To think that trades people adding extra charges to the invoice once the job is completed is cheeky fuckery?

[SleepFreeZone]

It’s happened to us so many times even when we have expressly asked them not to do it, and to run it past us first for us to okay it.

Perhaps we’ve just had bad luck but we’ve had two separate decorators try and hit us with extras. A plumber for some random skip charge which was definitely a swizz as we caught him out but he still tried to slam us for an extra £250.

Now we have a building company wanting £1600 in extra carpentry costs! We are going to sit down and discuss it with them next week but FFS is this just common place or have we been really unlucky with our choice of tradespeople?

It depends... did you get firm written quotes or were they estimates? Did it say anything in the small print about extra expenses? Did they ask if you wanted a skip or super-special carpentry?

I know its annoying but it happens sometimes. They basically look at a job and giving a quote for they know will have to be done but once you start ripping cupboards out of whatever they might come across problems than mean extra time and money to rectify. I agree its cheeky af to just hand over an invoice of a new amount without speaking to you first and letting you know what the extra cost is for.
My DH has it sometimes with his work (a tiler) gives a quote for a bathroom floor but then once he's ripped up old tiles the floor might not be level meaning he has to buy more adhesive to pack it out and level it before he can tile but he will always let them customer know and the issue before buying more materials, he especially has to do this as most of his work is though insurance so they want to know exactly where and why extra money is spent.
Builders can take the piss though and my DH knows a plumber who will sometimes make extra work for himself to get more money out of it but not all tradesman are cf! My DH also knows a lot of people who do the extra work for barely anything - like they either charge for their labour or the materials, whichever is cheaper, depending on what the extra work involves.

If you have signed a fixed price contract and haven't had any variance (moving or changing things) then the price paid should be the same as the contract. Basically the builder will have put a contingency into his price to cover his risk of the unexpected. If it's a quote you've been given that hasn't gone into detail then it's trickier ground.

I have a portfolio of rental properties which have all been knackered when I've bought them and done them up to rent them out and so am a good customer for builders and trades and I can still struggle for good service.