Paying a Plonker Plumber
Discussion
Can anyone advise on the legal position if I refused payment on job I'd asked a heating/plumbing and bathroom company to carry out?
They were supposed to fit an extractor fan & light unit in a shower and fit a vented roof tile. I supplied the extractor fan unit after discussing the spec with them beforehand.
To keep this brief, what I now have is a hole in the side of my house with some rigid pipe sticking out, a vent that won't fit onto the pipe (because it was supposed to fit onto the end of the flexible ducting), a fan unit in the loft which is simply bolted to a plank which is resting on the rafters, i.e. not fixed, metres of flexible ducting in the loft when they could have at least cut it down to fit, a pull switch mounted on the wall and not hanging from the ceiling and the fan sat in the shower tray with a note from the electrician that the hole in the ceiling is too small to fit it in to. It's not.
A friend who is a builder is also doing work on the house, and in fact he measured and cut the hole for the fan after talking directly to the heating/plumbing company. Unfortunately I had left them both in the house as I had work commitments, and my builder mate left shortly after the electrician arrived. Having spoken to the builder, he said he wishes he'd been able to stay to keep an eye on what they were doing.
It's all fixable by said builder mate. The only reason he didn't do the whole job was that he's not really an electrician and as we were having a radiator installed by the plumbing/bathroom co. they were also happy to install the extractor fan.
I'm this close to telling the company to go forth and multiply, and get my builder mate to repair their bad workmanship. I'm not afraid of threats of court action etc but I do want to make sure I give a legally sound answer. Feel free to bump if this is in the wrong section.
TIA.
They were supposed to fit an extractor fan & light unit in a shower and fit a vented roof tile. I supplied the extractor fan unit after discussing the spec with them beforehand.
To keep this brief, what I now have is a hole in the side of my house with some rigid pipe sticking out, a vent that won't fit onto the pipe (because it was supposed to fit onto the end of the flexible ducting), a fan unit in the loft which is simply bolted to a plank which is resting on the rafters, i.e. not fixed, metres of flexible ducting in the loft when they could have at least cut it down to fit, a pull switch mounted on the wall and not hanging from the ceiling and the fan sat in the shower tray with a note from the electrician that the hole in the ceiling is too small to fit it in to. It's not.
A friend who is a builder is also doing work on the house, and in fact he measured and cut the hole for the fan after talking directly to the heating/plumbing company. Unfortunately I had left them both in the house as I had work commitments, and my builder mate left shortly after the electrician arrived. Having spoken to the builder, he said he wishes he'd been able to stay to keep an eye on what they were doing.
It's all fixable by said builder mate. The only reason he didn't do the whole job was that he's not really an electrician and as we were having a radiator installed by the plumbing/bathroom co. they were also happy to install the extractor fan.
I'm this close to telling the company to go forth and multiply, and get my builder mate to repair their bad workmanship. I'm not afraid of threats of court action etc but I do want to make sure I give a legally sound answer. Feel free to bump if this is in the wrong section.
TIA.
SoGSA 1982. http://www.which.co.uk/consumer-rights/regulation/...
Write to them reminding them of their obligations under this act and give them a date by which the faults must be rectified. If (when) they fail to do that, you can go elsewhere and attempt to recover costs from the original contractor.
Write to them reminding them of their obligations under this act and give them a date by which the faults must be rectified. If (when) they fail to do that, you can go elsewhere and attempt to recover costs from the original contractor.
I called them on Monday morning with an innocuous 'So, what's the stage of the fan installation are we at?' and their reply was basically ask your builder to just stick the vent on, get him to insert the fan into the hole and yes, the light in the fan does work, our electrician tested it. I forgot to mention the light in the extractor fan also didn't work. So he's effectively done the entire installation bar knocking a hole into a wall.
No mention of anything along the lines of they were coming back as the job was finished.
An email was sent to them listing everything that was unsatisfactory and the builder put right all of their wrongs bar the electrical work.
I then received a text saying someone would be around this morning to fix the issues, of which there is just one left, the non-working light. I even exchanged the part for a brand new one just in case it was genuinely faulty.
I'm still certain that if I receive an invoice at all that there are good grounds not to pay for the fan installation part.
No mention of anything along the lines of they were coming back as the job was finished.
An email was sent to them listing everything that was unsatisfactory and the builder put right all of their wrongs bar the electrical work.
I then received a text saying someone would be around this morning to fix the issues, of which there is just one left, the non-working light. I even exchanged the part for a brand new one just in case it was genuinely faulty.
I'm still certain that if I receive an invoice at all that there are good grounds not to pay for the fan installation part.
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