what would you do?

[telectrix]

got a customer, bought a house. basically gutted, so asked me for a quote, labour only, to do some electrical work, extra sockets, etc. install new CU. now, technically, i have no problem. it's the financial side that buggers me. basically, i quoted £700 to do the CU and the bits and pieces. all good so far. now, he wants downlights throughout. i planned it out, 32 downlgihts in total. quoted £20 per fitting ( labour and cables), got knocked down from £640 to £450, now he wants 8 more fittings ( total overkill, 6 in a 3m x 3m bedroom and hall & landing) without paying any more. so far, i've had £500 out of the £700 initial quote which barely covers the time spent so far. my thoughts are to walk away, cut losses, move on. i can see future problems as he wants outside work and won't pay for safely installation. btw, he's just had all the front and back fenced and block paved... materials alone must have come to £5K. should i walk?

 

[NDG Elecs]

I've got a similar situation - got a client where I quoted for kitchen downlights, bathroom downlights, fan, smokes and heat, kitchen sockets, CU change, spur for boiler, spur for outside lights.

SO in December I did the lights, fan and smokes - submitted a part invoice.

His response - not paying till its all done

Now I have no control over when the project gets completed as all the dates are very vague.

So my decision is not to go back until some form of payment is made or a firm schedule is agreed - so since Xmas I've not contacted him........

I had someone like that last summer that was refusing to pay me 3K for work completed, as the overall job was not complete. It was only not complete due to reasons beyond my control which this fickler chose not to understand. It took some hassle getting it off him. I refused to speak to him on the phone in the end as I wanted a written record of all correspondence etc. Lost a stone in weight also due to the stress!

Walk Tel walk. If he wants to haggle tell him to go to Istanbul!!

 

[sparksburnout]

Remember that if you have a Gypsy / Pikey for a friend you have a friend for life but conversely make an enemy of one .........

OOOoooh blimey there going to be some deleting and possibly banning going on tonight........... I think you will find the word p*****y is a contravention of EU regulations and/or human rights.

 

[hasel5]

OOOoooh blimey there going to be some deleting and possibly banning going on tonight........... I think you will find the word p*****y is a contravention of EU regulations and/or human rights.

They don't have any rights in my eyes

 

[NDG Elecs]

OOOoooh blimey there going to be some deleting and possibly banning going on tonight........... I think you will find the word p*****y is a contravention of EU regulations and/or human rights.

Haha, yep there prob will be!

Just for the Mods attention I was referring to the tradition of haggling at the markets of Istanbul. It was not a sleight against the Turkish people!

 

[Blademan_98]

You do realise that we will get a new member saying his sparkie has walked and what should he do........

 

[jackhammerJIM]

Walk away Tel . You have balls for taking the job on in the first place .

 

[R G]

Hi
Im new on here , I would like to know if theres any local Electrician in the Liverpool area that can come and carry out some work for me , the last guy has walked of because he wanted paying , shocking really but still I have all the materials sitting here and would like someone who has no problem doing some extra work when asked....

A customer

 

[Geordie Spark]

OOOoooh blimey there going to be some deleting and possibly banning going on tonight........... I think you will find the word p*****y is a contravention of EU regulations and/or human rights.

Trust me, my future wife is one and she's very proud of the fact and even insisted me calling her Pikey cos she thinks the name given her by her mother is one normally given to a female Alsatian dog!

 

[sparksburnout]

Trust me, my future wife is one and she's very proud of the fact and even insisted me calling her Pikey cos she thinks the name given her by her mother is one normally given to a female Alsatian dog!

Be gorrah and be jeabuz

 

[jackhammerJIM]

I've got a similar situation - got a client where I quoted for kitchen downlights, bathroom downlights, fan, smokes and heat, kitchen sockets, CU change, spur for boiler, spur for outside lights.

SO in December I did the lights, fan and smokes - submitted a part invoice.

His response - not paying till its all done

Now I have no control over when the project gets completed as all the dates are very vague.

So my decision is not to go back until some form of payment is made or a firm schedule is agreed - so since Xmas I've not contacted him........

Had similar at the start of last year .

Customer paid the first 2 bills no problems , he insisted on buying all materials online himself , I tried to talk him out of it but he insisted . When he missed a lot of necessary parts i had to get them from the wholesalers the next day on my account .

When i invoiced for that part of the job he refused to pay unless i submitted an itemised invoice for over 30 parts .

Alarm bells ringing !

To my dismay i submitted the itemised parts list . He responded with a list of defective work and a couple of things i had damaged at his properly , all of which were absolute nonsense !

He wanted said damages knocking off the bill and the rest of the job completing before anymore payments were made (another £2000 worth of work)

Decided he wasn't worth it took my loss of £700 on the chin and walked away .

Good look to the fellow sparks who has to follow on from me . I hope he has a better legal side to him than me and screws this guy over . I have since upped my game and learned a good lesson .

Any customers who want to buy all their own materials , pay lots of cash for discounted tax , have a house full of part finished contracts , won't accept paying in instalments until work is complete are dodgy .

Good questions to ask potentially dodgy customers is "who their previous / current tradesmen are . Chances are you will know one of these people , ring them and find out what the potential client is like .

I have since crossed paths with the spark who worked their previous to me and low and behold he had the same thing done !

 

[telectrix]

Trust me, my future wife is one and she's very proud of the fact and even insisted me calling her Pikey cos she thinks the name given her by her mother is one normally given to a female Alsatian dog!

sheba?

 

[telectrix]

i,ve got no gripe with gypsies, pikeys, travellers, as a whole. only those that try to rip me off, and, of course those bar stewards that broke into and emptied my lock-up, then came back and demolished my home to weigh in the aluminium shell for scrap.

 

[NDG Elecs]

I have only never been fully paid twice in the last eight years. Both times the client has been an old bloke (mid 70s), and both were also going through divorces and were 'at war' with their missus's solicitors. A weird coincidence? I think not, and think in both cases they had developed some kind of siege mentality. Both times the relationship started well, until it came to final payment.

 

[R G]

I have never had a non or short payment fortunately , but I had near miss last year when a customer kept putting me of finishing the work , the job took 18 months from start to finish , and I had to do bits when it suited him , I was sure I was going to get done , but I just played along and in the end I told him the NIC had told me the work has to be finished and signed of in a certain time and that he would be one of the jobs to be visited on the annual inspection , that changed his idea and got him to allow me to finnsih the job and get final payment ...

 

[telectrix]

never try and get between a man and his beer, or a man and his divorce. poor sod has probably suffered for years.