More money requested as a condition to complete the work

sandrine_cowling

Newbie here, with a Roofer issue. Thank you for reading, sorry this is long.
We accepted a quote of £27500 for ridge tile work to be done on our roof, work on Fascias and guttering and had express the wish too have the scaffolding erected so I could paint our windows this was accepted as it made sense. The quote specifies that payment is due on completion and following site inspection. There are no mention of payment pattern or pre-payment needed.

Work was due to start at the end of August and we had hoped it would be finished before school started in September. Various delays on the part of the builder means the work agreed is yet to be completed (October Half term).
We were requested money for scaffolding £1000, which we paid, and 2 further part payments were asked on good will basis, which we also paid £9000 and a further £3.500. We now owe just under half of the complete amount. We do feel we have been kind and extremely patient, having worked from home to allow access with turning up as agreed on many occasions.
We are now harassed by the builder who is refusing to finish the work unless further payment is made. We have had endless exchange of emails, texts, his tine has become aggressive. We have agreed to a meeting to which he arrive over an hour late only to be shouted out on our drive, inappropriate and unprofessional use of language, to which more shouted was added as we asked him to lower his voice. He stepped out of the drive to continue shouting and warned that this was nothing. In addition we have received over 20 phone calls on a Saturday despite letting him know we had a family engagement. We eventually manage to get him to a calmer state and he apologised and we agreed to the next term for completion, making ourselves available on Friday. On that day, an rather long email arrived with a different recollection of the agreed conversation and he is making the demand of £10000 as a condition to return to site and has this morning (Saturday) threatened us with further action if we do not comply by Monday.
Note, we have never said we would not pay but asked for receipts of previous paiement covering the work done, which were promised but we are still waiting for.
This is coming stressful and making our life a misery.
Are we being unreasonable? What can we do next? Thank you for reading :-)

grumpy_codger

What 'further action' did he threaten you with? 
What work was actually done for £12.5K? The only money he can ask for is for the materials (that aren't very expensive) and for the completed parts of the job.
IMHO, £27.5K is far too big amount for 'ridge work', facias and guttering for an average house. And I think it's you who has to treaten him with court actions.

Swipe

I agree, £27K is insane. You could get a large detached house re-felted and re-tiled for half that without a single penny up front.

sandrine_cowling

This is a 4 bed house with one main ridge and 2 valleys and small extension. This is the scope of the work:
Removal of lower felt and battens, install new breathable membrane and battens, ridge strip & dry ridge system installed, tiles reinstalled with cleaned/new if necessary. Not many needed changing, replace guttering at rear, replace fascias and guttering at front, paint apex with scaffolding all around the house.
He has threatened us with a more formal action if we do not pay any money on Money. 
We do feel taken advantage off and have been put under pressure from day one. We foolishly proceeded.