Misleading builder estimate

[SpidersAreShitheads]

We’re having lots of building work done, and the first job - the creation of a new shower room and storage area - has been finished.

The builder gave me an estimate for the electrical work required which was £1500. He made it clear this was provisional as he needed the electrician to provide him with final figures. This £1500 was supposedly to cover the electrics for our new shower room, a new cloakroom with electric heater, and two new kitchens. The builder said he had allowed a “generous” sum for the electrics and was “confident” that it would cover it.

We have a lot of work left to do but we’ve dispensed with the services of this particular builder. Lots of reasons - including his inability to quote accurately. He quoted around £5500 for the shower room (we are VAT-exempt) and without electrics it ended up costing £12k!

We have been waiting for the final invoice which is pretty much just the cost of the electrics for the bathroom that was finished two weeks ago. He’s now sent it through and is saying the electrics for this one bathroom alone come to just over £1500!

Bearing in mind he quoted £1500 for all four rooms, £1500+ for one room seems mental. He is very pissed off about us not using him for the rest of the work so he’s in no mind to be reasonable.

We’ve said it seems very high and although the figures he previously quoted were provisional, he works with this electrician regularly and should have a good idea of cost. We said we’d expect the end figure to be very roughly in line with his estimate. Worth mentioning that our shower room was the simplest of the four rooms - straightforward job, no complications.

He has £1200 of our money but wants us to pay a balance of circa £600 (he’s being petty about retrospective charging for other things, which is fine).

According to the font of all knowledge - Google 😂😂- even if it’s only an estimate, the end cost should be “reasonable”. In other words there shouldn’t be huge unexpected increases.

What can I do? I’m self-employed myself so I’d never look to wriggle out of paying unfairly - but this feels like an inflated invoice.

Ugh, that is long!!! I promise that is actually the short version 😂😂

£1500 is massively low for electrical work. Sorry you are in this position but asking an electrician would have been wiser. Easy to say with hindsight. The builder was clearly wrong and was obviously not wanting to scare you off instructing him by telling you the real costs.

I think the best way is to pay him and then not use him again although if he did a good job that might be short sighted. On conversations and renovations it’s very difficult to estimate. When did he give the estimate as it’s difficult to get contractors and the price has sky rocketed
I’m site managing my own build and I’ve done it many times before but my god is it hard going this time

So if you got the work done to the standard you want just accept it and carry on and finish the project. Just don’t do another one. I do have every sympathy though with regard to costs

Agree that £1500 for all of what is described above in the original quote sounds insanely low. Not knowing what was done with the shower room, it is hard to say what was reasonable- any sense of how long electrician was there? Labour will be majority of cost, so easy to work back and see if day rate is reasonable?

Thank you @Spirallingdownwards.

So it’s a building company - a partnership - that basically offers the full range of work. He was keen for us to use “his” electrician rather than bring in our own.

I’ve never had building work done before so wouldn’t have a clue what’s reasonable. Surely that’s the point of an estimate? There’s literally no point at all if they can just make up numbers that sound good…

I am frustrated that he can give a price of £1500 for four rooms and then charge £1500 for one room. I wouldn’t object if it had been a bit more than originally suggested but this just seems wildly inflated.

The electrician he uses is his next door neighbour and partner’s uncle. The builder is very annoyed about not getting the rest of the work so not sure what bearing this has on the invoice….

Builder should’ve updated you that the cost would be going up before the final invoice and got your sign off on that. Otherwise he’s just pulling figures out the air and forcing you to pay them. To me the estimate shouldn’t go up by more than 20-30%, unless they find major problems, and again, those should be discussed and the increase accounted for before the final invoice. If he didn’t quote correctly that’s between him and the sparkie. You could give 10% over estimate as a goodwill gesture, but why reward his incompetence and bad grace beyond that?

Oh and don’t pay for work that hasn’t been done- 1/4 of the estimate to cover the room done plus 10% goodwill. Unless all the cable have been done to first fix for the other rooms?

@Autumn1990 - estimate was about 3 weeks ago, and I cross-posted with you but no issue getting the electrician.

All of the work was a bit shoddy, although that’s not necessarily the electrical part, it’s the general building.

Examples - when they fitted our vanity unit, the middle shelf needed a cut out to go round the pipe. It wasn’t done - we found the shelf inside the unit just leaning up against the side.

Plastering was poorly finished - photos attached.

Gap around the tap. Wonky toilet seat. Wood in door frame not butted up correctly so big gap left - photo attached.

Builder calculated bathroom panels - told us to buy 43sqm. He did the maths wrong and actually we only needed 18sqm.

He incorrectly measured the width of the room so was 100mm too big for shower tray. Then repeated the same mistake for the width 🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️ it worked out fine but just examples of crappy work and lack of attention.

I’ve already paid £12k instead of £5500 so I feel very pissed off at handing him more money. Also while I completely agree £1500 for all 4 rooms is clearly too low - £1500 for one bathroom also seems very high!

We had our own electrician that we would have preferred to use - I’ve not asked him to do a comparative quote but he was shocked at how much we’ve paid out for the work done. I haven’t told him yet about the proposed £1500 cost but I’ll be seeing him tomorrow.

I probably will just end paying it just to move on, but it’s bloody annoying.

@Labraradabrador - aaargh I wrote out a reply but just lost my post as I’ve got DC bouncing around 🙄

Basically electrician used to turn up and hang around chatting for hours as builder is his nephew.

Also, we would be told that electrician would be there on Thursday and to clear the work area - but then he turned up a day early without telling us so space wasn’t ready for him to work in…and we couldn’t move anything as BT engineer was working in the other room so nowhere to move everything to…. Builder knew the work area was piled high with boxes as he originally told us to “pile the boxes to the ceiling” as access wouldn’t be needed for ages…..only to tell us it needed to be emptied again literally 3 days later.

The whole thing was an absolute shambles.

The finishing is very poor, and i'd worry what he's done that you can't see.

The £1500 sounds high, I hope you guys agree something in the middle.

I do not miss my reno days at all. Good luck with the rest of it !

@SpidersAreShitheads - are these the new type of extension people?

You are being taken for a ride. It shouldn’t cost £1,500 for electrics in just one bathroom. As a guide an entire rewire of a four bedroom two storey house is about £8-£10k. A single story three bedroom house £5k - £7k.

Unless you have gone well overboard with fixtures and fittings and tiles then £12k for a bathroom is bonkers. I am currently building a house and have got my bathrooms for £7k each and that’s with tiles from Mandarin Stone and top end fixings. My en-suite with a £3k bath and Perrin & Rowe fixings is just over £10k.

The quality of work is shoddy.

Did you get a proper quote or was it a verbal about this amount. You really should have got a fixed quote, if you didn't it's a bit difficult. You will be arguing about expectations and quality of work.