UKC

At the beginning of May we called a firm out to repair our fridge freezer. When I initially rang the firm they told me that there was a minimum charge of £55 and they asked me for my debit card number to cover this.

The repair was effected to our satisfaction and I assumed that they would bill me for the balance. However time went by and I was assuming that the £55 had covered the repair in full.

This morning, nearly six months later, I received an invoice for the balance of £120 and a request to pay within 30 days. To take six months to issue an invoice seems a bit long to me.(Although I understand that the "legal" time limit is six years)

Just wondering if many firms are this "lax" in invoicing customers.

Did you not get a price at the time? Normally people doing repairs of anything give you a price first, unless below an already agreed level.

In reply to Philip:

No, because they said that the final amount would not be known until they had done the job, presumably because they did not know how long it would take and what parts were needed.

In reply to mypyrex:

It doesn't surprise me. Our nursery are terrible at invoicing. I think we went without paying for 4 months before they noticed. And then we got an invoice - well it wasn't an invoice so much as a print out of the spreadsheet they use for working out how much you owe (and even that is completely incomprehensible) but the invoice was missing basic information like how to pay etc.

My wife worked for a company that supplied energy and building services to big business. At one point, one of their accounts had over £2 million of uninvoiced work against it to a large supermarket chain! Bonkers!

In reply to mypyrex:

By "at the time" I meant at the time of the repair no the initial booking. When they bloke arrived to fix it, did he not make some funny noises, shuffle about a bit, and tell you it was going to cost X to replace Y due to broken widgets.

In reply to Philip:
>tell you it was going to cost X to replace Y due to broken widgets.
No, I would not necessarily have expected HIM to know what the final cost would be.

In reply to ByEek:


Blimey. It's a bit annoying because with this sort of timescale I think a lot of customers would have forgotten about it.

In my case, after about a month or six weeks-which seems a reasonable invoicing timescale, I assumed that the £55 was the full and final amount and indeed, until today, had forgotten about it.

In reply to mypyrex:

I certainly wouldnt allow any one carry out remedial work without knowing exactly how much I'm likely to be charged.

In reply to mypyrex:


I would. The minimum charge is basically travelling time and maybe half an hour on the job, so should cover most simple jobs. I would expect anyone doing the work to be able to give me an estimate in terms of time, hourly rate and cost of any replacement parts needed for a bigger job.

Does the invoice state that you have already paid £55, does it give a breakdown of time / hourly rate and any replacement parts. Does this match your memory of the work that was carried out?

In reply to The New NickB:


They haven't stated the hourly rate but I intend to ask them.

In reply to mypyrex:

basically they are invoicing you for works that were previously carried out,
however they did not get authorisation to carry out the works.
I would ask them to provide the authorisation (which they cannot)
If they attempt to make an additional charge on your card ask your bank for a charge-back as the monies have not been authorised by you.
If they insist and take you to the small claims court,
they did not have your authorisation to carry-out the repairs to that value.
they should have taken the payment before or as you collected your property.

they do not have a leg to stand on

In reply to mypyrex:

Just strikes me as a bit of a scam, wait 5 or 6 months to invoice, by which time the customer hasn't got a clear memory of what work was done, how long the service tech spent on the job, any parts that may or may not have been replaced.

In reply to The New NickB:


That is what I have been thinking. I just emailed them to ask what their hourly rate is. They rang back to say that it's £30 per hour + VAT. That worked out at a bit over 3 hours which, I have to save, was probably about right. Even so I think it is a bit cheeky to leave the invoice so long that the customer has forgotten the details. Morale: keep a record

Conversely we had a repair done to the oven the other day. I rang a chap who said "£50 plus parts - about £25 - total about £75" He was there the very next day and had done the job in about an hour. No hassle.

In reply to mypyrex:

My local village mechanic regularly takes best part of a year to send me an invoice usually for a car service or changing the winter tyres.

It took 18 months for the bill to arrive for a load of work he did in the garden (levelling, gravel, topsoil etc - he turns his hand to all sorts).

In reply to higherclimbingwales:


That's not always possible. I have customers wanting an exact quote but until you strip the unit you don't know and even then fixing one known problem sometimes highlights a second hidden problem.

In reply to RichardP:

Yes, you can probably screw them.

Alternatively they may be doing an OK job, just a bit lax on the admin front, perhaps they put too much effort into fixing stuff? Obviously they're not as perfect across the board as you are.

We just got invoiced for a job done back in January , the plumber had a family crisis and had to go back to Greece but hey, let's not pay!

In reply to mypyrex:

My energy supplier forgot to charge me for electricity for three years. There was a bit of a glitch in switching suppliers. I supose I ought to have noticed but since they also supply my gas and were sending me bills for that and taking a direct debit every month for that I never really twigged. Anyway at the end of three years they suddenly realised what was hapening and offered to write off two years if I paid the third. Seemed reasonable to me.

In reply to RichardP:

I've currently got a customer like you- we've done the work and invoiced for the work in an honest fashion yet they try to screw us over. Don't you love customers that scam honest trademen..

In reply to Rob Exile Ward:

Hi Rob,
the difference is that you were aware that there were personal issues with your plumber and the invoice would be forthcoming.
Reading the thread mypyrex thought he had paid all outstanding monies and paid the amount agreed at the beginning of the contract. If there were further costs due to unforeseen faults, or other changes these should have been raised prior to the work continuing. it is a basic part of business.

In reply to browndog33:

out of curiosity what do you do for a living?

I'm a 47 year old JIB Approved electrician.
I have been self employed most of my working life.

with any type of work you agree what will be carried out and if there are things that are unexpected these should be raised with the customer, that way everyone is protected