Contractor wants me to pay before supplying invoice

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  • J_B
    J_B Posts: 6,412
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    They want paying
    You want a proper bill.


    You have the bargaining power and they have ... erm ... none.


    Simple solution = no bill, no pay


    Certainly don't pay into someone else's account.


    I'm guessing that there will be some sort of warranty with this stuff, which will be much easier to rectify with a 'paper trail'


    Stand your ground.


    :)
  • robatwork
    robatwork Posts: 7,086
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    Can we assume you got an invoice for the £8000 of work?

    This does sound fishy though - I can't think of any non-nefarious reason they won't just knock up an invoice/bill and ask you to pay into a personal account by bacs.

    I've sort-of been through this with an electrician years ago - he did some underfloor heating and I needed an invoice to register the system with the manufacturer for the extended warranty. I paid him with the promise of invoice to follow immediately. He never sent it and disappeared off the radar.
  • Paul_DNAP
    Paul_DNAP Posts: 751
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    If they gave you a quote, then did the work, then the quote becomes the invoice.


    Either way, you've got the windows, so pay the people.
    (Although I could be wrong, I often am.)
  • DoaM
    DoaM Posts: 11,863
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    Paul_DNAP wrote: »
    If they gave you a quote, then did the work, then the quote becomes the invoice.


    Either way, you've got the windows, so pay the people.

    Have you read the full thread? OP has already paid the £8k invoice. It's the supplementary works for about £300 that the company won't provide an invoice for.
  • garth549
    garth549 Posts: 486
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    If I rung up our customers telling them to make payment without an invoice they'd laugh at us (and probably never deal with us again)!

    Just email them stating that payment will be made in full within 24 hours of receiving the invoice. It's not difficult!
  • Paul_DNAP
    Paul_DNAP Posts: 751
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    DoaM wrote: »
    Have you read the full thread? OP has already paid the £8k invoice. It's the supplementary works for about £300 that the company won't provide an invoice for.


    Yes, I have.


    I have read it as the £8k job was completed and this £300 is a separate follow up job to do something else.
    (Although I could be wrong, I often am.)
  • Murphybear
    Murphybear Posts: 7,257
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    It gets a bit stranger - on Friday I went to the office to pay (and get that invoice!) and was asked by the owner to pay by BACS into a personal account not the company account because there was apparently a security issue with the company account so it was temporarily blocked...I haven't done this yet as when I got home and sat in front of my laptop to do it, it struck me that this was not right as the owner and the company are legally separate entities and my contract is with the company. I’ll wait until Monday and talk to them again. Views?

    Asking you to pay into a personal account plus refusing to send an invoice would have alarm bells ringing very loudly to me. The excuse they use is a bit flimsy as well. You could say that you will pay into the company account as soon as the problem is fixed. Then see what happens
  • davidmcn wrote: »
    If you're satisfied that the bank details have been given to you by someone authorised to do so on behalf of the company (which seems to be the case if you know it's the owner), I don't see what the problem would be. Different if it was, say, a rogue employee wanting to steal the customers' payments.

    In any event, there's no need for you to know (and not yet any means for you to verify) the name in which the account is held.

    If you're uncomfortable with it though, why not just give them a cheque payable to the company?

    The owner is obviously trying it on...wanting to take unaccountable income from the business
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