Invoice for electrical work that never happened.

[jasminethecat]

Around a month ago I was without power and needed an electrician to come out as a matter of urgency. I rang Electrician A and left a message. I then rang Electrician B, who answered and said they could come out the next day, but that I would need to pay a deposit as they get a lot of cancellations. I didn’t have my card to hand to pay immediately over the phone, so he said that I would need to pay by the end of the day and e-mailed me an invoice. I thanked him and rang off.

Almost immediately after that call, I received a call back from Electrician A, who said he could come over right away. I then replied to Electrician B’s e-mailed invoice, explaining that I had found an electrician who could come over immediately, and would not longer require their services. This was just over 1 hour after my phone conversation with them.

I assumed that given I had not paid a deposit as per Electrician B’s requirements to book them, my dealings with them were now over.

Today, however, I received another invoice from them.

I’m hoping it’s an admin error, but am also worried that they think I still owe them the deposit for the ‘booking’ I made over the phone? I don’t, do I?

Tell them they have never done any work for you. This doesn’t carry water legally in any way

Thank you! It’s an invoice for over £100, which I just don’t have right now, really made me panic this evening.

I don’t think they’ll be able to enforce it, but they specifically said they take a deposit because people keep cancelling… and then you cancelled. So if you’d paid the deposit at the time I imagine they wouldn’t want to refund it, so they probably are trying to claim you owe it, rather than it being an admin error.

Yes I agree with you it’s not great that I cancelled, and if I had paid the deposit then it’s right they should keep it, as that’s the point of a deposit. But I didn’t pay it, and so I didn’t consider it a firm booking. And it only took me about 80 minutes to get back to them to say no thank you out of courtesy, so hardly like I kept them hanging.

Also, the guy on the phone actually said “think it over”, implying I still had not committed yet, although I obviously can’t prove he said that, and I expect he’ll deny it.

It might be automatic, if they raised it on accounting software for example it may be set up to remind after a set period of time automatically.

Actually I just went through my phone records- it was under an hour between my call to them and my e-mail to cancel. I called at 14:52, they e-mailed the invoice at 15:25 and I replied just 5 minutes later at 15:30.

They really can’t seriously have a case to make me pay can they?

Thank you, I will hope this is the case 🤞

I've never heard of a workmen asking for a deposit before doing a job. I'd say no and find someone else.

I did find somebody luckily, and he fixed the issue that same day.

You have the legal right to cancel. There is an exemption for emergency work but that’s only if the work has been started AND you were informed of your cancellation rights

Given a whole month has gone by between the first and second invoice, I would assume an admin error, automatically raised by accounting software maybe.