Hi,

I hired a builder to do some work in my flat. The final invoice he sent me was, by my calculations, way too high, so I sent him an email asking him for more details and could he please tie it back to the original quote, which he claimed is not possible. There were lots of emails exchanged, he sent me some revised figures, and the last invoice he sent me was closer to what I calculated I owe him. So I questioned him about that one final time (I mean, all he has to do was tie it back to the quote, I don't know why he can't do that), and he is now saying "Fine, pay what you think you owe me, and I'm going to issue you with another invoice for works that I didn't charge for."

Does he have the right to do that? If he has, is there some protection in the law that would stop him demanding, say, £1000 to put one shelf up? Can he charge me for the time spend in email exchanges regarding clarification about hist first invoice?

Is there a legal process that he has to follow to get me to pay?

Can I contest the invoice? Is there a legal process that I need to follow to contest it (I haven't received it yet).

Thanks in advance for any help.

I assume that you obtained a quote and then added other jobs without agreeing a price.

Please confirm if this is correct.

Then, please list these extra jobs and how much he wants to charge, just to have an idea about how unreasonable the prices are.

Some jobs seem easy enough but carry a big price because of the equipment needed.

For example, drilling a 4 inch hole in a wall is easy enough and takes a few minutes, but the diamond core and clutched drill needed to do that are very expensive and builders need to get their money back overtime, so it's not unusual to charge up to £100 to fit a vent even though it only takes 15 minutes.

No, that's not what happened. It's a bit more complicated than that. It literally is what I said. I could not make sense of his figures, I asked him for clarification, he was not willing or able to tie back his invoice to the quote (surely that's not an unreasonable thing to ask for????), there were lots of emails exchanges, he said I was being picky about the wording when I tried to quote some things he said, and he was trying - as a see it - to charge me for things that I shouldn't be charged for.

What I mean by that is this: I first got a quote that included a quoted amount to replace the kitchen floor with laminate or lino. I also asked him for a (separate) quote for putting down reclaimed wood flooring. This was sent to me with the words "I have added the cost of reclaimed flooring installation at the end", came in a document called something like "…including reclaimed floor installation", and clearly said ("kitchen: installation of reclaimed flooring"). So I thought that it was a quote for, you know, putting down reclaimed wood flooring.

Now in the end, I chose lino, and that's what got installed. So I thought that the quote for reclaimed wood would not be counted as part of the final cost, but he says that actually, he is counting it, because - he told me as part of the email exchange to clarify his figures - it's for lino flooring installation. This was quoted as (L) for the kitchen + (M) for the hallway and (N) for the bathroom, and L was a higher amount than the original amount quoted for lino. Since I thought this referred to reclaimed wood flooring, that made absolute sense to me. But apparently, no, it was for lino, and the higher cost for the kitchen is because it's a larger area, since it involves the hallway and the bathroom…which I would absolutely agree with if hallway and bathroom didn't carry their own cost. So, unless there's something blindingly obvious that I'm not seeing (which IS possible), that didn't make sense to me.

I can send you the long version if you'd like, it's not worth putting on line.

Anyway, we did agree in an amount, I've paid it, still have not received the additional invoice for works not charged for, and no idea what these will be.

I'm going to try and get legal advice tomorrow, just in case.

Anyway, thanks for replying. If/ when he does send the additional invoice, I'll update.

All is extremely confusing, I can't make up what was agreed and what not.

In any case it appears that instead of fitting reclaimed wood you decided to go for lino but didn't agree a price.

Not clear.