Outrageous Over Charging by Plumbing company

Brouts

As a plumber myself, I'm shocked and appalled at this.  It's people like this who give us a bad name and leads to trust issues with Tradespeople.  This is not right and very much sounds like they've taken advantage of a vulnerable person.  I sincerely hope you persue this and get your money back!    

eskbanker

eskbanker said:

AnyJustice said:

My ex-wife recently engaged a plumber to install a washing machine in her flat and agreed to their terms without paying much attention.  It was a pre-booked appointment so no hint of an emergency.  The work was carried out and took 3hrs.  When she received the invoice from the company it was for £1117.80 which included hourly rates of £235/hr for work done and £810/hr for administration (15mins = £121.50).

Did the terms include the hourly rates, or was a quote sought, and provided, for a non-emergency job?

AnyJustice said:

Service Details: Property Address: <address quoted>l/Start time: 11:05Emergency Call-out Fee: £40Scope of Work: The engineer will investigate the plumbing issue and will attempt to repair it.Hourly Rate ( per hour or part of an hour ): £235Administration Fee: 0.15 of the bill (Decimal)Please note that all charges are subject to VAT.

So the hourly rate was clearly specified in the terms, and that was the opportunity to challenge it - the question remains as to whether she made any attempt to obtain an actual quote for what was a non-emergency job, in terms of how long it would take?

If the admin fee is stated as "0.15 of the bill (Decimal)", that means that it's calculated as 15% of the labour charge, not that it was 15 minutes at an astronomical rate, although your derivation of £810/hr appears flawed anyway....

It's certainly not difficult to see why someone would be aggrieved at paying high prices, but it is clarified that "this is an emergency/immediate service", so it appears unlikely that there'd be any realistic prospect of a retrospective challenge, i.e. it's really a caveat emptor situation.