Looking to get peoples opinions here, particularly tradies, on an invoice I just received.
Long story short, the decking lights stopped working in my new house (been in around 9 months or so).
Contacted three sparkies via checkatrade to provide a quote for the repair.
First guy "Sparky A" turned up, lifted a piece of decking, opened the 'IP rated box' (it wasnt) to find the entire thing submerged in water. After drilling a quick hole, he had a look at the transformers, took a picture, and then left saying he'd get me a quote together to replace them.
Second guy, "Sparky B", turned up 30 minutes later. He saw the box and the picture of it being full of water, tested it and found it was still live (gulp..) and said hmm that is worrying, and then said "Its £50 an hour, and i want to make sure everything is safe before i leave" - to which i said, yep absolutely. So he did some tests, found out it didnt trip when under water as it wasnt on the RCD (gulp x2), moved it onto the RCD side, retested, cut the wires going into the IP box and sealed them and left it all safe.
The guy then provided me a quote to install a new IP box, add glands, junction box, etc. I said yep lets go with it, £170 later its all done and marvellously working.
7 weeks have passed, and I just got an email from Sparky A - who is waiting for me to get in touch about something (no idea where he got that from). I told him that given the amount of time that had passed that someone else had done the work. At this point he sends me a £30 invoice for his time for 'work done'?
Now ive made it clear that im not prepared to pay this 'chancer' invoice; given i never agreed any payment, i didnt ask for any 'work' to be done, and frankly a quote is not chargable in my opinion - and if he had said that i'd have shown him the door.
What do you guys think - should i pay the invoice? Frankly I think its a shakedown and that i never agreed/signed anything to agree to having any chargable work done, and that from their perspective they'd be mad to pursue it given i can get checkatrade involved as per http://www.checkatrade.com/Consumer/ResolvingIssues.aspx which is surely more damaging to them than a £30 fee?
Cheers,
Sam
Long story short, the decking lights stopped working in my new house (been in around 9 months or so).
Contacted three sparkies via checkatrade to provide a quote for the repair.
First guy "Sparky A" turned up, lifted a piece of decking, opened the 'IP rated box' (it wasnt) to find the entire thing submerged in water. After drilling a quick hole, he had a look at the transformers, took a picture, and then left saying he'd get me a quote together to replace them.
Second guy, "Sparky B", turned up 30 minutes later. He saw the box and the picture of it being full of water, tested it and found it was still live (gulp..) and said hmm that is worrying, and then said "Its £50 an hour, and i want to make sure everything is safe before i leave" - to which i said, yep absolutely. So he did some tests, found out it didnt trip when under water as it wasnt on the RCD (gulp x2), moved it onto the RCD side, retested, cut the wires going into the IP box and sealed them and left it all safe.
The guy then provided me a quote to install a new IP box, add glands, junction box, etc. I said yep lets go with it, £170 later its all done and marvellously working.
7 weeks have passed, and I just got an email from Sparky A - who is waiting for me to get in touch about something (no idea where he got that from). I told him that given the amount of time that had passed that someone else had done the work. At this point he sends me a £30 invoice for his time for 'work done'?
Now ive made it clear that im not prepared to pay this 'chancer' invoice; given i never agreed any payment, i didnt ask for any 'work' to be done, and frankly a quote is not chargable in my opinion - and if he had said that i'd have shown him the door.
What do you guys think - should i pay the invoice? Frankly I think its a shakedown and that i never agreed/signed anything to agree to having any chargable work done, and that from their perspective they'd be mad to pursue it given i can get checkatrade involved as per http://www.checkatrade.com/Consumer/ResolvingIssues.aspx which is surely more damaging to them than a £30 fee?
Cheers,
Sam
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