My builder gave me a list of what he would do with a price....

[PinkChick]

now he's almost finished and there were a few things we added (spotlights that you can tilt as oppsoed to static ones, under wall unit lights, bit of skirting, 3 extra peices of plaster board, extra plaster, extra £100 on radiator..he has now bumped up the fee by £600!!!.."for materials and labour"!!!!..sorry but am i wrong in thinking as he was doing all of these jobs anyway (plaster boarding ceiling, putting in spots etc) that he should be charging anything like this for labour??..the spots were about £8-but he WAS already buying the static ones, the under unit lights were about £8, we bought 3, bit of skirting?..what £10?..extra plaster and plaster board??£60 max??..have now asked for breakdown, letting him know we didnt estimate this as i was checking on prrces all the way through..but am i being unreasonable here?..the job did take longer thn he originally said, but he didnt price me on time, he priced the work and it only ran over due to his staff being slow(he told me this) and the fact he kept popping out to start 2 other jobs off, one day not getting to ME till gone 3.30pm!!!!..he's coming at 4.30 to finish off a few bits but im not happy!

I'd be surprised if he has spoken to his solicitor yet as his solicitor will charge just to write a letter. We tell people we are passing things into the hands of our legal people as a last chance to pay.

He may employ one of these firms of debt collectors who work on a commission. They will just send letters/phone etc. Make sure you keep all copies of correspondance.

will do thankyou for all your advice.

i have just had friends husband round who does joinery to see if he can finish off but when he got here he said the under lights i have on cupboard are dangerous, the electric cable is coming out of the wall, it is then connected to the white wiring from the light with a kind of little tiny box and has duck tape wrapped round and round !!..all these underlight cable are also held in plsce with big clumps of silver duck tape!..he's said they need to come out of a socket on wall, either that or hes bought the wrong lights and these are the type that are normally plugged in on their own and shouldnt be connected!..we are also now wondering about this ring main he fitted as he did NOT remove flooring in either of understairs cupboards in order to reach fuse box?????

Ask the builder if he's got building regs approval for the electrical work (or if he's a "competent person" under the regs, for the "certificate of completion")

By the sound of it the answer will be no to either question! If he starts making things difficult you can always threaten to contact Building Control, I'm sure they'd be very interested in the illegal electrical work he's carried out...

more info on BR for electrical changes [[http://www.stroud.gov.uk/docs/planning/electrical_regulations.asp here]

damn missed a ]

here

I don't know much about electrics but I do know as Betsy has poited out that the regs have got a lot stricter recently. We only have 1 person on our firm who can do electrics.

thanks BEtsyBoop and IOS, will look into that..i havent heard back since i emailed him last night

is it unusual to have not had any kind of response from builder since i sent email?, is he now just waiting for me to go abck to him with figure??id have thought he would have acknowledged it?? or maybe not