Electrician half finished a job and is taking me to court for £15,000

[KalabashK]

Hi

I hired a friend to install the electrics on my new house. He was there from the start. We have no contract just texts and emails. He quoted me Initially around 10K via text then up to 13-18K. He has had £10,500 from me directly and I have paid another £5,500 to his suppliers and installers and got another firm to do £3000 on security system as he was running over schedule. He suddenly started charging me a day rate, then is now claiming I owe him 31 days plus £4000 in materials plus interest. He walked off the job with no meeting or mediation, He was definitely not on site for all of those 31 days and I don't know what actual work he completed in that time as it would have been very little. I have witness statements from other workman on site that he was messy, made loads of mistakes and blamed other people, i have texts and witness statements proving he was not on site half the days he said he was.

I have paid £1500 in remedial work and another £4-6000 is due to finish the job that he claims was 90% complete in his application.

He sent the pre action letter by email with no information and no reply form and made no attempt at mediation prior to the letter. He claims he sent me delivery notes for stock that was delivered to my home but I have never seen them. Can i ask for it to be set aside on these grounds alone?

I am sending the acknowledgement within 14 days so I get another 14 days to respond. I intend to defend the whole claim.

I do believe I owe him 2-3 days work in that time absolute max relating to work I asked him to do BUT i believe he overcharged me from the beginning, using money I gave him as an advance for his own "wages" instead of for materials.

He has sent me invoices for materials I don't know for a fact are mine. He has never tallied it up in one document.
He admits by text some materials were not mine but he needed time to organise himself, this info was never forthcoming.

I sent £2500 and £3500 giving him an advance for materials he then now wants to charge me VAT on that and has added that to his bill, when that VAT should have been included in the total amount.

Should I respond point by point refuting his claim and copy and print all the witness statements and text messages etc?
Should I send my complete defence in one pack? Or does that reveal my hand.

Not sure if whatsapp messages that are screen shotted count as evidence?

Please advise me how best to answer in my defence ??

Are there any technicalities I should be aware of?

Thanks so much in advance!

[ROBSMN]

I feel for you dude, it is not nice when it happens with friends, this is why I learned many years ago that friends and relatives are not welcome to deal with if the matter about money, service, etc. In this case, as it is not your friend anymore after this situation (I suppose) just go to the court to find out who is right and where justice is and yeah, take all proves you have. I can say that recently I was dealing with some good professional guys from Bates Electric, here they are electrician Chicago IL and I was satisfied by their job, they were doing all electrical installations in my new house - I was just calling them, making orders and paid money after everything had been done, no any problems as it could be with friends or relatives

[ostell]

You must put everything in your defence first time, it costs you to modify your defence.

You save those WhatsApp messages as evidence.

That admission that some of the invoices were for materials not connected with your job should be very interesting.

Mention that you have had costs getting failures remedied.

Your actual evidence is submitted later in the process.

[des8]

Thread a bit long in the tooth

[ostell]

Even I didn't spot that!!

I wondered what happened