Help - unhappy tradesman

mandm65

enfield_freddy wrote: »

he might be vat registered , however he has failed to charge/disclose or indeed tell the vat man that he has charged vat (or not - ILLIGAL)

Are you saying that he has done something illegal?

enfield_freddy wrote: »

were you going to be given a full and final invoice , or (as you state) where you just getting recepts for daily work?

No invoice at all, just email account of number of days worked and the balance.

enfield_freddy

if he is vat registered , he should be charging vat .


by paying him cash without a fully headed receipt , he is easily able to not pay tax on those earnings .


maybe he is fiddling , maybe he is,nt.


however he does sound like an unconfident person , who is unable to give estimates.


ask him for a full breakdown of work , detailing dates and times and also listing the payments made by you ,


you want this on letter headed paper , not an email some excuse like your bank manager wants it for overdraft reasons , or insurance , make something up that sounds plausible for the work.


see if there is a vat number on this letter

xFlake

Hello,

Couple of questions before I give you an answer which should help,

- Where was the contract for the work agreed? Telephone, at your home?
- Was anything given to you, when the contract was agreed in writing?

Regards,

mandm65

xFlake wrote: »

- Where was the contract for the work agreed? Telephone, at your home?

At my home

xFlake wrote: »

- Was anything given to you, when the contract was agreed in writing?
Regards,

Nothing given to me in writing as such but i did get an email confirmation

Thanks

xFlake

Ok, I'll approach this from a legal perspective.

The Consumer Contracts... Regulations 2013 require certain contracts made in a consumers home, where the value is over £42, to be issued with a cancellation period ("cooling off period") of 14 days. This needs to be in a prescribed format set out in the Regs, you have received no paperwork so the trader is in breach of the Regs.

Now there are a few ways you can approach this...

By not issuing this notice the trader has committed an offence (Reg 19), and you can report him to trading standards via Citizens Advice consumer service. In practice, unless he is a repeat offender, he will probably receive advice on his practices.

As you have not received the cancellation notice you now have 12 months and 14 days to cancel (Reg 31).

In practice that means if it goes to County Court he will lose, because you can cancel anytime within the extended period, assuming you do. However, I would strongly suggest you pay what you think is reasonable. There is nothing to suggest in the Regulations that the contract is unenforceable, however the predecessor to this legislation had a clause saying the contract was unenforceable if the notice was not issued, this was backed up in a Court of Appeal case (Robinson v Swift [2014]), some case law can interpreted into legislation which is superseded. However I would highly recommend the former, especially if work has been done, and the trader could rely on Reg 35/36 for reasonable costs.

Sorry if all that is a little wordy! If you have any more questions let me know I'll try and answer them.

unholyangel

xFlake wrote: »

Ok, I'll approach this from a legal perspective.

The Consumer Contracts... Regulations 2013 require certain contracts made in a consumers home, where the value is over £42, to be issued with a cancellation period ("cooling off period") of 14 days. This needs to be in a prescribed format set out in the Regs, you have received no paperwork so the trader is in breach of the Regs.

Now there are a few ways you can approach this...

By not issuing this notice the trader has committed an offence (Reg 19), and you can report him to trading standards via Citizens Advice consumer service. In practice, unless he is a repeat offender, he will probably receive advice on his practices.

As you have not received the cancellation notice you now have 12 months and 14 days to cancel (Reg 31).

In practice that means if it goes to County Court he will lose, because you can cancel anytime within the extended period, assuming you do. However, I would strongly suggest you pay what you think is reasonable. There is nothing to suggest in the Regulations that the contract is unenforceable, however the predecessor to this legislation had a clause saying the contract was unenforceable if the notice was not issued, this was backed up in a Court of Appeal case (Robinson v Swift [2014]), some case law can interpreted into legislation which is superseded. However I would highly recommend the former, especially if work has been done, and the trader could rely on Reg 35/36 for reasonable costs.

Sorry if all that is a little wordy! If you have any more questions let me know I'll try and answer them.

Not quite correct......if they provide the information at any point in the next 12 months then the cancellation period ends 14 days after that information is received. If they fail to provide the information within 12 months then the cancellation period ends 12 months after it should have had they complied (12 months and 14 days basically).

Furthermore, its not quite as clear cut as you're hinting at.

OP has yet to tell us what information was provided and what services he was actually contracted to provide. If it was urgent repairs/maintenance for example, there is no right to cancel.

JethroUK

mandm65 wrote: »

We did not think he would ask us to pay for the addtional days because he alreday agreed something with us, beside we have had paid him for whatever he claimed.
.

Quite, the "something" he agreed was "another 3 days work"

You can't sit back and let him do 6 days work and look spirited he charged you for them

And the fact that you couldn't even bring yourself to say that he agreed "to 3 days work" speaks volumes about your actual conscience tapping on your shoulder

mandm65

xFlake wrote: »

Ok, I'll approach this from a legal perspective.

The Consumer Contracts... Regulations 2013 require certain contracts made in a consumers home, where the value is over £42, to be issued with a cancellation period ("cooling off period") of 14 days. This needs to be in a prescribed format set out in the Regs, you have received no paperwork so the trader is in breach of the Regs.

Now there are a few ways you can approach this...

By not issuing this notice the trader has committed an offence (Reg 19), and you can report him to trading standards via Citizens Advice consumer service. In practice, unless he is a repeat offender, he will probably receive advice on his practices.

As you have not received the cancellation notice you now have 12 months and 14 days to cancel (Reg 31).

In practice that means if it goes to County Court he will lose, because you can cancel anytime within the extended period, assuming you do. However, I would strongly suggest you pay what you think is reasonable. There is nothing to suggest in the Regulations that the contract is unenforceable, however the predecessor to this legislation had a clause saying the contract was unenforceable if the notice was not issued, this was backed up in a Court of Appeal case (Robinson v Swift [2014]), some case law can interpreted into legislation which is superseded. However I would highly recommend the former, especially if work has been done, and the trader could rely on Reg 35/36 for reasonable costs.

Sorry if all that is a little wordy! If you have any more questions let me know I'll try and answer them.

Thanks for putting a legal prospective this, at least I leant something new I did not know before.
At this stage I am two minds whether to approach the trading standards over this as it has been over a week since he sent us a mail and thus far we have not received either VAT invoice or any court letter?
Like I said we have paid him according to the agreement so does that count as ‘pay what you think is reasonable’?
And finally thanks for your offer to answer any furtehr question.

mandm65

unholyangel wrote: »

OP has yet to tell us what information was provided and what services he was actually contracted to provide. If it was urgent repairs/maintenance for example, there is no right to cancel.

it was not urgent repairs/maintenance, it was continuation of the job left by the original tradesman (long story).

mandm65

JethroUK wrote: »

Quite, the "something" he agreed was "another 3 days work"

Correct

JethroUK wrote: »

You can't sit back and let him do 6 days work and look spirited he charged you for them

Unsure what is the the purpose of the above but would you not consider little bit of responsibility/conscious on his side? At least he could ahve warned/informed us or perhaps seek our approval for additional days? What if he had continued for another couple of days then would you have expected us to pay for extra 5 days or however long it would have taken him to complete the work?

JethroUK wrote: »

And the fact that you couldn't even bring yourself to say that he agreed "to 3 days work" speaks volumes about your actual conscience tapping on your shoulder

It seems you did not read my original post.