Builder trying to charge for extras which were installed without asking us or agreeing cost

joeflaherty

JamoLew said:

gotcha - i think hes been a bit cheeky quoting £90 a door then trying to charge you £253 a door -- thats a big difference.
Have you asked why the prices are so different ?
So these were additional doors not originally included in the initial quote ?

That's correct. I've no idea why £90 has become £253. Looking online, £90 is about par for the materials, but not the labour. But ultimately, this is their mistake, not mine. 
Of the four additional doors that are under dispute, I've offered to pay one at the full £253 as it included some additional stud work to block up an opening which was required by BC so I'm happy to pay the full price on that. Two of the remaining three are required by BC but one actually isn't required (bathroom door) but, cosmetically, it looks better to have the same style of door as the new ones. Hence why I've offered to pay their quoted cost of £90 for these three, to avoid the builder threatening to take these four doors away and us not getting our BC sign-off.

Eydon

I know building regs change on a regular basis, but I had my loft converted over 5 years ago and it was a requirement then that either all doors had to be replaced with full fire doors, or every room had to have a smoke alarm. We opted for the smoke alarm option, but even then the two doors we already had with glass panelling in had to be replaced with solid doors.
So what I'm saying is, the regs for firedoors have been around a quite a while, so your builder should have known about them when he did the quote and included all of them at the time.

Aylesbury_Duck

joeflaherty said:

JamoLew said:

gotcha - i think hes been a bit cheeky quoting £90 a door then trying to charge you £253 a door -- thats a big difference.
Have you asked why the prices are so different ?
So these were additional doors not originally included in the initial quote ?

That's correct. I've no idea why £90 has become £253. Looking online, £90 is about par for the materials, but not the labour. But ultimately, this is their mistake, not mine. 
Of the four additional doors that are under dispute, I've offered to pay one at the full £253 as it included some additional stud work to block up an opening which was required by BC so I'm happy to pay the full price on that. Two of the remaining three are required by BC but one actually isn't required (bathroom door) but, cosmetically, it looks better to have the same style of door as the new ones. Hence why I've offered to pay their quoted cost of £90 for these three, to avoid the builder threatening to take these four doors away and us not getting our BC sign-off.

There's a certain amount of drip-feeding here which makes it difficult to advise, but ultimately I still don't see how advice can help?  Whatever the whys, wherefores, rights and wrongs of quoted and actual prices, the end-point is that you need three of the doors, want the fourth, the builder has bought and installed them but you don't want to pay their invoiced price.  You seem to have three options.  Pay the invoiced price and the matter is done with.  Don't agree to pay it and accept that the builder may reasonably take out the doors.  Or make an offer that the builder will or won't accept.  I can't see that you can compel the builder to do anything, so this comes down to negotiation on what is a trivial sum in the context of what was almost certainly a five-figure project.  

Spank

If the doors are £90 to buy it's unreasonable to only offer that, they would have had to had the handle hole drilled and both it and the hinges would need some chisel work on it + it would need to be plained to fit. All of that needs paying for, maybe not £145 each door.

The_Rainmaker

I'm confused.

Did BC increase the spec of each door and also increased the number from 2 to 6?

joeflaherty

Hi all, thank you for your comments on this. I'm happy to report that the builder has accepted our offer of £253 for the door that required the additional stud work, and cost price (£90) for the three doors which were installed without agreeing it with us first, which was well before BC told us that they would be required.

Happily, they've also deducted £380 for our decorator's cost, as they had to redo a section of plaster work, which then put our decorator back a couple of days. 

All's well that ends well, and we can get on with enjoying our new loft.