Builder scam

[Violettress]

Hi all, I was wondering if anyone has any advice or if they have been through a similar situation.
I found a builder on check a trade a few months ago to replace a flat roof. He attended the house and we agreed a price, time to attend etc, I paid £800 in advance for materiels and x2 new garage doors. Long story short he never showed to do the work after many excuses all week. Eventually he randomly turned up to take down the wall on either side of the garage claiming they needed to be rebuilt because he couldn't fit the garage doors on, he then asked a further £2k for the brickwork to replace this and to buy timbers for the roof which was worse than he origionally thought.
I very stupidly transferred this to him and that's the last I ever heard. I now have no garage roof and no garage doors and wall. I have since found out he did similar botch jobs to many people. I have reported it to the police who say its a civil matter as he did attend site to pull down some bricks, this seems to be his MO to stop the police arresting him for criminal damage or running away with money.
I am currently taking him to court but wondered if I can claim the money from the bank for unauthorised push payments? Another person he scammed said his bank paid him everything back but my bank (Halifax) is refusing because he turned up on site for 30 minutes to pull some things around, make it worse and left. I was still scammed and think I should get this money back, any thoughts? I am at my wits end with this!

[R0b]

I'm inclined to agree with the bank's position.

It may be that the other person was lucky and had a lenient bank but I'm not sure how this could be construed as APP. APP fraud usually happens when someone is pretending to be someone they are not in order to extract sums of money from their victims.

It's not absolutely clear to me that the builder has actually scammed you, and arguably it could be said that he simply didn't bother turning up to finish the job so that's up to you to prove. The fact that he actually turned up to do some work would give the presumption that he intended to carry out the work. If you believe that not to be the case, you would have to rebut that presumption with evidence.

Regarding the police, that's their typical position when it comes to disputes like this although it's possible that you could argue the builder has committed fraud or at least theft of your money but it's up to you to prove that otherwise, they will give you the usual civil matter response. If you're not happy with the response I believe you can make a complaint to the police station about it and they should investigate but don't hold out much hope.

Checkatrade have a guarantee up to £1,000 if you satisfy their conditions, one of which is writing a review within 30 days of the work being done. Unfortunately in your case the work has not completed but you should consider if you are still within the 30 day window of when he started, write a review and see if you can recover some money back from Checkatrade, as well as mention that this tradesperson appears to be a fraudster in that he entices you into paying for the work but then never shows up to finish - people like that shouldn't be on that website which it represents itself as reputable.

Just a word of caution next time you want to engage trades people, never pay up front for work that is yet to be completed. Any trades person or company who insists on upfront payment in full should be a major red flag. Ideally, you should do staged payments for each milestone of the work completed or provide a proportion of the total cost as a deposit to start the work and obtain the materials. You should obviously get this in writing and agreed by the trades person or company before work begins. Otherwise you might find yourself in a similar position.