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Hi All,
Frstly i apologise if I’m asking in the wrong location.
My wife recently employed our neighbours brother on their word he was a good tradesman to remove and install a new bathroom suite for us.
Though he works as a registered plumber there is no records for him on the internet, can’t find any mention to him anywhere.
No formal contract or price was agreed on though he did say it would be three days’ work at £160 a day, he was to work in line with the tiler.
However he arrived at 10am on the first day , spent an hour on a dinner break and was gone by three, in the time he was here he spent most of the time on his phone,
he did pull out the toilet (smash out) and remove the bath that he left on our front drive for us to remove, he placed the new toilet in place (in the process removing the cut of vale for the reservoir) however he did say it wasn’t stable so to be careful not to move it, we later found that he had lost the feather seal so siliconed the pipe in, also blocking the pipe to some degree so a flush took something like 40 seconds, he also used a flexi waste pipe that created a second u bend as it dropped on to the floor, with the poor flush at a second u bend the toilet got blocked the first time it was used, u can picture what was stuck in the flexi pipe that I had to remove and empty down the outside drain
On the second day he turned up again around 10 am installed the bath and sync, he cut our copper pipes off at the base and used plastic pressure joints , put the pipes on the wrong way round for the sink, installed the bath but did not bring the feet down correctly so one was not actually down, he then siliconed around the frame, our tiler realised they was something wrong as the bath moved to much when anyone stood in it. He removed our electric shower and left bare wires and advised us they would need covering but they were off at the main switch, he was gone again for 3 after most of his day had been spend supposedly going to fetch parts , such as drills and saw blades , personally I think he was going to quote on other jobs, judging by how much time he spent on his phone.
Our tiler was nothing but professional , he contacted the plumber/ handyman on several occasion to come and remove the toilet and sink so as he could tile around them ,however he never turned up and I ended up removing them myself.
When the tiling was completed we tried to get the plumber/handyman to return however he said he couldn’t for the next week as he was on another job
I had no choice but to install the toilet/sink etc myself in doing so I found he had cut the copper pipes so close to the floor that once it had been tiled I had to replace all the pipes to make them fit , I replaced the toilet waste pipe with a fixed solid pipe and reseated the bath, basically redoing the work he was supposed to have done.
To rub salt in a wound we found our kitchen roof falling away where he had allowed water to escape in to the floorbaords.
To cut a long story short, 4 weeks later he decided to post us a bill for 2 days labour and parts £400
Now I know we should have not gone on word of mouth and should have got everything in writing,
I feel as we had nothing in writing, we have no choice but to pay him as he can class a day’s labour as long as he wants and charge whatever he wants to for parts.
I feel like paying him, then invoicing him for the work I had to do, to fix the issues he caused!
My question is what do we do now ?
hoping someone can advise
stef
Frstly i apologise if I’m asking in the wrong location.
My wife recently employed our neighbours brother on their word he was a good tradesman to remove and install a new bathroom suite for us.
Though he works as a registered plumber there is no records for him on the internet, can’t find any mention to him anywhere.
No formal contract or price was agreed on though he did say it would be three days’ work at £160 a day, he was to work in line with the tiler.
However he arrived at 10am on the first day , spent an hour on a dinner break and was gone by three, in the time he was here he spent most of the time on his phone,
he did pull out the toilet (smash out) and remove the bath that he left on our front drive for us to remove, he placed the new toilet in place (in the process removing the cut of vale for the reservoir) however he did say it wasn’t stable so to be careful not to move it, we later found that he had lost the feather seal so siliconed the pipe in, also blocking the pipe to some degree so a flush took something like 40 seconds, he also used a flexi waste pipe that created a second u bend as it dropped on to the floor, with the poor flush at a second u bend the toilet got blocked the first time it was used, u can picture what was stuck in the flexi pipe that I had to remove and empty down the outside drain
On the second day he turned up again around 10 am installed the bath and sync, he cut our copper pipes off at the base and used plastic pressure joints , put the pipes on the wrong way round for the sink, installed the bath but did not bring the feet down correctly so one was not actually down, he then siliconed around the frame, our tiler realised they was something wrong as the bath moved to much when anyone stood in it. He removed our electric shower and left bare wires and advised us they would need covering but they were off at the main switch, he was gone again for 3 after most of his day had been spend supposedly going to fetch parts , such as drills and saw blades , personally I think he was going to quote on other jobs, judging by how much time he spent on his phone.
Our tiler was nothing but professional , he contacted the plumber/ handyman on several occasion to come and remove the toilet and sink so as he could tile around them ,however he never turned up and I ended up removing them myself.
When the tiling was completed we tried to get the plumber/handyman to return however he said he couldn’t for the next week as he was on another job
I had no choice but to install the toilet/sink etc myself in doing so I found he had cut the copper pipes so close to the floor that once it had been tiled I had to replace all the pipes to make them fit , I replaced the toilet waste pipe with a fixed solid pipe and reseated the bath, basically redoing the work he was supposed to have done.
To rub salt in a wound we found our kitchen roof falling away where he had allowed water to escape in to the floorbaords.
To cut a long story short, 4 weeks later he decided to post us a bill for 2 days labour and parts £400
Now I know we should have not gone on word of mouth and should have got everything in writing,
I feel as we had nothing in writing, we have no choice but to pay him as he can class a day’s labour as long as he wants and charge whatever he wants to for parts.
I feel like paying him, then invoicing him for the work I had to do, to fix the issues he caused!
My question is what do we do now ?
hoping someone can advise
stef
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