Plumber is charging me for cancelling!

Rajster · 8 January 2018 at 9:37PM

Our boiler broke on 2nd Jan and we had a guy come out to have a look at it. He recommended having a new one fitted but he couldn’t fit it for another week. A day later we asked him to go ahead. However, in the meantime another person was recommend to us and he could fit a boiler much sooner - within 2 days. We asked him to do it and it was fitted today and finally we have heating and hot water. We have 2 children under 4 so it was essential that a new boiler was installed as soon as possible. We cancelled the original guy today and now he’s trying to charge us £250 for cancelling even though this was never made clear up front and there is nothing in writing to say we agreed to such a charge. He is threatening legal action if we don’t pay.

Surely we don’t have to pay this? It was an emergency situation that needed resolving as soon as possible.

Please help!

DoaM · 8 January 2018 at 10:22PM

Did he charge you for his first visit? (i.e. the inspection visit).

You don't say where you are in the UK, as such it's not possible to determine whether £250 call out and inspection is a reasonable price or not.