Should I have offered cash to wifi engineer?

[DeborahVance]

Hi

I had Openreach out just now as my wifi wasn't working. While he was here I asked about moving the box to inside a cupboard and if it was possible. I said I would be happy to pay, meaning, I would expect to pay officially as it was sort of me changing my mind, thinking we might need to have another appointment

He said you would pay? do you want to do it now? and I said yes.

When he left I thought I wondered if I should have given him some cash. I know officially, no, I shouldn't have, but would you have given him some for fixing it for me?

I would have bunged him some cash, would have probably been cheaper too

If he's in company uniform, and working on company time, then no, because his enquiry asking if you were willing to pay is likely him asking for authority to just charge it to your next monthly bill.

If he wanted paid personally for doing it as a "favour", then he needed to make that clear to you, and come back and do it when he wasn't representing the company.

Surely in order to add it to the next bill he would need to have been clear about what the cost was going to be?

Well you'd think so, yes. It's probably a standard fee.

The fact is though, he left without asking for payment, so if he was expecting you to pay him in cash he surely would have asked for that before he left.

Either he's done it free of charge because he gets salaried anyway and doesn't care about the specifics of individual jobs, or he's assumed you knew this sort of thing normally involves a small standard charge added to the bill.