Contractor not coughing up.....

[Murdoch]

Thats great to know, I might do one of them online & see what happens. I may scare them into paying, at the end of the day nobody wants their credit score ruined.

Your main problem will be convincing the court that you were given the verbal go ahead ...... because the other party simply has to claim they didn’t give you the go ahead.

 

[Welder]

I.F.

Unfortunately I concur with the others in that you have learned an awful life lesson - the bigger the co. the bigger the ar5se. The brilliant news is that it could have been so much worse!

This scenario is just one of the reasons I record ALL of my phone calls automatically. It is fully legal and beyond valuable.

Personally, I'm not even sure I'd go down the small claims route as you'll be throwing good money after bad. If you have the MD's details just bide your time cos sweet revenge is best served stone cold...

If you decide to pull away, wait a few weeks and just bob back and post the name and nothing else. We will then know too.

Focus on the positives that 2019 will bring a person of your integrity bud. Forget the little sh1te and move on.

 

[Best]

I also agree you need to look at it from a legal viewpoint, - Was the work requested by the company?
However, you might still have a chance, so personally I would try the Small Claims Court. Nothing to lose other than time.

 

[Chuck]

Your main problem will be convincing the court that you were given the verbal go ahead .. because the other party simply has to claim they didn’t give you the go ahead.

True, but these cases are decided 'on the balance of probability' (at least in England, not sure about Scotland). This boils down to who the judge believes on the day.

Another approach is to see if you can get Watchdog interested:

BBC One - Watchdog - Send your story to Watchdog

The story has several of the qualities they look for.

 

[snowhead]

So going back to the beginning, you must have been given authority and presumably the (unwritten but assumed) promise of payment for the original first visit?
Did they email as you asked?

They clearly owe you some money.

They aren't going to be able to deny having contacted you otherwise you wouldn't have coincidentally happened across one of their customers, but more importantly they wouldn't be denying unauthorised work.

Re invoice them for the visit and investigation or whatever they originally asked you to do.

If they refuse payment, go to small claims for that.

 

[SimonG]

A customer I did work for had hassle with Wickes for his bathroom and kitchen. He was a high level accountant. Threatened them with a winding up petition/order. Don't actually know what's involved but certainly made Wickes jump to it.

 

[Pickwickpick]

A customer I did work for had hassle with Wickes for his bathroom and kitchen. He was a high level accountant. Threatened them with a winding up petition/order. Don't actually know what's involved but certainly made Wickes jump to it.

Yep you can apply to the courts to make someone or a company bankrupt (won't work in this case as debt has to be more than £5k). From my days as an auditor I knew a couple of large companies that dealt with disputes this way, they'd ignore all communications unless the firm they were in a dispute with petitioned the courts for bankruptcy and only then would they cough up!

 

[SimonG]

Yep you can apply to the courts to make someone or a company bankrupt (won't work in this case as debt has to be more than £5k). From my days as an auditor I knew a couple of large companies that dealt with disputes this way, they'd ignore all communications unless the firm they were in a dispute with petitioned the courts for bankruptcy and only then would they cough up!

Thanks for that. The only thing that sticks in my mind about it was Wickes turned up on site within a couple of days.

 

[gmartine]

@Chuck

Watchdog won't be interested in a tradesman getting screwed unless it's part of a larger action/investigation concerning a rogue company screwing over joe public as well.

 

[Chuck]

@Chuck
Watchdog won't be interested in a tradesman getting screwed unless it's part of a larger action/investigation concerning a rogue company screwing over joe public as well.

Of course. Whether they'll follow up depends whether there have been other reports about the same company. In this case the OP has already come across one 'elderly lady' who was ripped off by the same company so there's a good chance there will be more.

Anyway, the OP has already typed up the story so posting it to Watchdog is (a) free and (b) will take very little time. It also gives one a satisfying feeling that you have 'done something' beyond writing it off to experience. All the other remedies are either time consuming or costly. AFAIK, a winding-up petition costs about £2k just to register it with the court, for example.

Island Fling has my sympathy but every small business seems to have their own version of this story. Some big company or landlord calls with an 'emergency' gives verbal instructions to 'do whatever it takes and send us your invoice'. Then, when the invoice arrives they claim they only wanted you to provide an estimate not do the work. The first rule is do not to leave home until they've sent you a purchase order (big company) or confirmed the work order by email and paid a deposit by credit card (small company). The second rule is that every job carries a risk of non-payment. With new customers this risk is big, with long-standing relationships it is small, but it is *never* zero.