Dispute with builder's invoice - please advise

Ryan_King95

ORIGINALLY POSTED IN CONSUMER RIGHTS BUT MOVED TO HERE BASED ON ADVISE GIVEN
Hi All,
Back in January we hired a builder to complete a renovation on our new house in SW Scotland (Semi Detached, 4 Bed, 1 Bath, 1 Kitchen, 1 Living/dining room, 1 Garage). He was tasked with the below works:

• Complete re-wire of house and garage, including adding in new sockets and modern items such as NEST thermostat/Ring doorbell, USB Sockets, Networking etc.
• Re-plastering of all walls and ceilings in house
• New windows/back door
• New internal doors, skirtings, architraves, stair Bannister
• Removal of old bathroom and kitchen
• Install coving throughout

He was initially tasked with buying/installing a new bathroom & kitchen and installing new laminate flooring throughout, however we eventually took this into our own hands due to the builders availability to do the work. We made the mistake of not getting a written, detailed estimate beforehand (a big mistake I know now), but he verbally gave an estimate of £30,000 for all work to be completed, including £5000 for windows, £5000 for electrical work and £5000 for plaster work. It should also be noted that at the time this estimate included him doing the flooring and bathroom as well, which we eventually done separately anyway.

After chasing him for two months for the final invoice after he finished work in August (delayed due to lockdown), the final bill comes to £44,000 exc VAT. The re-wiring alone comes to almost £9000 exc VAT. Do I have any ability to dispute this final invoice given we don't have a detailed written estimate from before the work was started? At no point during the work did he advise that the cost had increased so much, and we actually expected it to be under the £30k with the removal of the bathroom/flooring work.

Any advise on this would be much appreciated.
Thanks.

Doozergirl

You have nothing written down at all? 

What about your specification.  Did you provide a detailed one to them?  How has that changed throughout?  

Were there any invoices or just a final one? 

Even a written estimate is an estimate, not an actual quotation that is set.  You don't even have one of those.  

How can you dispute something when there is nothing to dispute?   Both you and the builder have been incredibly naive.

I don't have much to go on, but   £5,000 wasn't going to sensibly cover a full rewire with networking,  the best part of £500 alone on a doorbell and thermostat and £800 odd in VAT.  

 

grumbler

Doozergirl said:

...and £800 odd in VAT.  

 

What do you mean?

Regarding 'networking', do they still do wired networking nowadays?

Ebe_Scrooge

grumbler said:

Doozergirl said:

...and £800 odd in VAT.  

 

What do you mean?

The OP said the costs were quoted exclusive of VAT, so they'd need to add approx £800-odd to the ex-vat figure of £5000.

grumbler

I checked again and still don't see this.

ETA: and if any builder quoted me (a private person) without VAT, I'd immediately question this. VAT is their problem, not mine. Why do I have to care about VAT?

Doozergirl

grumbler said:

Doozergirl said:

...and £800 odd in VAT.  

 

What do you mean?

Regarding 'networking', do they still do wired networking nowadays?

The builder is VAT registered.  If they thought £30k included the VAT then £800 of the wiring estimate would be VAT and that sort of price is more towards a basic spec of wiring, not one with smart gadgets and network cabling. 

And yes they do still wire, because it's still faster and more reliable than wifi.  Wifi doesn't always permeate walls or steel very well 

grumbler

Doozergirl said:

The builder is VAT registered.  If they thought £30k included the VAT then £800 of the wiring estimate would be VAT and that sort of price is more towards a basic spec of wiring, not one with smart gadgets and network cabling.

We don't discuss here whether the quote was fair or realistic, do we?

If he said £5K, then for a private customer it's £5K, not £5K+VAT.

Ebe_Scrooge

grumbler said:

Doozergirl said:

The builder is VAT registered.  If they thought £30k included the VAT then £800 of the wiring estimate would be VAT and that sort of price is more towards a basic spec of wiring, not one with smart gadgets and network cabling.

We don't discuss here whether the quote was fair or realistic, do we?

If he said £5K, then for a private customer it's £5K, not £5K+VAT.

Fair point.  I'm just going by what the OP put in his penultimate paragraph : "After chasing him for two months for the final invoice after he finished work in August (delayed due to lockdown), the final bill comes to £44,000 exc VAT. The re-wiring alone comes to almost £9000 exc VAT".  So rightly or wrongly, the builder seems to have given the OP an invoice exclusive of VAT.  I tend to agree with you that this is a bit "off", but there you go :-)

Doozergirl

grumbler said:

Doozergirl said:

The builder is VAT registered.  If they thought £30k included the VAT then £800 of the wiring estimate would be VAT and that sort of price is more towards a basic spec of wiring, not one with smart gadgets and network cabling.

We don't discuss here whether the quote was fair or realistic, do we?

If he said £5K, then for a private customer it's £5K, not £5K+VAT.

Would you prefer me to ask the OP to split their posts into separate ones and spread them around the forum to please you?   I'm attempting to put a little bit of perspective on not a lot of info.  

I didn't say that.  The VAT on £5,000 net is £1,000.   Regardless, no one knows what the price was, OP included, because they had a verbal estimate, which is useless.  

Mickey666

Doozergirl said:

You have nothing written down at all? 

What about your specification.  Did you provide a detailed one to them?  How has that changed throughout?  

Bingo!  £30,000 is a lot of work to agree with a few bullet points.  For example, what does "Networking, etc" even mean?  Could be a wifi router for £50 or flood-wiring with gigabit cables, multiple outlets on each faceplate, all fed back to a central comms cabinet, with patch panels and a PoE gigabit switch sized for system expansion to allow for IP security cameras etc. for considerably more than £50.

Having said that, it's a bit naughty of the builder not to say anything about the £30k estimate being exceeded before issuing the final invoice.  I wouldn't quibble about a 10% variance, but 50% should have been flagged earlier to avoid this sort of surprise and give the OP a chance to decide whether to continue or alter the requirements.  Possibly a case of not enough communication between the parties during the works?

Mickey666

grumbler said:

Regarding 'networking', do they still do wired networking nowadays?

They would if they had any sense.  They usually don't because it's disruptive to retrofit so they rely on wifi and crossed fingers.  But this forum is testament to all the problems that wifi can cause - it's by no means a panacea. 

I've installed loads of network cabling during my house restoration because the cabling is cheap-as-chips, faster than wifi, totally reliable and highly flexible.  All brought back to a neat 'hub' cabinet so the system is easily configured/re-configured at will.  Of course, I still use wifi as well, for things like tablets and smartphones, but coverage is no longer a problem because any deadsports can be easily covered by using a discrete PoE access point (something like this: https://www.tp-link.com/uk/business-networking/wall-plate-ap/eap115-wall/ ).  I even have an outdoor wifi point as well.   But for things like a desktop PC, smartTV, NAS backup, Media Server etc, there's nothing faster or more reliable than a wired connection.

Frankly, it's a crime against IT that new builds are not flood-wired with network cabling.  The incremental cost would be peanuts.