Dealing with Dodgy Tradesmen or Builders
If it hasn’t happened to us, it’s happened to someone we know. Dodgy tradesmen and cowboy builders took ages to do the work, did it wrong or simply didn’t do it at all. Everyone has a story, which is why it’s crucial to know your rights and remedies so you can be prepared at the outset.
Firstly, don’t be taken in by what appears to be goodwill on the builder’s part. You may be confident of a positive outcome, but this is a business arrangement and you must ensure you have a watertight contract that you are happy with. This would include specific clauses in relation to how much the job will cost and how long it will take. If you do not, then the assumption will the job should cost a ‘reasonable amount’ and take ‘reasonable time’ – which is subject to interpretation and may drag things out if you find yourself in dispute.
Refer to the section on Doorstep selling if you signed up to having some work done after someone paid you a visit to your home (whether or not this was an unsolicited visit).
Your statutory rights
With contracts for Work and Materials where the main focus is labour and skill, you are always protected by three statutory terms, even if you have nothing in writing, or the contract you signed does not specifically mention them. They are:
1. Reasonable care and skill
As you are buying the services of a trained professional, there is the assumption that the builder or tradesman will act with ‘reasonable care and skill’. If he does not, you can claim a breach of your statutory rights and be entitled to terminate the contract and either pay nothing further or seek to get your money back through the courts. Where substandard work has been carried out, you may well have incurred greater potential costs to have the work put right, so it is not enough simply to ask for your money back. In such circumstances, it may be more appropriate to pursue a claim for damages. Remember that where the cost of the work is over £100 and you are able to pay by credit card, you would be well advised to do so. This would make the credit card company equally liable where you were not able to recover your costs from the builder.
2. Reasonable time taken
As mentioned earlier, if you have no contractual clauses specifically in relation to timeframe for the work, the assumption is that the work will be carried out within reasonable time. Once reasonable time has elapsed you would not be entitled to terminate the contract, but you would be able to give reasonable notice, providing a deadline at some point in the future and thereby making time ‘of the essence’. If the builder then fails to meet that deadline, you would be entitled to terminate the contract. If you did agree timeframe as part of your contract with the builder, and this timeframe is exceeded, then you can automatically move to terminate the contract if the deadline is broken.
For this reason, you would always be advised to specify a date for performance and make clear in the contract that ‘time is of the essence’.
3. Reasonable cost
Just like timeframe, if you have no contractual clauses specifically in relation to fees payable, the assumption is that you will be charged a reasonable price. However, problems tend to arise where a service is commissioned, exact price cannot be given and the buyer is then presented with an extortionate bill. Where this happens, and where you have little choice but to pay (for example an emergency plumber), but you must make clear your objections at the time of paying, so that you can take action at a later date. You can do this by writing “paid under protest” somewhere on their documentation or (preferably) on the back of a cheque, and by following this up with an immediate letter to the organisation in question to dispute the price you were charged including evidence of alternative ‘going rates’.
It may be that unforeseen additional work will be required and costs will go up. It shouldn’t be by too much and you could argue that the builder could reasonably have anticipated this when providing the estimate. In any case you should limit your liability by requesting that the tradesman or builder informs you if it is going to cost over a certain amount.
It is always advisable to pay the money in stages, leaving a significant amount until the end, when you are fully satisfied that the work has been completed to satisfaction. You may be required to pay money in advance for the ordering of specific goods, but never be afraid to ask for paperwork so you can check it for yourself.
The work is half done – where do we go from here?
With the purchase of a faulty good from a shop, you can simply return the item and get your money back – putting you back into the same position you were in before you bought it. You can’t say the same for building work, particularly if they have walked off the job with it only half done. The question is, is the contract severable? It very much depends on what you are having done and what payment plan you have agreed. Upon presentation of the finished item, can you simply say that you are not going to pay for it and you are not going to give them the opportunity to make it good? This may be a little unreasonable, but if you plan to cite a breach in contract due to an absence of reasonable care and skill, you must make it clear that you are rejecting the finished item. If you have accepted it, you may have to pay all or a portion of the price agreed in the contract.
What about work is taking place in phases? Let’s say you are having a conservatory built which involves the payment of four instalments. If after the second instalment it is clear that the work is substandard you can sever the contract at that point and ask them not to return. You can then pursue damages for monies paid and additional sums if any consequential losses have been incurred (the cost of putting right the poor workmanship). If however the builder offers to redo the work, then the reasonable response would be agree, as long as it can be done ‘in reasonable time’. But what if you have lost complete faith in the builders and do not want them back at all? This is also a reasonable response, although you would have to have good grounds to claim a loss of faith. For this reason, it is always advisable to take photos and keep a diary when having any long term building work done, so you have evidence should it ever become a dispute. Many trade bodies representing firms such as builders will offer a dispute resolution service – which is always cheaper and quicker than litigation! Therefore always choose a builder or tradesman who is accredited by a trade body, association or guild which can offer this service.
Other relevant sections:
- Where the final price is much higher than the estimate
- The job was done as a foreigner – do I have any rights?
- How much can I expect in damages?
Related posts:
the council has failed to repair a patch of tiles in my bathhroom they have been out twice to repair this but only placed tiles over the bump on both occasions what are my rights on this
Hi
We are trying to sell our house and the buyer’s surveyor picked up that the conservatory has dropped. Subsequent structural engineers reports have shown that the conservatory was built on inadequate foundations for the subsoil and have recommended that the conservatory be rebuilt. Our insurance won’t cover it as its due to poor workmanship so it’s looking like we’ll have to negotiate on price (which is very painful as we are really extending ourselves on our purchase!)
The conservatory was built in 1991 and although we weren’t owners of the house at the time we have a copy of the original invoice for the conservatory. The company who installed it are still in existence and I was wondering whether it might be worth us writing to them to see if they would rectify it. What are our legal rights in this regards?
Kind regards
Beki
I am a good electrician that is consiencious they is to much corner cutting these and a lot of its lazyness like no capping no grommets in switches no earth sleeving cables slapped over attics and not clipped. I worked with blokes that hardly use a ruler this all cracks me up some electricians dont deserve to be paid by washers.
They is some very good electricians out there who I have worked with nice and neat workmanship.
My late father was a good painter and decorator he never glossed on gloss like I have seen some painters do.
The other day when I was in Belle Vue Carlisle I seen a bloke on a tiled roof high pressure washing it thats one thing you dont do.
Proberly done as much damage as he charged in blasting water in unecessary places and looseing the slate nails.
I looked on the side of his van and it said high pressure washing driveways patios roofs.
He would proberly be from Carlisle’s Hadrians camp gypsie camp.
HOW DO WE POLICE ALL THIS. Please E Mail me back with your comments which I would welcome.
Hi
8 months ago I had a new bathroom fitted. The man responsible for the job, has left me in dire straights. Iv come across a water leak, which is affecting my kitchen ceiling & my cellar is becoming flooded with water. So after 15 telephone calls, this guy kept telling me he would come over & have a look, yet has failed time & time again.
I last spoke to him & out of desperation threatened him with legal action.
What are my rights, what should i do?
Hi
I have a problem with the patio at my house. It was built just under 4 years ago and verbally has a 5 year guarantee (though nothing written on my invoice). During the first 2 years i had to have the builder back twice for some minor repairs on slabs that had become loose. These were fairly quickly resolved.
Last summer many more slabs became loose and many are dipping one side and it now looks a total mess. The builder finally came back in October last year and agreed it was bad and he would be in touch to arrange a date to come and sort it out. That was the last i heard. Despite numerous attempts to contact him on both his mobile and home number i am not getting anywhere. I leave messages and he simply hasn’t got the courtesy to even phone me back.
The patio is now so uneven that my son tripped on one slab sticking up last week and sustained minor cuts and bruises.
Where do i stand legally on this matter? Is it a case of it not being “fit for purpose”?
Any advice that anyone can give would be very gratefully received as i am about at the end of my tether over it.
Thanks…Mark
Why can’t we name and shame these bad tradespeople. I’m sick and tired of people getting away with poor workmanship. This country is such a rip off – it’s time we fought back – not through the courts which costs time and money. But where it really hurts – on the front cover of the local newspaper, all over the internet and leaflets posted locally naming and shaming the scumbags.
We very recently had our bathroom refurbished. We had problems from day one with an argumentative builder who tried to tell us how we wanted our bathroom…looking back we should have stopped work straight away but we had saved for over a year to start renovating our house, beginning with the bathroom. To cut an incredibly long story short, the builders have now left the job “finished” but unfortunately there is still so much that needs doing and rectifying that they should have done that there are hours and hours of work to do before we can even paint the walls. We haven’t paid them in full yet as we were very careful to make sure they didn’t bodge the job with full payment. We have taken photos of most of what is wrong but we can’t live with the mess as it is. They also very kindly left us with a brand new leaking toilet! I have a list 17 items long of unfinished, shoddy, not done work and damaged items in our house. We have had the final bill come through and in total including VAT, it comes to nearly £1500 more than was originally estimated. Although he’s charging us for extra works undertaken such as replacing the old sink and bath taps with new ones of the same type, he’s also still trying to gain money for work he hasn’t done!!! To add insult to injury, he never once said that the cost was going to jump up by that amount…considering all of the bathroom hardware etc. we had already paid for we don’t know where this figure is from. I also kept a logue of times that they turned up for work on each day…on more than one occasion it was 11am or later. I can’t afford nor do I want to pay this man any more than he estimated as the job isn’t finished, things are damaged and not done and he was rude to deal with…I have completely lost faith in his abilities and I don’t want him in my home again…We are probably going to end up doing the works ourselves as we can no longer afford to pay someone else to do it so now something that should have taken approximately 2 weeks to complete is still ongoing. Where do I stand on payment to him as the job isn’t finished but I don’t want him in my house any more. He is regulated by the FMB. Can anyone advise?
Had very poor service from a company called serviceteam ltd based in London. Ironic that they use the term service. Appalling service and so called customer service. Would NEVER recommend this company. Just see their terms and conditions and ask my neighbors what they did to me. I have now had the work redone by an excellent tradesman.