Plumber Charging Missed Call Out Fee Even Though I Was In The House?

Peppa537

I think the fee should be paid. The plumber did come out and when he couldn't get an answer at the door phoned the number provided, it wasn't his fault she didn't answer the phone. A lot of engineers phone when on way so why didn't she answer anyway, even if she did not recognise the number? I would if I had a job booked in at the house. Others have also explained why plumbers may not use a doorbell. He could have gone to another job instead if this one hadn't been booked in and  been paid so has missed out. Also when I'd organised for a gas engineer to install a new cooker last year, when I knew nearer the time it would be my husband at home for the appointment and not myself, I contacted him giving him my husband's mobile number. I was at work and wouldn't have necessarily been able to answer. 

ArbitraryRandom

powerful_Rogue said:

Last time I had someone round was an electrician to change two very old lights in the garden. I supplied the lights and paid £100 for the service.

No paperwork, no T&C's - He came quoted, I said yes and he got the tools from the van.

In theory I could have said 'You did not supply me with the required information in a durable format, so I shall not be paying you'.

Crazy.

Everyone is posting situations where things go fine. 

How many threads do we get on here where things have gone as planned and both parties to a contract are happy? 

Laws are not made for situations where things go well - they're made for when things go badly. 

So in your example, how would you feel if the electrician broke your light fittings and you had no contact details/way to trace him?

Or as the electrician, if he did the job then you refused to pay and he had no proof of what you'd asked him to do/at what price?

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head

born_again said:

For a one man band or small companies. It can be, as doing that is costing them time/money to do, They may answer call while on a job & agree to pop over as it's near & they have a spare bit of time. But do not have the facility to send emails.

Presumably that phone they took the call on has the ability to send email.  

powerful_Rogue said:

Last time I had someone round was an electrician to change two very old lights in the garden. I supplied the lights and paid £100 for the service.

No paperwork, no T&C's - He came quoted, I said yes and he got the tools from the van.

In theory I could have said 'You did not supply me with the required information in a durable format, so I shall not be paying you'.

Crazy.

Yes it is crazy, if people like yourself who were happy but did such just because they can were doing this all the time then traders would have to start covering themselves by giving the information but it presumably doesn't happen because few know about it and most people just pay for a job well done. 

I don't usually get involved in morals here but I would not suggest someone who is completely happy with a job not pay for it, as ArbitraryRandom points out, people only start picking at the finer aspects when things go wrong. 

In this case I don't think £30 is much to pay for a missed appointment (I'm surprised the fee is so little really) but given you could argue either side is at fault, which really results in opinion, falling back on the regs for a more definitive answer seems sensible. 

Just to add you'd still have to pay as you forgot the clear statement that you are exercising your right to cancel  

Appliance_engineer

I fix appliances every day. Most work comes from my website where I have detailed terms and conditions, a FAQ, very clear pricing and a booking system that consumers can book themselves, which means I can assume they've been on my website and would have had all necessary information available to them should they look through the various pages.  They can also download the terms and conditions if they so wish.

It's clear from the website that I charge an initial visit charge of £20. If it's from a phone call, then I tell them on the phone. That's on every initial visit and after that, there's labour and parts. I need to visit to be able to quote the customer, and that uses up my time and resources, and includes my specialist knowledge and experience to diagnose the problem and provide a solution.  I'm also on their premises, so I have to be insured, I've spent money on fuel to get there. I've expended time visiting that I could employ elsewhere to a customer who will actually pay me for my time.

Sometimes, I get a call out of the blue from somebody who hasn't visited the website and just has my number. I'll call round within a short time if I'm nearby. I'm really not going to start emailing detailed terms and conditions to a potential customer in those cases. It may be required in contract law but this is the real world, and this thread has got jammed up with contractual regs and mentions of 'durable formats'. What nonsense.

If somebody calls out a professional to their property, they should expect that there will be a charge for time and expenses incurred unless otherwise advised; that should be the default expectation. Yes, there are tradespeople who do free call-outs, but they are in the exception, and usually desperate for work, and often incompetent.  Professional tradespeople do not work for nothing and the paltry sum of £30 shouldn't even be being complained about.

If I go to a machine and fix it, the customer knows my labour charge and cost of parts where needed, but I'm not going to write it all down and get him to sign it before doing the work, just in case he later disagrees with the costs, etc. I think that would immediately cause the customer to think that I mistrust him so much that I need him to sign up so that I can later use his signature against him.  That just isn't the way tradespeople do business. I work on trust and expect that my customers will be intelligent enough to understand that a professional will charge an amount to compensate for time, travel and knowledge.

The original poster is just being ridiculous in trying to justify their unwillingness to pay for a visit that was made to their property because the plumber didn't ring the doorbell. That's really, really silly.

ArbitraryRandom

Appliance_engineer said:

Sometimes, I get a call out of the blue from somebody who hasn't visited the website and just has my number. I'll call round within a short time if I'm nearby. I'm really not going to start emailing detailed terms and conditions to a potential customer in those cases. It may be required in contract law but this is the real world, and this thread has got jammed up with contractual regs and mentions of 'durable formats'. What nonsense.

And you don't have to... but you need to understand that if you don't and they refuse to pay the callout fee then you have lost your legal right to enforce your T&Cs. 

They 'should' pay you - but they don't 'have' to pay you. 

Appliance_engineer

ArbitraryRandom said:

Appliance_engineer said:

Sometimes, I get a call out of the blue from somebody who hasn't visited the website and just has my number. I'll call round within a short time if I'm nearby. I'm really not going to start emailing detailed terms and conditions to a potential customer in those cases. It may be required in contract law but this is the real world, and this thread has got jammed up with contractual regs and mentions of 'durable formats'. What nonsense.

And you don't have to... but you need to understand that if you don't and they refuse to pay the callout fee then you have lost your legal right to enforce your T&Cs. 

They 'should' pay you - but they don't 'have' to pay you. 

Morally they should. Imagine a barber having to get a customer to sign a form agreeing to the price of his haircut before doing it. It's nonsense.  Traders operate differently to other businesses.  Implied trust is part of the 'contract' in my opinion, and it works both ways.

Nobody is saying that the original poster can be compelled to pay, and for £30, nobody's going to pursue the amount legally, but morally and rightly, the OP should pay.  Anything other than settling the £30 charge says everything you need to know about the OP.

RefluentBeans

Appliance_engineer said:

ArbitraryRandom said:

Appliance_engineer said:

Sometimes, I get a call out of the blue from somebody who hasn't visited the website and just has my number. I'll call round within a short time if I'm nearby. I'm really not going to start emailing detailed terms and conditions to a potential customer in those cases. It may be required in contract law but this is the real world, and this thread has got jammed up with contractual regs and mentions of 'durable formats'. What nonsense.

And you don't have to... but you need to understand that if you don't and they refuse to pay the callout fee then you have lost your legal right to enforce your T&Cs. 

They 'should' pay you - but they don't 'have' to pay you. 

Morally they should. Imagine a barber having to get a customer to sign a form agreeing to the price of his haircut before doing it. It's nonsense.  Traders operate differently to other businesses.  Implied trust is part of the 'contract' in my opinion, and it works both ways.

Nobody is saying that the original poster can be compelled to pay, and for £30, nobody's going to pursue the amount legally, but morally and rightly, the OP should pay.  Anything other than settling the £30 charge says everything you need to know about the OP.

Everyone has said that morally they should pay. But the contract, as you have now admitted, is unenforceable without stating what the charges are before the contract is agreed. 

Fines from private companies are a terrible idea and we should really not encourage the erosion of consumer rights to protect consumers from hidden charges. 

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head

Appliance_engineer said:

I fix appliances every day. Most work comes from my website where I have detailed terms and conditions, a FAQ, very clear pricing and a booking system that consumers can book themselves, which means I can assume they've been on my website and would have had all necessary information available to them should they look through the various pages.  They can also download the terms and conditions if they so wish.

The obligation is to provide confirmation of a distance contract via durable means before the service begins.

The EUCJ have ruled information on a website is not durable. Guidance suggests that the information can be obtained from a website if in a medium which the consumer can access and reproduce the information, if personally addressed to the consumer and without any unilateral modification of its content by the service provider or by another trader being possible.

The consumer also needs to be able to access this information for the duration of the contract and an adequate period after the contract is terminated. 

It's unclear what you mean by download, if you mean they can download generic information that may not meet the requirements as the information must be specific to the consumer (i.e for the service they are requesting rather than say a list of services and prices), this forms part of the clear and comprehensible manner requirement. If you can edit the information that would be contained in a document that the consumer downloads after they have formed a contract the download isn't durable (i.e if they agree terms, come back to download and those terms are different to what was there to begin with)*. 

As to your real world comments, there are plenty of dishonest people out there who would have no qualms charging a vulnerable person an excessive amount that wasn't agreed, this information protects them (that's not in any way to suggest your good self falls within this category ). You aren't forced to supply the information but if a customer was unhappy with something and refused to pay your ability to recover money due would be limited if you had failed to abide by the information requirements and that customer found their way to somewhere like here to be advised of their consumer rights. 

*To add to this, if today I book you to fix my fridge on Tuesday and the website says £60 a hour but you put the general price up to £70 a hour tomorrow without the durable information you are suggesting I should trust you to charge me the £60, there's two people I trust in this world, one is me, the other isn't a stranger fixing my fridge , that's why the information is important, if the download retains the £60 agreed that of course is fine. 

ArbitraryRandom

Appliance_engineer said:

ArbitraryRandom said:

Appliance_engineer said:

Sometimes, I get a call out of the blue from somebody who hasn't visited the website and just has my number. I'll call round within a short time if I'm nearby. I'm really not going to start emailing detailed terms and conditions to a potential customer in those cases. It may be required in contract law but this is the real world, and this thread has got jammed up with contractual regs and mentions of 'durable formats'. What nonsense.

And you don't have to... but you need to understand that if you don't and they refuse to pay the callout fee then you have lost your legal right to enforce your T&Cs. 

They 'should' pay you - but they don't 'have' to pay you. 

Morally they should. Imagine a barber having to get a customer to sign a form agreeing to the price of his haircut before doing it. It's nonsense.  Traders operate differently to other businesses.  Implied trust is part of the 'contract' in my opinion, and it works both ways.

Nobody is saying that the original poster can be compelled to pay, and for £30, nobody's going to pursue the amount legally, but morally and rightly, the OP should pay.  Anything other than settling the £30 charge says everything you need to know about the OP.

I don't think anyone is disagreeing with you - we're just trying to make sure that you know the risk you're taking on by choosing not to comply with the regs. 

And again it's not a question of £30 (very few people would go to small claims for such a small amount even if they could) but about the worst case scenario - it can be a lot more than £30 if you go on to actually start/do the job without providing the required info as a dodgy costumer can point out how the law says it's the whole contract that becomes unenforceable. 

Realistically, the chances of such a thing happening to you are slim - most people don't know the rules and wouldn't try and cheat someone like that anyway... but you need to understand that not bothering to jump through the hoops IS a risk that you are choosing to take for the sake of sending an email.

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head said:

It's unclear what you mean by download, if you mean they can download generic information that may not meet the requirements as the information must be specific to the consumer...

To add to this point based on my understanding - in the example we've been talking about, the bulk of the information is generic (traders name/business address etc), that there is a non-refundable callout fee for a no obligation quote, how much, and that it's separate from any parts/labour to be calculated and provided to the customer after the trader has assessed the job - because they're two separate 'contracts' (to attend/quote and to repair). 

THEN the trader should provide a 'tailored' quote with details about hourly rate, cancellation etc before starting the work... which can be a fill in the blanks form kept in the van or an email sent via phone, inc confirmation of when the work should start - IF the trader wants to be able to enforce the contract, of course... 

Hoenir

RefluentBeans said:

Appliance_engineer said:

ArbitraryRandom said:

Appliance_engineer said:

Sometimes, I get a call out of the blue from somebody who hasn't visited the website and just has my number. I'll call round within a short time if I'm nearby. I'm really not going to start emailing detailed terms and conditions to a potential customer in those cases. It may be required in contract law but this is the real world, and this thread has got jammed up with contractual regs and mentions of 'durable formats'. What nonsense.

And you don't have to... but you need to understand that if you don't and they refuse to pay the callout fee then you have lost your legal right to enforce your T&Cs. 

They 'should' pay you - but they don't 'have' to pay you. 

Morally they should. Imagine a barber having to get a customer to sign a form agreeing to the price of his haircut before doing it. It's nonsense.  Traders operate differently to other businesses.  Implied trust is part of the 'contract' in my opinion, and it works both ways.

Nobody is saying that the original poster can be compelled to pay, and for £30, nobody's going to pursue the amount legally, but morally and rightly, the OP should pay.  Anything other than settling the £30 charge says everything you need to know about the OP.

Everyone has said that morally they should pay. But the contract, as you have now admitted, is unenforceable without stating what the charges are before the contract is agreed. 

Fines from private companies are a terrible idea and we should really not encourage the erosion of consumer rights to protect consumers from hidden charges. 

Consumers though are the first to claim compensation these days at the slightest inconvenience. A case of the kettle calling the pot black.  As long as somebody else incurs the cost not my problem.