Work Carried out without permission

Clairea03

Morning
Invited an electrician round to quote me for a new wire feed as I was moving an oven in my kitchen.
He's come in while the fitters were in the house, carried out this and other additional works without first contacting me, providing me with a breakdown of work required or the cost of works and certainly without my permission to go ahead.
He's slapped me with a £400 bill and I'm not in a position to argue what work was actually carried out as I wasn't in the property at the time.
I emailed him straight away to say he'd acted outside of a contractual agreement but he's ignored it.
He text me yesterday to say he'll drop the price to £250 to cover his cost of materials but isn't able to provide me with receipts so again I can't argue what was actually used to carry out the work.
Should I stand firm and refuse to pay without a proper breakdown of cost of materials or is he within his rights to demand this even though he didn't have my permission to carry out the works?

Many Thanks

wesleyad

I assume his receipts wouldn't show much anyway... just the cost of the length of wire? It's his expertise you are paying for, which he can value at anything.

It comes down to how much are you willing to pay?

Legally I'm not sure where you stand, someone will help out, but I would think that he can't just do work without permission, and no contract has been formed.

However if you wanted the work done anyway and now it is done, it might be easier to just agree a price you would have been willing to pay if he had done things the correct way round.

DoaM

Situations like this come down to the balance of probabilities, and what evidence is available. So ... what do you have in writing (email/text is fine) regarding requesting a quote? What does he have in writing showing you authorised him to proceed?

Basically - what written evidence is available apart from his invoice?

neilmcl

So, in the end exactly what work was carried out. You may find that £250, whilst probably at the higher end of the scale, isn't too far off the mark and probably not worth the hassle.

peter_the_piper

£250.00
Lack of invoice
Tempting to pay with cheque and dob in to HMRC