Aibu to not want to pay the full amount?

[gingerginger2]

We had a quote for some work in our garden, which was £1300. we agreed to it, mainly through inexperience I think.

The Gardner’s came to do the work today and it took 3 of them 4 hours.

Given that materials could be bought for £300, aibu to not want to pay them £300 each for a half day?

I‘ve questioned the invoice and they said they estimated it would take a day, and they only quite by days.

We did agree to the quote. But it feels like a total rip off.

The work they did is ok. Sufficient. No above and beyond, just sufficient.

If they haven’t completed what you asked get them to come back. They quoted you for the complete job not to leave a few bits unfinished.

Next time you ask for a quote, you can ask what sort of hourly rate they use for their calculations.

I get my hedge cut every year, costs £400, it takes 3 guys around 2-3 hours. They work like demons, bring a shredder/cutter thing, take away all the chopped off bits

Have been told by many people I pay too much, it's crazy etc

One of my neighbours saud he could do it for half the money, it took him 2 days, it was wonky, and I needed to get rid off all the cuttings myself.

Sounds like you dealt with professionals, and if it's too expensive, choose different people next time!

Question though: if you would not have known they were that quick, and would have just seen the result, would you have been happy?

Would prefer they worked slowly? Fair play to them as they probably worked really hard and full on to get it done quick.

When picking tradesmen OP the ones that can do it the soonest normally means the ones with the least work because they offer poorest quality for money 😂

You'd be a rubbish facilities manager.

they could do it soonest.

There’ll be a reason for that. Good tradesmen have full diaries.

I would definitely snag the remaining bits and have them do it within the job. Leaving the slabs up is not on.

You are going to need to employ tradespeople as some point throughout your life though.

What you need to do in future, is not just go for the person who can come soonest.

My DH has a long waiting list - usually 2/3 months - and all his work comes from hearsay and he has built an amazing reputation over the past 15+ years. He never gets cancellations and runs things to within a millimetre of perfection.

I hope you find someone like this in future. They are out there and are worth their weight in gold.

You would seriously quote for a job, and then offer a discount because you got it done faster? And I assume, would also expect to be paid more, if it took you longer? That's not how it works.

Oh I think that is a lot for some raised beds and an unfinished job. I think if they were experienced and at that price they should be able to estimate whether you had enough soil.

I would be asking them to finish it and and any extra soil or work would be included in the quote.

It’s a tough lesson but sometimes you have to be quite specific in what you expect and want. I suspect you’ve paid a premium for quick work rather than quality.

Perhaps the reason they could do it fastest is because they are expensive and sloppy.

So then it transpires that you didn't supply them with enough topsoil. They worked with what you had provided them with - it's not their fault they're only 2/3 filled! How on earth could you blame them for that?!

Good grief.

You paid for them to do a specific job. It is irrelevant whether it took them 2 minutes or 200 years: you were paying for the result.

If the end result was not what you asked for, you're well within your rights to ask them to finish it properly.

The fact that you charge your clients by the hour is completely and utterly irrelevant.

If you find it easier to work on hourly rates, you need to hire people on that basis.

Why is leaving the slabs up not on. The slabs had to be removed to make the raised beds. The OP would have liked them relaid elsewhere in the garden but if this wasnt in the job description then they are perfectly within their rights to leave them.

If you thought £1300 was too much for the job then you should have got another quote.
The time taken is irrelevant. The quote was for the job. The job is done. Don't start accusing them of ripping you off because they were efficient and lucky enough to not encounter problems.

I agree that you've been overcharged. And I agree that you haven't had value for money. But I think that you probably have to pay it. BUT - bear in mind that they quoted for 3 days-worth of effort, and they actually put in 1.5 days-worth. There may be a conversation to be had about getting some additional work done.

Also, can you find their original email/letter/whatever saying what it would cost and how long it would take? Is it described as an estimate (non-binding) or a quotation (binding)?

It sucks to be on the wrong end of this, I know. But bear in mind that they will also probably be absorbing the costs of other jobs that have massively overrun. That's the issue with payment by outcome, rather than time and materials - if things go well then you are probably, perversely, going to be disgruntled.

if i‘d Known I was paying them for a full day regardless

You didn't pay them for a day, you paid for a JOB. Why are you unable to understand how this works?!

YANBU. We had a quite fairly similar situation a few years ago. Our garden needed a massive tidy up/weeding. We were quoted several hundred pounds for two men to spend the whole day gardening. Three men showed up, and were finished in 3 hours. Discovered after that they had literally just snapped off the weeds around ground level rather than digging them up, so our garden was pretty much back to how it had been within a couple of weeks. I think that it's a common rip-off.

For perspective, our current gardener is £20 per hour, so we pretty much could have had him in all day for several days for what the other "gardeners" charged. He also weeds properly.

So, if there had been some unforeseen issues and it had taken them longer than your perceived but not quoted hourly rate you’d be offering them extra?

Obviously you are meant to negotiate a price before the work is done but that doesn’t mean you can’t, at least, try to negotiate afterwards.

Making raised beds is hardly difficult. I wouldn’t want to pay anyone £83 per hour to make them.

TBH Chances are that two out of the three of them will receive a pittance and the lead guy will receive the rest.

@Sedona123 that sounds more like they didn’t work according to spec? A tradesmen can quote xdays for x amount of men, do it quicker but still have the same labour costs, breaking things off instead of removing them as agreed is wrong if it wasn’t what was agreed.

If the other quotes were similar then I don't think you have been ripped off, although £1300 does sound a lot if the materials were only £300.

I would definitely insist they complete it as agreed before you pay though. It would probably have been a lot cheaper to provide the materials yourself and get a gardener or handyman to do the work.

I recently refused to pay a quote agreed by an elderly relative even though the work completed was fine. The quote was an absolute rip off and the company had clearly taken advantage. I offered to pay them less than half of what had been agreed.

It's shit but a lesson learned.

They didn't quote you on an hourly rate they quoted you a price for a job and they completed the job to a satisfactory standard therefore u have to pay.

My husband got some gardener to cut bushes right down to the stump at the side of the house for more than £100 and they guy was done in about 90mins. That's what he agreed so he had to pay.

These guys are experienced with proper tools so something that u expect to take longer doesn't for them.

Wow! I'm missing a trick here. I do gardening, but only charge £10 an hour and mostly do weeding, digging over beds and light hedge cutting and grass cutting.
Also, depending on the job, you also have the weather to contend with.
Some weeks you could have no work at all, so yes, some trades people do charge a lot of money per job.
Just be thankful they weren't dodgy Dave from the traveler site who gives an estimate and triples it with threats!

My very good builder friend advises me that jobs like these are always roughly worked out on the basis that 50% of the cost covers materials and 50% covers labour. Broadly speaking.

Too late now but worth bearing in mind in future.

I think the price you paid was OK. Not particularly expensive but not cheap either, obviously.

If the company had sent two people the job would have taken all day, the outcome would be the same, the coat would be the same.You would be happy.

They sent three. The outcome and the cost were the same. You are not happy.

I had a tree surgeon round to lop off and dispose of some branches. It took him less than 30 minutes, he charged £160. But it was a job I could not have done myself, or wanted to. Sometimes you have to suck it up and accept that you are paying someone for a SKILL as well as for their time.

I would check their VAT status. For those rates and that size of business, i would expect the business to be VAT-registered. If not, I would ask HMRC to investigate.