Cowboy Builder Threats... Any advice?

james676

Good afternoon everyone,

Very stressful topic for me and I've tried to keep emotions out of it to make it quicker to read the below.. Any help or advice anyone has, please let me know!

Here we go:

I've got myself into a bit of an annoying situation of the past weeks:
- bought a house that needed a total make over
- found a builder to do it all via mybuilder.com (has a 9/10 rating)
- eventaully the guy turned out to be a massive headache with fake ratings and generally very incompetent workers (e.g. flooding the whole basement several times as the forgot to put stops on open pipes before turning on the boiler, massive leakage throughout the house given the bad quality soldering of copper pipes, builders pi**ing in our garden as they were too lazy to walk to the pub while we didn't have a toilet, tiles installed with no run/angle in a walk in shower, several items going "missing", like bathroom extractor fans etc...)
- stupidly we paid the builder 90% of the total cost already, but now just want him out the house. We're at the stage where we're happy to just get someone else in to fix broken things.
- today the builder sent us an email (first time ever), saying he wants the final sum paid by 5pm or will take us to court

Our problem:
The builder needs to provide us with the gas safe, electrics (house was rewired), strucural engineers and damp guarantee reports. He is not willing to give these to us, unless we pay him another GBP 7K. That figure was never given to us and comes as a complete shock. When asked, the builder said it's mainly the cost for him coming by over the past weeks fixing various problems we had at the house (all of which were originally caused by him!).

What are our options?
We can try and negotiate the 7k figure down with him, but he really doesn't deserve another penny and will probably not budge! Are there any other options we have? Especially with regards to the gas safe and electric sign off?

Any ideas are welcome... It's been a stressful time for us!

Thanks,
James

Blackbeard_of_Perranporth

Question. Are you an architect?

If yes, you should know what you are doing.

If no, stop watching daytime tv shows and employ one.

suisidevw

So this job cost £70k........ what is in your contrat with the builder about staged payments?

james676

We have paid GBP 40k to date, all of which was in stages of GBP 5k/week. My partner and I had to go on a 3 week buisness trip at one stage, where we paid GBP 15k in advance, with the builder promising that all work would be complete upon our return.

Initally the builder and us estimated the total cost to come to GBP 45k, although having added up the total amount of work done and the value of it (based on the builders quotes for each bit), it comes to GBP 40k. We therefore do not want to pay him another penny, especially given the very poor quality of work.

I'm fully aware that we have made some very bad decisions and employed the wrong builder, even though we checked out several customer references before.

And no, we are not architects (we work in the laundry industry..).

suisidevw

So you don't have anything written down between you and the builder of quotes (not estimates) and payment plans?

Blackbeard_of_Perranporth

Do you have a schedule of work, and an indication of staged payments. Also a contingency should unforeseen difficulties arise during your work.

Who is your project manager?

smifffy1989

james676 wrote: »

Our problem:
The builder needs to provide us with the gas safe, electrics (house was rewired), strucural engineers and damp guarantee reports. He is not willing to give these to us, unless we pay him another GBP 7K. That figure was never given to us and comes as a complete shock. When asked, the builder said it's mainly the cost for him coming by over the past weeks fixing various problems we had at the house (all of which were originally caused by him!).

Do you have a contract with him? If he has been paid as per the contract but has fail to supply these then I would get in first with a claim of breach of contract.

james676

There are no written details of any quotes, nothing contractual anyway. It was all 'back of the enevlope'..

Fully aware how stupid this sounds now, but at the time we trustsed this guy and thoughts it would all go well, espeiclla since we spoke to several of his customers, which I'm guessing were probably just his mates...

Blackbeard_of_Perranporth

james676 wrote: »

There are no written details of any quotes, nothing contractual anyway. It was all 'back of the enevlope'..

Fully aware how stupid this sounds now, but at the time we trustsed this guy and thoughts it would all go well, espeiclla since we spoke to several of his customers, which I'm guessing were probably just his mates...

I am afraid the back of the envelope is not worth the stamp you lick to put on the front.

Alas, you may have to suffer extra expense to put things right, but get a proper quote and works schedule together to correct the project, and you may have to go to court to recover the losses you perceive you incurred with your original builder, but without a schedule, this may be difficult.

Lesson for your next project, is you are going to invest £40,000, would you give it to me if I promised I could double your money?

james676

Thanks Blackbeard.

I guess my main question is what our options are in terms of getting sign off on the installed electrics and in obtaining a gas certificate? Is anyone aware of what we can do and what costs are potentially involved? We are based in London, if that helps.

Thank you.

smifffy1989

I would have thought in terms of the builder taking you to court the lack of contract helps you. This is because you can prove you have paid him. He would have to prove that you owe more than you have paid.