We spent c.60k on renovation work to our house with a builder-cum-project manager. When you analyse the costings for this work up to 4k worth of the charges are potentially spurious (but very difficult to prove). The builder turned out to be very aggressive and generally not very nice but my husband has a professional relationship with his girlfriend so we paid up (plus, as I said, it's very difficult to prove).
Since the works were completed we've had a number of issues. We had to have c. £150 of urgent remedial work to potentially dangerous electrics. We've had to call out an emergency plumber because of blockage in the soil stack in the middle of the night (£150) another £150 to sort out various bathroom leaks. £200 to sort out fireplaces that weren't finished properly (concrete hearth set at two levels, rubbish like that). £400 to fix structural issues with a window they installed which was causing major damp. £200 to seal windows that were installed but not sealed. £200 in odd jobs that needed fixing, a great many favours, and a number of other things that need doing but not urgently. Oh and we'd paid for a full rewire but the builder inexplicably left off the kitchen so that he could classify it as a partial re-wire and by-pass many of the regulations.
We've paid for this stuff because (a) we were at the end of our tether and (b) any snagging was dealt with extremely aggressively by the builder.
I've now had back the results of electrical testing we paid for (£150). Am happy to pay for the actual testing, but the essential (e.g. very dangerous) works add up to another £400 including VAT and there are several hundred pounds more of work that really need doing. I'm so angry that we will basically be looking at another £700 to get works up to scratch that I'm tempted to pursue the electrican (subcontracted by builder) via his professional body. On the other hand I'm 30 weeks pregnant and could do without the stress. We basically don't have this money though, we used up all of our savings funding the above.
What would you do?