Added charge on invoice

G

Gemma1108

New Member
Good morning,

My electric gates have been playing up recently so I phoned a local company and asked them for their assistance. Over the phone I agreed to a £45 call out fee to assess the job. He said that it would then be £45 per hour to fix the problem.
He came to assess that afternoon. He unscrewed 4 screws from the front of the electrical unit and proceeded to tell me that bugs had got in and we needed a new unit. He left and said that he would email me a quote that evening. The next day he send a quote through for just short of £1000!

I decided that I would get a second opinion from another local company. That afternoon, from the second company, I received a quote for £550, which of course, I decided to go ahead with.

I emailed the original firm and told them that i had received a cheaper quote elsewhere and have decided to go ahead. He them sends me an invoice for £104. This is made up of the original £45 call out fee and £45 for one hours labour to fix the gates.

Firstly - I only agreed to the £45 call out and secondly - he didn't fix the gates. Just simply looked and went home to provide a quote.

I have emailed him to say that I am more than happy to pay for the call out but we never agreed to any fees on top of that just for him to assess the situation.

Please can anyone give me some advice?
 
The way I read it is. You were charged and agreed £45 for him to come to the job. You were then charged £45 per hour or part thereof for him to fault find. How the £104 computes I do not know because if it was £90 plus vat it would be £108, if he was only 1 hour fault finding.
 
The thing is, I only agreed to the £45 call out as I thought that included him looking at the problem. The £45 per hour labour was made out to be the charge upon his return to fix the gates. It’s very frustrating as the company is less than 2 miles from my address and he was at my house for 15 minutes. No labour whatsoever was carried out other than removing 4 screws. The other company that is actually doing the work quoted me free of charge.
 
Gemma1108 said:
The thing is, I only agreed to the £45 call out as I thought that included him looking at the problem. The £45 per hour labour was made out to be the charge upon his return to fix the gates. It’s very frustrating as the company is less than 2 miles from my address and he was at my house for 15 minutes. No labour whatsoever was carried out other than removing 4 screws. The other company that is actually doing the work quoted me free of charge.
Click to expand...

Bugs getting in is not a diagnosis, it is an excuse to make money from a new installation. Don't pay, unless we’re not getting the whole story and he undertook electrical fault finding, and provided you with the results.
 
The way I read this is that the call out is literally to drive to you and turn up. Then the first hour for removing the cover and making the bug discovery. I know it seems unfair but I suppose if he had discovered a blown fuse or something minor and fixing it all for the 1 hr charge it would have been happy days. It's a fairly typical scenario to pay both charges. As said though, should have been £90 , maybe plus vat.
On a side issue, when you get the follow up company to sort out the problem, I would suggest they make everything insect proof. I'm not an electrician but have electric gates and do my own maintenance and servicing. I have had issues with both bugs getting into the wall sensors and twice, slugs getting through wiring conduit and shorting out a circuit board. My remedy was silicone seal the cable inlets in the back of the wall sensor mounts and fill the cable conduit entry points into the control box with silicone grease.
Worth doing the same in any floor motor boxes also to prevent mice getting in and chewing cables.... another issue I had to deal with!!
 
I would charge for the call out but if i were there for only 15 minutes with that issue i would have only charged the call out.

If it was local and I wasn’t going out of my way that much then for the sake of future business I wouldn’t bother charging anything. Also possible he works for someone else who makes those cost decisions.

Unfortunately the reason for call out charges is how easy it is for people to waste a tradesman’s time where they could be making money elsewhere. Can’t tell you how many times i have turned up to a quote and no one is there or suddenly decided they need to go out somewhere. Some spoil it for everyone unfortunately.

i think you should take the positives out of it though, i do think you dodged a bullet with the actual work .
 
You agreed to pay the £45 call out, who did you agree to pay more to? if no agreement then legally they are asking you to pay, your choice, no one is taking you to court for 108 quid.

On the other hand if you agreed to pay £45 for a call out + £45 per hour for the time they spent, presumably rounded up to an hour then that is the bill.

All depends what you agreed on the phone.
 
may seem unfair to the poster . He could have
waived the £45 labour . Like most people on
the tools I've started a freebee that ended up
snapping/discovering someone else's bodge
that becomes my problem.
 
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