Looking for advice about potentially defrauded by Solid Conservatory Roof Company

Andrew6754

Hi everyone, new to the forum and have signed up to see if anyone might have any advice on a situation which feels to me like a we are in in a state of disary about potentially being in a the process of being defrauded by a Conservatory Solid Roof business .

Basically, we have an a 5 year old orangery, with some solid walls and a glass roof that is freezing cold and not working for us.. We looked for a number of months for a builder to replace the glass roof with a solid tiled roof, insulate all up to building regs and knock through in to the main house. We got structural and energy calcs done, and got building notice approval by building control, and then Covid hit and all the builders got delayed \ went off the radar etc. 

In October we were visited by a local company that focuses on replacing conservatory roofs to solid ones with full building reg compliance. They said they could fit the job in the next month. From the checks I did they seemed legit ltd business, survey found no problem, plenty of positive online reviews and price seemed good for what we were getting.

The roof was to be a "Warmer Roof", which are a prefabricated wooden roof designed and built offsite at their suppliers UK factory. 

Stupidly, we agreed to go forward with them as per their contract, and made the mistake of transferring them a BACs payment of 50% of the total job - Over £5k...

The contract also stated that another 25% would be due "On Start", which at the time didn't seem like a big deal because at least at that point I thought they would have a bespoke Roof to fit and pay for, so we we should be safe as we could be.

After the order, our job was passed to "their site manager" who long story short spent the next 2 months lying to us about start dates, promising that the roof was prefabricated and everything is ready to go, but they were having problems with Covid. It then came to light that the "prefabricated roof" would be too longer lead time, but they could build a "site built roof" for a bit less money which would still be OK with building control. I verbally agreed in order to try get things moving, but the start date kept slipping with no notification, just noone turning up.

We wanted to get Xmas out of the way with no disruption and agreed with him that the start date would be 4th Jan, expecting all the materials to turn up to swap the roof that day.

Instead the site manager turned up on his own, ripped all the plasterboard off the walls, still under the pretense that the lads and material would turn up this week, but gave me a warning not to pay any more cash to the company until I get something to show for it and and left the site abruptly.

The next morning when I was expecting things to start again, instead I got an email from the company saying the site manager no longer works for them and not to be in contact any longer. Speaking to the company they blamed him for mismanaging multiple jobs and putting their business at risk. He called me and told me that he had in fact quit and the company has 30 outstanding jobs with customer deposits taken, but only a few £K left in the bank. He said he has it all on file and could not work for them any more.

Now the company is saying to me they want to complete the job asap and can have lads onsite tomorrow. But Oh BTW we will need to pay them the next 25% before they can start building the new roof onsite, as that was on the contract. We don't have any materials onsite or anything to show for the 5K they already have, apart from a skip turned up (ordered by the rogue employee) some ripped down plasterboard and a dreadful feeling that we have been had, and they doing all they can to take more of our money without the intention to deliver anything.

My current intention is to tell them I am not handing over any more money until at least the materials have arrived onsite and they have built the and affixed the new roof. My other worry is they are going to turn up tomorrow, take the exiting roof off and then use that as as some sort of leverage to pay the next amount.
So basically I was just wondering if anyone had any advice? Does it sound like they are just having cash flow issues and running off cash, is a flat out cash deposit scam, or am I in the wrong for signing up to a vaguely stated contractor contract which has put me in a terrible position?

Whatever the rights and wrongs me and my wife are currently feeling totally gutted, upset and angry, and if they don't agree to wait for the roof to be replaced before asking for more money the next step will be to speak to trading standards and the financial ombudsmen. 

TELLIT01

At best they are simply disorganised, but from the story you tell it seems rather more than that.  I certainly wouldn't pay anything else until you see substantial work completed.  Irrespective of the contract it seems they have mislead/lied to you on a number of occasions.

Easy to be wise after the event, but them being able to start very quickly isn't necessarily a good thing in the building trade.  Good trades get booked up months in advance, and bespoke roof framing also takes time.  We are heading down the same route of replacing a glass roof with solid and our first conversation was in October and installation is pencilled in for late Feb or March depending on the weather.