Quote scam?

Candie

Thank you! That’s what I think but I just wanted to check my rights. I suppose he could argue that he didn’t notice either? 

Aylesbury_Duck

I'd negotiate.  If it went to court you can't be certain either side would win, so may be better to agree a price at some point between the two positions rather than risk him taking you to court and the court determining you owe the full amount.

Aylesbury_Duck

And I doubt it's a scam.  Sounds like an arithmetic error.  His fault for not adding up correctly but yes, I think you're partly to blame for not spotting it, either.  Unless you did of course, and hoped he wouldn't notice.  That's why I'd be wary about playing hardball: a small claims court might have some sympathy for his position. 

Candie

Aylesbury_Duck said:

And I doubt it's a scam.  Sounds like an arithmetic error.  His fault for not adding up correctly but yes, I think you're partly to blame for not spotting it, either.  Unless you did of course, and hoped he wouldn't notice.  That's why I'd be wary about playing hardball: a small claims court might have some sympathy for his position. 

I understand what you’re saying and I guess it’s down to who you believe. I would not have agreed to the quote if I’d Known the full amount as it’s way over what I expected. Also he then changed what I was paying for and said I had to oay one of the tradesman myself 

Aylesbury_Duck

Well then, pay him the amount listed as the original total and see how he reacts.  You have all the correspondence which will help your case if he does take it to court.

Any chance you might need his cooperation if any of the work done causes problems further down the line?  Worth considering when deciding what to do. 

Candie

Aylesbury_Duck said:

Well then, pay him the amount listed as the original total and see how he reacts.  You have all the correspondence which will help your case if he does take it to court.

Any chance you might need his cooperation if any of the work done causes problems further down the line?  Worth considering when deciding what to do. 

I would not consider having him back as he also tried to bill me for work that was originally I. The quote 

Money_Grabber13579

Aylesbury_Duck said:

And I doubt it's a scam.  Sounds like an arithmetic error.  His fault for not adding up correctly but yes, I think you're partly to blame for not spotting it, either.  Unless you did of course, and hoped he wouldn't notice.  That's why I'd be wary about playing hardball: a small claims court might have some sympathy for his position. 

If it’s £900 exactly, it sounds like a failure in the use of a calculator e.g. he’s typed in £360 instead of £630 (transposition errors are always wholly divisible by 9). These things can happen so I would agree that a court would have some sympathy for his position. Unless he was suing every customer for the same mistake. Which is unlikely.

Sandtree

Candie said:

Do I have to pay more than the original quote? 

From what you say, depending on how you look at it, you aren't being asked to pay more. At a line level you say the invoice is the same as the quote was and its just the summation of it that is different. Does the quote even state that its a fixed price? 

You haven't said what the total price was on the quote?  Given there were only 5 items on the quote it seems likely that the calculation error would stand out unless it was a £50,000 job but then I'd expect something of that size to have more line items.

Ultimately if it went to court the judge would have to decide if its the bottom line or the line items that are key to a quote. Whilst some are implying this may be an intentional trick of builder there are plenty of people who go out their way to leverage pricing errors and on the surface it does look as if the error should have been very obvious to anyone looking at the quote.

Going to court will be a roll of the dice, clearly he appears to have made a basic maths error and potentially you realised and kept quiet until he spotted it when doing the invoice. I think its in both parties' interests to negotiate a reasonable outcome.

davidmcn

If it's an error which ought to have been obvious to both parties then I doubt it's enforceable either way. Which doesn't necessarily help you determine what the price ought to be, though somewhere in the middle would seem a reasonable start.

Candie

I suppose I just have to put it down to experience - always add up the figures when you get a quote.  What made it worse was that they also decided that they weren't going to finish some of the work and had 'forgotten' to tell me that I had to pay the joiner myself despite them getting a joiner in and buying all the materials and the joiner already halfway through the work.....