Client threatening to sue me for 'damages' caused during work

missile

£800 does seem very steep.

As this is a door lock and it seems OPs customer would be unable to secure the door after OP attempted to repair(?). Perhaps the bill includes an emergency call out charge.

George_Michael

Even though that price is probably far in excess of what should have been paid, A fair bit of the cost will depend on where the location is and what time the repair was carried out.

If it was somewhere remote and the customer called a 24 hour emergency locksmith then the initial callout fee and the first hours labour could easily be £100+ and if the door needed to be disassembled to remove the jammed lock, there might be a few hours labour which again, if it was at night won't be cheap.
Add on to the cost of parts (again, parts that probably have a huge markup) and the job cost would soon start to rocket.

Ineedadviceman101, one other thing that you really should have (apart from insurance) is a list of known and trusted professionals such as an electrician, plumber, gas engineer, roofer and a locksmith.
You never know when you might encounter something that you are not too sure about or something that you are not legally qualified to work on and having someone to call could well get you out of the ****.

scd3scd4

Ohh come on, you don't get to charge what you want. It was to be reasonable.


Again............ask for a copy of the receipt and then do some homework. At the end of the day it wont cost much more to call their bluff and go to a CC and pay if you lose.

bris

shaun_from_Africa wrote: »

Are you saying that any self employed person could start a job, then when that job went wrong, simply walk away with the excuse "Not my area of expertise mate, best you get a professional in to fix what I have done"?

What the OP should have done is to arrange (and pay for) a specialist to complete the job that they had started.

No, but a lot of the time you don't know what a job entails until you get there and have a look.
I assume the door was already faulty so it was still faulty when he left.
Changing a lock on a upvc door couldn't be any easier and really nothing can go wrong.
It's one screw that holds it in and it just slips out, there is no where for it to fall into.
But when the mechanism is faulty the tend to fall to pieces on the inside due to age.


The mechanism runs the entire length of the door, held in by about 8 screws. This is taken out and matched up by a specialist such as Sealco (who I use) and put back in. It's not a big job so regardless £800 is a rip off.


So anyone can change a UPVC lock but when the mechanism is faulty not many like to take it on. So is the customer any worse off after the OP left? Faulty door at the start, still faulty when he left, so the customer has a tough case.


If the OP admits he screwed up the job then that's a different story.

Ineedadviceman101

Thanks for advice all, I do have public liability insurance covering accidental damage - but they want the claimant to pay the first £250 so. If that can be avoided that would be ideal.

shaun_from_Africa

bris wrote: »

Changing a lock on a upvc door couldn't be any easier and really nothing can go wrong.

"nothing can go wrong" right up until the time that something did go wrong.