Builder Disputes...

Stanley Leisure · July 4, 2015

HI GUYZ!

It's actually landscape gardener dispute, not a builder, but they're all the f*cking same.

Anyway, the original quote to get our sh*tty garden completely revamped was 9k. A lot, I know.

We could only afford 7k so the quote was revised, accordingly. It involved quite a lot of big, intricate carpentry (looks great, btw) but it has been a fiddly job.

Bloke comes round this afternoon to discuss extra costs incurred, totalling just over £3k. Obviously we're not paying that - it's 40% over the original quote (which we both signed). The costs equate to about £1200 in materials and £1800 in labour (he has a few lads on rotation). To us, it seemed their hours were pretty inconsistent, sometimes there was one here, sometimes two and often they weren't all doing full days.

We knew, time-wise that it was dragging on (about a week) but we'd agreed a price and, at no point, did he flag up the extra material or labour. He's a massive wally, this bloke - really disorganised, thinks he's an artist (though he is quite a talented designer/carpenter) and also acts like he's our mate. In the past he has cancelled meetings because he was hungover, tried to get us to pay toward parking tickets he got because he scratched off the wrong date on the ticket. He's not a bad person, just a d*ckhead and a bit shambolic.

Anyway, things got a bit nasty this weekend - I told him that he was completely unprofessional and it wasn't our fault that he's bitten off more than he could chew. It was left ok and I just said that Mrs Leisure and I would discuss it but not sure what the next move is. We're about two days from it being finished.

There's no way I'm paying 3k, but what is an acceptable amount to offer, if anything? I had a contingency, but it wasn't that much and his own quote sheet even has a small print thing about notifying the client about extra costs as they happen.

THANKS GUYZ!

Edited July 4, 2015 by Stanley Leisure

muleskinner · July 4, 2015

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