Electrical Work

[elay5]

Final bill recieved for electrical works and its like a nightmare, 11k there abouts.....having a row with electrician but he is defending his bill for the amount of work done

"For a property of your size and the amount that you have installed, that is a correct price. I can show you how much it would have worked out at a price per point system. You have to take into consideration you have 90 downlights installed, 30 double sockets, half a dozen USB sockets, all the fused Spurs, fans, isolators, dimmers, alarms etc"

The property is a 4 bed about 2000 sq feet, its been a total renovation etc but 11k arghhh

He charges 250 a day plus VAT and his sidekick is 175 a day

[YorkshireTea86]

How much was the quote for? Did you make any changes part way? Does the quote detail what was included?
Sorry i gave no idea if this is waynoit or not and I'd imagine that also depends on where in the country you are.

[Humptynumpty02]

We are similar sized house, we recently had 40 downlighters installed plus various other things bit nowhere near what you've had done and we paid £4.4k we are in Surrey. Your bill doesn't seem too bad tbh.

[badgercat]

Did you not discuss prices at all ? Not even a ballpark ?

[ShortLass]

I'm doing a project at the moment and electricians are more expensive than people like plumbers. I've also had issues with my electrician invoicing for a job after the event and it being more than I expected. I have had words

The cost of putting in spot lights should be £40-50 per spot. I was told they are over charging if it is more than this.

You've had a lot of work done, so maybe the bill is justifiable. But as he has already done the work, it will be very difficult to argue the point unless you can identify anywhere he has over-charged.

I'm surprised an electrician would carry out £11k of work without taking any interim payment, or having any agreed quote ahead of time.

Perhaps a police request saying: this is actually much more than I was expecting; I would appreciate a run down of the individual costs so I can see where my money has been spent.

Good luck

[ShortLass]

*polite
(not police)

[wowfudge]

Did you not have a quote?

[whatsthecomingoverthehill]

Is that just labour or does it include materials?

[HipsterHunter]

£11k? Wowzers. Does that include materials?

[HipsterHunter]

If that is just material is means he was on site with his side kick for 25 days / five weeks. That is a lot.

[UnconventionalWarfare]

I can easily see a bill of 11k including the vat for all that.

[Buckinghambae]

We upgraded the electrics on our new build and dealt directly with our electrician.

47 extra spots, alarm, wired for speakers throughout (though kit is coming from a separate installer), upgraded switches, additional 10 plugs, upped the supply for pyro oven, and some poncy wiring for our lighting.

All told £6.5k so given that he got to do it on top of the existing stuff and only had to intercept at first fix, your bill isn't surprising me.

[Buckinghambae]

Though I adore my electrician, I left him to choose which plugs to upgrade and which ones to leave plain white and I would not have disagreed with a single choice. I also have random conversations about longer term and he has made things easier for me to upgrade later. I.e. I mentioned wanting to put a waste disposal in when we had recovered from the initial house bill and so he doubled up the under sink power without me asking.

Less fun if they aren't so sweet!

[elay5]

Bill includes materials, labour and VAT

Mistake I made is that we didnt discuss a proper quote, I initially thought he would just sign of work my builder did but to meet deadlines, he started doing the work to take the load of builder and to make sure it was done right

His explanation is that the chrome lights wife picked are more expensive than white ones, dimmers all over the house and he basically rewired 4 bedrooms upstairs and 3 bathrooms, all with spotlights and dimmers and track lights bar one bathroom

He did the living room and dining room, kitchen and utility room and the hallway upstairs and downstairs

I feel like a total idiot not getting an initial quote, for some reason I thought it would be a 5k job arghhhh talk about a cock up on my part

[elay5]

And I am in St Albans hertfordshire area

[whatsthecomingoverthehill]

OK, well it still seems a bit on the expensive side, but without VAT it is £9.2k. There could be a few grand on materials, particularly if the spotlights were expensive ones (and there are a lot of them). So it's not sounding as bad. Not sure how far you would get at small claims court if it came to it. It's also a big risk for him to do all this work without proper authorisation.

[unfortunateevents]

It sounds as if you didn't have a proper handle on what each of the trades were doing. I'm not sure why you thought the builder would be doing LX work if you had also employed an electrician? Have you been employing all the trades separately? Normally, if the builder was the main contractor he should have provided an overall quote including LX, carpentry, flooring etc etc. and sub-contracted out to trades so I am assuming that you have employed everyone separately and are project managing yourself. Having said that, when you first agreed to the LX work, did you really just get a day rate without any idea of how much work was involved? Did you not at any point look at the cost of the lights etc e.g. when your wife chose the downlighter, did neither she nor the LX consider the unit cost?

The total sounds pretty high but without separating the materials from labour, it's difficult to say if it is out of line. For instance, downlighters might have cost anything from a couple of pounds each to maybe £40. So ninety of them might have cost hundreds or up to £3k!

I actually think that the LX probably has bought the materials you requested and done an amount of work to justify this total and you unfortunately just haven't been sufficiently on the ball so have ended up with a shock.

[elay5]

Yes unfortunate events I think you are right, there was a lot of work done on the house if am honest, its just probably me not understanding how the costs could sky rocket, this is the breakdown

Materials 3500
Labour 5475

Final bill for both 1st and 2nd fix

[Ontheboardwalk]

How many days did they spend on your property?

With VAT day rate for both of the workers combined is just over £500. Looks like they've charged just over 10 days for the two of them. Does that sound right?

[HipsterHunter]

When it is broken down into mat and labor excl VAT it really doesn't seem that high for the amount of work.

Ouchy puchy bill and the electrician should have kept you a bit more informed on costs.

[elay5]

Yes 10 days sound about right, he is still going to come round to finish up some work because he waiting on the painters etc

[Ontheboardwalk]

Thinking about it though it does seem a bit OTT if both him and his side kick were on site for the all of the 10 days. Was it truly a two man (20 day equivalent) job?

[elay5]

At the end or in June we were working to a tight deadline to finish all work before or the bulk of work before the 30th of June

In terms of quantity of work, I am not so sure, is the total rewiring of a house, installation of down lights etc and modernisation a very intensive job, is it a five day job?

[UnconventionalWarfare]

For what you say you have had done its not far off the mark 10 days for two of them especially if other trades are roaming about in the way doesnt sound bad