Electrician - customer not paid invoice

[Darren Smith]

I gave a customer a verbal quote of 450 to do some works for her on a property she had bought .
she hasn't paid it . Whilst doing the works she agreed to more and more things being done some were just like a good idea eg smoke alarms etc . some were rectifying faults that i discovered as i went through the property .
anyway i was there alliot longer than thought at 1st and did a heck of allot more .
the final bill came to around 950
she sounded shocked when i told her .
other electricians i have spoken to said that it was cheap and should have charged more . the materials were around 400 and i was there best part of 4 days .
I sent her the invoice for payment but sent the wrong one by accident . it was more expensive . anyway i told her id done that and sent her the updated one which worked out a little cheaper .
Anyway i phoned her and she i explained that she owed in fact the 950 .
she has not been replying to texts and i was going to do some more jobs for her .
the replys i got were avoidance texts i was offering to get rid of her old cooker for her and she avoided the idea .
so i have text her a few times asking what she is going to do about her bill if there is a problem etc
no response

i text her again today and she said she will e,ail tomorrow . i replied just talk to me and we can sort it. no response
i then called her no answer . ....
im not bothered if there is a issue i will sort it . if she cant afford it il come down in price a bit .
though she owes me some money and i want to resolve it and move on .

she kept saying we are she was running out of money and stuff . though she has a v expensive house and has just bought this one she also works and also goes to v expensive health clubs etc .

she kept saying about how she was going to send a solicitors letter to the previous tenant and the prevuous owner .... so seems like she likes a bit of a solicitors letter .

I had to buy her materials with my rent money . then had to pay my rent on my fiances credit card as she hadnt paid . we have a new born baby and that aint on

im happy to settle up for less if she pays i guess .
or put right any issues
if she dont work with me il CCJ her
can someone help me write that into a polite letter .

ive got my suppliers barking at me for payment so il be getting the CCJ soon

[ostell]

Re: Electrician - customer not paid invoice

If you've been trying hard and bending over backwards to accommodate your customer then I would be writing a letter before claim to her.

Give brief details of why you are claiming and the amount and give her 14 days, say, to make payment. Then you start a claim in the small claims court.

I'm sure someone will help you write a LBA

[Darren Smith]

Re: Electrician - customer not paid invoice

yes please id like some help to write a letter please i will hand deliver it today

[Snoopy1948]

Re: Electrician - customer not paid invoice

Hi Darren Smith

Out of interest, have you at any time given this woman a written estimate of works? And have you ever given her detailed bill with a breakdown of all works done to date and how that is divided between labour and materials? It seems to me that you started a 'contract' on verbal terms only and there was no signed agreement to proceed. I am sure that others on here can comment on that better and how you stand with perhaps no signed agreement and no written quotation and a final written account ( I am only assuming this ).

[Darren Smith]

Re: Electrician - customer not paid invoice

No i just gave her a price verbally .
i gave her a invoice with all the works on it
i also detailed on it all of the things that were additional to the original price i gave her .

most of the time in my kind of work in domestic properties you just agree on a price and then do the job .
its not my fault her electrics were bad. She also gave me the knod to do all the extra bits that needed doing .
Im not in the business of doing things for free .
Even if she doesnt pay up she should at least pay for the materials if not she has basically stolen them off me .
when your half way through a job and your working with tools you dont often get a laptop out and produce a new price you normally just let the customer know and get on with it and do the paperwork at the end .

[Ripped-Off]

Re: Electrician - customer not paid invoice

I shouldn't think it matters if the contract wasn't in writing, though it does make things that little bit harder to prove. Even if a contract couldn't be proven, there is always the doctrine of implied assumpsit.

What you do need to prove though is that the other party requested works in addition to those that you had quoted. You could meet with a defence that the work was always included in the £450.00. In Crowshaw v Pritchard(1899) a contractor submitted a quotation, but later reneged on the deal on the basis that the quotation was an estimate not capable of acceptance. The court held it was a firm offer capable of being accepted. There's a slightly differing and more modern view in Sykes v Packham [2011], an interesting article appears here.....
http://www.building.co.uk/estimates-...023600.article

I digress......as for the letter before action there are lots of templates on this site and around the internet. Provide a particularised list of the works carried out; you can send copies of invoices if you want to be thorough but a simple list and the cost of each item should be enough to start with. Are you VAT registered by any chance?

You could start by looking at this template from the 'Which' site http://www.which.co.uk/consumer-righ...ms-court-claim

[LeoCasta]

It sounds like a pretty interesting story. I still had about that. I called an electrician to fix something, not a company, an acquaintance of an acquaintance. OK, I was pleased that I found him. He repaired me, as everything was working well but in the end, he told me a huge amount for his services (at least for me huge), almost double I paid, so I went to a company. Since then, when I have some problems, I turn to https://www.sparkelectrician.com.au/taren-point/. Now it offers even a discount. I ask myself, why do simple people ask for more than the just company? Why is this happening?