Services partially undertaken again

Manxman_in_exile

Their professional indemnity insurer investigating and deciding there was no negligence on the part of their client does not mean they weren't negligent! 

This is a bit like the thread a week or so ago where a court application got thrown out because the solicitors submitting it got the name of one of the parties wrong (sort of).  The consensus here seemed to be that the solicitor's error should be put right at their expense, and not their client's.

But that was an obvious mistake whereas your situation sounds a bit different.  I would say that if your service provider made some critical decision about whether or not to do certain things or to take certain steps without ever consulting you or discussing the pros and cons of their proposed course of action with you, then they should be liable for any additional work/costs/overruns etc., and not you. They are the experts - or should be. (As per dinglebert above, I'm surprised they didn't deliberately get you involved in the decision so they could say "But you agreed...".)

On the other hand, some may argue that your provider made the right decision for you in all the circumstances - it's just that the outcome was not what it should have been.  Accidents can happen and things can go wrong for no-one's fault.  I'd still say the provider should foot the cost - they'll have many other jobs where the outcome is as expected and they profit from it.

I can't refer you to any specific legislation but I'm sure others will.

Of course, some sort of cost sharing agreement may be the proper result - but I wouldn't be paying the full extra costs.

Dal_Whinnie

Manxman_in_exile said:

 I would say that if your service provider made some critical decision about whether or not to do certain things or to take certain steps without ever consulting you or discussing the pros and cons of their proposed course of action with you, then they should be liable for any additional work/costs/overruns etc., and not you. 

Just to be clear, I'm not sure that this would be described as a critical decision except in hindsight. There were potential implications to taking this step which the provider balanced against not taking it and decided in this case not to take this step. Unfortunately, this didn't work out and the provider had to re-do the work and included the step they had previously decided not to and managed the potential implications of doing so. 
I just feel that I should not have to pay the extra costs of having to have the work redone.