Invoice not paid

asdute

Contractor not paying final invoice
Hi I would like to ask if any one knows. Our Ltd company worked at the building site, cotract has ended and contractor was fulling around for 4 month not paying final invoice. Couple weeks ago I have send him letter before action and I finally got response! However he decided that he owes me £2500 less than my invoice. Is there any time limits when he can actually disagree with original invoice especially that he was ignoring all my emails calls and messages for 4 month.
Invoice that he has send me has some errors like our company name is completely different on his invoice which he wants us to sign. I have asked him to correct it and he is not responding again for almost 2 weeks. What else can I do to get his attention and obviously get the payment for this invoice.
Thank you

InsideInsurance

Unless there is any terms in the contract then there are no guidelines or rules about timescales.

Ultimately as your the creditor the ball is 100% in your court as you are the only one that can issue proceedings for which the time limit is 6 years

You've already sent the letter before action so why havent you taken the action?

asdute

Oh because after receiving this letter he has responded
in no time and it all looked that he wants to deal with it ASAP. But now he has gone silent again. As it is first year for our Ltd I do not know much about all those things. Is there any other way to get his attention? Can I send him another letter? I just want to try I deal with it without courts being involved I bet nobody wants to jump straight in to that.

InsideInsurance

asdute wrote: »

Oh because after receiving this letter he has responded
in no time and it all looked that he wants to deal with it ASAP. But now he has gone silent again. As it is first year for our Ltd I do not know much about all those things. Is there any other way to get his attention? Can I send him another letter? I just want to try I deal with it without courts being involved I bet nobody wants to jump straight in to that.

Presumably your threat wasnt "if I dont hear from you" but "if you dont pay"? In which case his replying is fairly irrelevant especially if they have gone back to silence.

You could send another letter before action but on the grounds you havent carried out the threat of the first one why would they think you were any more serious in the second one?

A letter from a solicitor may be taken more seriously but the cost of having it drafted is going to come out of your pocket unless the contract allows for debt recovery costs to be transferred. Alternatively court papers are the next step or accept the lower figure they are offering

comeandgo

You state you worked on a building site. Was the work/measurement agreed? Has the contractor given you a reason for the differences?

asdute

I have asked why his invoice is lower but i did not hear from him since. It was price work all prices were agreed by both of us.

engineer_amy

with regards to him stating a lower amount, as it is in the construction field, is it possible the £2500 difference is due to a CIS retention? in which case he should provide a CIS deductions statement to you. other than that, would it be anything to do with the quality/quantity of work, and a final figure not being signed off/agreed on? Do you have any contract or anything in writing agreeing the cost prior to commencement of the work?


on the other issue of non payment, you have sent your LBA and while you have got a response, you haven't received payment yet nor a confirmation that payment will be made by a certain date, so I would start recovery action through the small claims court (depending on the outstanding value). No point in empty threats.

asdute

Our company is registred as gross so we always used to get gross payments. Prices has been agreed verbaly not signed. 100 %sure that quality work was done as he has received full amount from his contractors. I am still working at the same site so if any complains would be made about work done it would have reach me first. Outsanding amount is over 9k in my invoice.

InsideInsurance

asdute wrote: »

Outsanding amount is over 9k in my invoice.

How much over? Presumably that including the £2.5k they appear to have knocked off?

The Small Track (aka small claims court) is capped to £10k of damages. It can by exception hear higher cases if they are very simple in nature but I'd be slightly more cautious if you are at risk of going into Fast Track instead as at this point moderate legal fees are allowed to be claimed from the losing side.