Paid a solicitor £300 to do some work. That was the estimate. Terms and conditions of work state that if they are unable to do the work within the fee they will let the client know and rework the quote. The client will not be liable for any additional fees unless they sign off on the new quote.
Last week I received a bill for £750, meaning they are charging £450 on top of the initial £300. I go on mat leave soon, and have carefully budgeted for the next 12-18 months. Had we known it would cost £750, we would have either re evaluated what we had asked of them, or not proceeded with the work.
At present they have come back to me and said it is difficult to cost things but not much else. I don't know what to say to them. I wonder if they will offer a payment plan or a discount of 10% or something, but neither of those things change the fact we would have likely changed course had we known about the fees increasing. They also took a long time to do the work, longer than planned. This meant we had to have extra phone calls/emails to update them on things that wouldn't have been necessary had they completed the work earlier. I was chasing them before lockdown started, so it isnt purely covid related either.
Does anyone have any suggestions of what to go back to them with? I am not a CFer, but genuinely would not have proceeded had they kept me informed of the rising costs. I don't know what to do.