Company threatening over invoice for quotequote

ondi

We're buying a house which needs a bit of work on the garage roof.

We requested a quote and the company said we'd have to pay £60-80 when the roofer arrived on site to have a look.

The roofer never went to the site, instead came up with a quote from the measurements we gave them.

We have arranged to have the value of the work deducted from the price of our house.

Today we had a call from the roofer telling us to pay an £80 invoice, despite the roofer never going to the site! The roofer said they would call the estate agent ant tell them the quote was void.

Now a few things I'd just like some assistance with:

• There's nothing in writing telling us we'd be charged for the quote. We've been invoiced for something that didn't actually happen.
  
• There's no way they're allowed to ring our estate agent! Right? A quote is exactly that, they're not able to "void" an estimate of costs?

Thanks in advance!

davidmcn

ondi wrote: »

There's nothing in writing telling us we'd be charged for the quote.

Doesn't need to be in writing. Were you told there'd be a fee for providing a quote? Or that there'd only be a fee if they made a site visit?

There's no way they're allowed to ring our estate agent! Right?

Wrong, they can phone the estate agent (who is of course the sellers' estate agents, not your estate agent!) if they like. But I don't see the relevance of them "voiding" it, you now know what they'd charge.

ondi

Thanks David, we were specifically told there would be a fee for the site visit. The site visit was not made.

G_M

You cannot stop them contactng the EA. Nothing illegal in that.

Whether tthe EA wwill take any notice or do anything as a result is u to them. At worst (I guess this is your concern) they could tell their client (your seller) that the builder has 'retracted' his quote.

Frankly that just makes the builder look stupid! He has written a quote saying the work would cost £X. If he now says it won't cost £X, he just looks like an incompetant builder.

But I suppose there is an outside chance the seller will respond by demanding you increase your offer back to the original amount.

Unlikely, but if so you jst say: "Well I'll have to get another quote - then this will take time/cause delay - and do you really think the next quote will be significantly diffferent? Or shall we just accept that the roof needs work and use the quote originally provided?"

eddddy

To be honest - I doubt the EA would do anything at all, even if the builder phoned them.

The EA just wants the property sold, so that they can collect their fee.

The buyer and seller have agreed an adjusted price. Why would the EA want to 'rock the boat' by proposing further negotiation? That's just likely to delay the sale, cause bad feeling, or worst of all, result in one of the parties walking away in a huff.

Asl77c

Poor way to try and get business to charge to have a look. We got quotes for the roof on ours. House was also checked for woodworm. No one charged us for the initial quote at all.

G_M

Most businesses, contractors etc will provide free quotations/estimates to home-owners, as they hope to get the work.

For non home-owners/prospective buyers, they tend to charge a fee as the likelihood of them getting the work is greatly reduced, so they are less willing to devote their time to visiting and writing up a quote.

But that's a generalisation to which there are exceptions (either way).