Call out fee

mynameisnotfred

Appreciate others’ thoughts on this so am trying to portray it as fairly as possible.

We’ve recently had an issue with our fridge playing up. Called an engineer who came out within four hours to take a look at it for us. Reassured us that there was nothing really wrong with it.

We then said “as you’re here, we’re also having issues with our dishwasher” which isn’t draining very well. Spent no more than 5 mins talking about it and he noted model and said that he thought it needed a new pump which he would order for us for £50.

He then said he would charge us a call out fee of £70 for fridge and would charge us a reduced call out fee of £50 for the dishwasher.

We paid both but now wondering if we’ve been ripped off paying a seperate call out fee for the dishwasher when a) he was already at our property and b) we could have had exactly the same conversation about that over the phone without him having to visit us.

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head

Usually with this type of thing I would expect to pay a call out fee and then £x per hour/half hour the person spends in attendance. 

For an appliance repair person you might perhaps expect to pay a call out fee and then £x per appliance they inspect.

I wouldn't expect to pay more than 1 call out fee for additional things as the person is already there.

You say you called the engineer which makes this a distance contract, they should have supplied you with:

the total price of the [F2goods, services or digital content] inclusive of taxes, or where the nature of the [F2goods, services or digital content] is such that the price cannot reasonably be calculated in advance, the manner in which the price is to be calculated,

They should have given this information over the phone and then sent a follow up via a durable medium (email would be most common but perhaps something like messenger, basically something where you have a hard copy) before the service began, which given one aspect of the service is a call out that should be before they arrived. 

Even if it were argued the 2nd inspection were a 2nd contract, this would have been off-premises and whilst the information requirements are less for such a situation they should provide, on paper, the information above in italics. 

Did this engineer give any such information and if they did how does their charge compare to what you paid? Did you pay in cash? 

TELLIT01

The engineer could easily have said they don't have time to check out the other appliance and they would need to make another appointment.  Then there would have been 2 full call out charges.

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head

TELLIT01 said:

The engineer could easily have said they don't have time to check out the other appliance and they would need to make another appointment.  Then there would have been 2 full call out charges.

Not sure why anyone would cut their nose of to spite their face, making up a story about being out of time and walking away now for the sake of squeezing a few quid out of the customer may have lead OP to reconsider the issue with the dishwasher or get someone else in, by inspecting it at the time the engineer earnt themselves the job of fixing it.

Doesn't really matter either way really the only thing that matters is whether the OP was charged the amount the information stated they would be charged. The reason the information requirements exist is for exactly this problem.