Tradesman's Bill with Uncompleted Work - Moral Dilemma

thescouselander · 14 July 2015 at 9:03AM

I recently had a reasonably large refurbishment project done at our house which needed a number of different trades to complete. To keep things simple from my end I hired a bloke who could also bring the other trades people along as a package.

For the most part everything has gone very well however, the electrician only completed about 90% of the work which I agreed to finish off myself in exchange for a reduction in his part of the costs. Now it has come to invoice time the electrician is saying the last bit of work was not covered under his original quote so he's not willing to take any money off his bill. Now I know this is a load of BS because I had the electrician round here several times where we talked about all of the work in detail. I also wrote everything down in black and white so we had a record of the discussion.

Not all is lost however, as the guy pulling everything together has said he'll cover the difference from his own pocket. I'm a little uncomfortable with this though as he seems to be very honest and his part of the job has been really good; I don't see why he should pay for the electrician's dodgy behaviour. On the other hand I don't see why I should pay for work that wasn't completed although the sums of money involved are small (around £50).

What would you do?

zaax · 14 July 2015 at 9:34AM

Sounds like he does not want to work for the site manager again.
If he quoted to a job of of work he does that job of work - a contract is a contract only pay him for the work he has done

casper_g · 14 July 2015 at 9:51AM

It sounds like a key selling point of the main contractor was that he would subcontract the other trades and insulate you from the associated risk. Maybe you could have got the work done more cheaply if you'd contracted with individual trades separately. Don't feel bad that the main contractor is doing what he promised.

Your contract is with the person you agreed to pay. If part of the work hasn't been done, you shouldn't pay in full. Whether this is fair is a question for the main contractor to address with the electrician. For the sake of £50 he will almost certainly write off the cost (but perhaps make a mental note to use a different electrician next time!).

ETA: I'm not quite sure why you were negotiating price reductions directly with the electrician. This probabky muddied the waters a bit and is why you are now in a dilemna. You should really have spoken to the main contractor at the time you were considering agreeing to reduce the electrical scope of work.

thescouselander · 14 July 2015 at 10:58AM

Just to clarify I didn't negotiate with the electrician, I arranged everything through the lead tradesman.

pimento · 14 July 2015 at 11:04AM

Shouldn't you then just have one bill from the Project Manager?

System · 14 July 2015 at 12:07PM

you are only dealing with the main contractor - they will have included something in their price for contingency - they will most certainly not be losing money (just slightly reducing their margin)