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Customer won't pay for extra material

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  • 25-02-2017 1:45pm
    #1
    scuderia
    Closed Accounts Posts: 87 ✭✭


    Hi

    My friend is a sole trader and recently agreed to do a house renovation job for a customer. The price for everything was agreed by word of mouth and my friend go under way with the job.

    The customer then decides to get more expensive tiles and more expensive french doors instead of the ones included in the initial price. My friend informs the customer by word of mouth that this will cost more. The customer agrees and my friend sources the doors and tiles. Once the doors have been put in and tiles put on the wall, the customer pretends that the price is the original price despite my friend informing them that it will cost extra for these particular items before he even sourced them. They are refusing to agree to pay extra for the doors and tiles.

    He is refusing to complete the rest of the job until they inform him that they will pay for the extra items once everything is complete.

    He has written up an agreement stating what exactly he must complete and what exactly the customer owes him for that, and has brought it to the customer to sign before finishing any other work in their house.

    What right does my friend have here? Could anyone help here please?

    Many thanks


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    #2
    dudara
    Registered Users Posts: 33,518 ✭✭✭✭dudara


    Moved to E&BM as this is a business matter, not a consumer issue.

    dudara


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    #3
    henryporter
    Registered Users Posts: 2,089 ✭✭✭henryporter


    Contract should be before the fact, not after. He has little choice but to learn from his mistake and move on.


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    #4
    antoinolachtnai
    Registered Users Posts: 9,793 ✭✭✭antoinolachtnai


    Your friend has rights here. He is entitled to be paid for the work he has done, and the materials he has supplied, but the problem is how he is going to assert these rights.

    A lot hinges in practice on whetehr he has a deposit for the job.

    He needs to find some way to resolve this without it involving Court. Even if there were a twenty-page contract this would be the case.

    One last-resort option he has is to take back the doors and possibly other fittings and sell them to defray his costs if there is no agreement to pay for them. This is not a straightforward thing to do but it will send a clear message as a last resort.

    It is important to keep the whole thing good-humoured.

    The other side will probably relent in the end and he needs not to create a poisonous atmosphere about the whole thing, so that he can go back on-site to complete without a lot of rancour.

    He does need to try to understand the other side's position too. It may well be that they just don't have any money to pay. If this is the case, then he needs to figure out how he can defer payment.


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