas fitting.

Total labour cost was under £200. The marble the chap bought himself for around £8k. You wouldnt really expect a sole trader tradesman to take on an £8k credit risk for a £200 job. There's also no way the tradesman would have an account with credit terms with a random small marble workshop in Italy.

bod1467

Indeed. But unless the OP's landscaping involves fitting an expensive, bespoke fountain or something equally unusual, then your example bears no comparison whatsoever with the OP's situation.

InsideInsurance

bod1467 wrote: »

Indeed. But unless the OP's landscaping involves fitting an expensive, bespoke fountain or something equally unusual, then your example bears no comparison whatsoever with the OP's situation.

We dont actually know the OPs job hence asking initially what the split is between labour and materials.