Owing landscape gardener money?

Kelly2608

Hi everyone

We recently started having work done on our garden- clearance, levelling, new patio, new fencing, brick wall and turf. We were quoted £11000 for everything. 3.5 days into the work my husband lost his job, very unexpectedly. We called the gardener straight away and explained that we can not afford to complete the work at this time. We still want it done but we can’t at the moment.

When we received the quote we asked how payment was to be made. The guy said at the end of the job. On the first day he was asking for money to hire a digger and start getting the materials and we transferred £2000. In the 3.5 days they didn’t start until 9.30-10.15 each day and were clearing up between 2-4pm and had taken 1 he lunch breaks. They also started clearing our next door neighbours garden and included her rubbish in our tip loads which she paid them for. They only used the digger for a few hours and it was sent back after 1.5 days. At the absolute maximum 9 tipvloads were done. There weee two guys completing the work.

After we told them we couldn’t continue with the job for the time being. He came back at us that we owe another £1500. We asked for an itemised invoice so we could see the costs but it’s just an overview of work done and no specific charges. Also they came back the next day and collected tools. They manage to completely snap off the bottom of our back door on our out house, they stole our brand new wheelbarrow and left a completely broken, battered and Bent wheelbarrow and they manage to break a wheel off our bbq.

We have researched cost of landscape gardeners and top loads, diggers and hourly rates.

We priced up the following
Digger £200 for 7 days hire (only ended up hiring for 2 days)
Labour 24 hrs- at £300 a day for 2men(based on a full day’s work) £1350 (one day another 2 men came to help out)
Tiploads £80 x9 (at the most) £720
Total £2170

We feel that we have overpriced the labour and cost of the digger.

Does anyone know where we stand?

Thank you

missile

I would ask for your wheelbarrow back, compensation to repair the door, state you will pay on completion of the work in writing and ignore all further communication.

You agreed to the estimate and paid for digger etc. It matters not a jot if those costs were inflated.

AndyMc.....

missile wrote: »

I would ask for your wheelbarrow back, compensation to repair the door, state you will pay on completion of the work in writing and ignore all further communication.

You agreed to the estimate and paid for digger etc. It matters not a jot if those costs were inflated.

I disagree with that given the op has broken the contract.

baldelectrician

Did they give you any 14 day cooling off period (in writing)?

If not then there is no contract anyway.

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2013/3134/pdfs/uksi_20133134_en.pdf

Kelly2608

Thanks everyone

No there was no contract given, we were also not told about a cancellation period or a cancellation fee.

We still want he work carried out, my husband now has a new job but I don’t feel I can continue with this company I don’t trust them at all now.

trailingspouse

Sadly they probably feel the same about you. £11,000 is a big job, they will have probably turned down other jobs because yours was booked in.

You seem to have gone in very heavy handed, and with no concept that it was you who broke the agreement with them. I suspect you were already unhappy with them - but you didn't stop the work, of stop them taking next doors garden waste, so I think it's too late to do anything about that now. Those were problems that are unrelated to the redundancy.

Yes, you should have had something in writing for a job of this size, there's fault on both sides there. More fool them for not getting one signed, more fool you for going ahead without one.
How long was the job expected to take? And how much does that average out as per day? It would seem reasonable to me that you should pay them that daily average x the number of days they were on site. At the very least that could form the starting point for discussing who owes how much to whom.

As things stand you've paid part of the money and had part of the job completed. I would draw a line under it and get another company to come and complete.