We got flooded back in September 2023. Insurance sorted everything and we had a generally OK experience in the end. Some of the work required a builder to come in - replace floors, walls, do general carpentry. I built up a great relationship with the builder and decided to contract them to make some minor alterations - replace a stud wall with a block one & insulate 3 walls in our garage which I agreed to pay for outside of the insurance claim. During construction we were in contact with them 2-3 times a week by phone or email. They were onsite for 3 months in total.
All signed off in June 2024 with a slight hiccup in that our front door needed to have 5mm chopped off the lower edge for it to open as they'd mis-calculated the height of the new floor. Seemed ok at the time & we were planning on getting a new door at some point. Had no further contact until...
Come November and it rapidly transpired that the 5mm was the difference between a door that sealed and a door with a 5mm gap under it that you could see through. So called insurer to arrange a site visit by the builder. Builder came out, inspected door, agreed nothing could be done. Went away.
December 20th I receive a small claims summons. No forewarning, no email or phone call, nothing. Just a summons. Addressed to me, but not at our house, instead, to the woods 300m away across a field! A woods that doesn't have postal address but by some fluke Gary the postman recognised the letter was for me and redirected it.
In the summons they claim they sent invoices to me by email and post in September, November and December which I've not seen. Presumably the post went to the badgers, squirrels & deer in the woods and the emails I've no idea: they're not anywhere in my inbox, junk or deleted items, or in my ISP's spam filters.
I went through mediation requesting a discount for the stress of having a summons issued to me. During which they claimed to have sent all correspondence to the same address as supplied by my insurer. From the address on the summons this is demonstrably untrue - we have emails from them with our correct address on. They declined any offer and were clearly negotiating in bad faith.
I've written to them without prejudice and got this garbled rambling reply that could be from ChatGPT, but is more Poundland magic 8-ball. Again they deny sending anything to the woods, despite me holding in my hand HMCTS letters to the contrary. They also deny there's a problem with the door & are blaming me for specifying the wrong flooring. Flooring that is 1mm lower than the original.
Since they've now put me in a bad mood I've been around snagging and have a list of deficiencies in the work to counter their claim. I've their correctly addressed other correspondence, the incorrectly addressed summons, I've requested through a SAR call logs from by phone provider. I'm just wondering if I should engage a solicitor, fight them myself or just pay up and accept they're halfwits.
You may have legal expenses cover with your house insurance. That would be my first call.
How much money is being disputed?
Was all the other work they did for you satisfactory, and it's just the door you're not happy with?
Have you paid them anything?
Courts don't like it when people rush into litigation - the fact this summons is demonstrably the first you've herd of it is good for you...
You should have had a final (formal) letter before action from them, giving you 30 days to pay before they file against you....
I'd suggest you take advice, but that alone should be enough to put the brakes on with the court case whilst some facts are established, possibly even have the case 'stayed' (put on hold) or struck out if they are telling porkies about not sending invoices and final letters to the wrong place.
Aside from home legal help if you have it, give the court clerk a call and see what they say, courts really don't like 'abuse of process'.
I'm just wondering if I should engage a solicitor, fight them myself or just pay up and accept they're halfwits
Sorry to be blunt here but if you are going to fight them yourself you will need to rehearse a slightly more coherent argument. I've read your post a couple of times and still don't really understand what the actual issue is, who is taking you to the court and what you were meant to have paid for that you didn't.
That's a lot of words. What are they invoicing you / claiming against you for? What does the gap under the door have to do with anything? Are you refusing to pay them for three months' work due to something being a couple of mil out?
Also,
How do you address something to "the woods"? How can they be onsite for three months and not know where you live? That's truly bizarre.
All signed off in June 2024...
Come November and it rapidly transpired
This must be some usage of the word "rapid" of which I was previously unaware.
There's a key point missing from this: why are they trying to take you to court in the first place? You said that everything was signed off in June last year so presumably you've paid them. What more do they want?
I'm not entirely following, but is this part of the original insurance claim?
Ask your insurer to deal with it if so.
If part of your extra work consider legal advice, in either case talk to the court.
Beware of the incorrect address, that's setting my Spidey sense off 🤔
Small claims are designed to avoid lawyers so contact the courts directly to explain what's happening if you feel confident
Courts don't like it when people rush into litigation - the fact this summons is demonstrably the first you've herd of it is good for you...
Courts also don't like it when someone gets a summons for a missing invoice which can be speedily solved by paying the invoice but instead go through a process of counter-claiming for issues which they never raised with the supplier, and waste mediators time by asking for stuff like "a discount for stress because they didn't pay a bill and got a summons!"
It's always quite hard to prove a negative, but if they were correctly addressed the versions put in the post will be assumed to be delivered if there's some record of posting unless the recipient can convince the court they probably weren't.
They declined any offer and were clearly negotiating in bad faith.
Presumably they didn't decline any offer - they would have accepted the offer of you paying in full (perhaps including costs)? That's not negotiating in bad faith, its just sticking to their claim. Your issue was you didn't make them an acceptable offer. I'd suggest you've probably approached the mediation badly if you were hoping that you owed someone £xxxx, hadn't paid it (perhaps because you thought they hadn't invoiced you for 5+ months!) and then would get a discount when the only time you did engage with them was in response to a summons.
a slight hiccup in that our front door needed to have 5mm chopped off the lower edge for it to open as they'd mis-calculated the height of the new floor
They also deny there's a problem with the door & are blaming me for specifying the wrong flooring. Flooring that is 1mm lower than the original.
If the floor is 1mm lower, why did anything need cut off the door?
I'm just wondering if I should engage a solicitor, fight them myself or just pay up and accept they're halfwits.
What's your basis for defending the claim? You don't need a solicitor for small claims but that doesn't mean if you have spurious arguments that you will "win". If you were in any way stressed from receiving a summons, how are you going to find facing the other party in court? Even if you did win (or perhaps at best get some reduction in cost for the strip of draft excluder your door needs ;-)) it will be insignificant compared to the cost of a solicitor - you can not recover your legal fees in small claims.
I've written to them without prejudice and got this garbled rambling reply that could be from ChatGPT, but is more Poundland magic 8-ball.
You didn't share the content - usually ChatGPT is not garbled and whilst verbose isn't particularly rambling (whereas I would say your OP if it is representative of your style is far from clear and concise). Was it from a solicitor or direct from the builder?
If you go to court practice the story a few times. I’m lost.
Can you explain clearly who you owe money to and why? Is it from work in June?
If you go to court practice the story a few times. I’m lost.
Can you explain clearly who you owe money to and why? Is it from work in June?
Yeah, I must say I had to read to OP a few times to try to figure out what was going on... and i'm still not really clear, I just interpreted it as best I could based on what was written...
Don't write official comms like that - be 100% objective with zero fluff.
Also you should note that you cannot claim, or counter claim for 'hurt feelings' in the lower courts...stick to facts and objective losses, etc. lest you want to get off on a bad foot with the judge and court staff.
'Small claims' or whatever it's called these days are not social workers - they are just there to arbitrate whether 'party X' owes 'party Y' money, or not, and than enforce that.
In my experience the judge in a Moneyclaim case will regard customers as victims and businesses as scoundrels. If you present your case calmly and consistently (and assuming you've entered a counterclaim) you'll be fine.
That’s all good feedback, thanks.
The claim is for work done in addition to the insurance work. Extra stuff that we wanted to do and wouldn’t mind paying for while the opportunity was there.
House was warm until November when the weather got colder and our newly insulated hallway started demanding more heating than in previous years. Likewise the now insulated garage was warmer apart from all the plug sockets which now drip with condensation as they’ve failed to seal the socket boxes properly. Stuff you couldn’t tell were issues in June but became apparent in late autumn.
The door issue came about as they made some incorrect assumptions about the height of floating floor they were installing and the floor finishing material that was going to be applied. Somehow the new wooden floor necessitated the door being raised up 12mm on its hinges and then having an additional 5mm looped off the bottom in order to close.
Between June and December they sent nothing to me. Or rather, I received nothing as I assume they were sending letters to the woods down the road.
I’ll call the court and my insurance company as I’ve legal cover.
The claim is for work done in addition to the insurance work. Extra stuff that we wanted to do and wouldn’t mind paying for while the opportunity was there.
I'm no nearer I'm afraid.
Was the work done? Did you pay for it?
Before you call anyone I'd make sure you had your story straight.
Sounds like the work was done, really badly and the bills were sent to the hundred acre woods and Winnie didn't pay?
Work was done, never received an invoice asking for payment. Or an email. Or a phone call. Got summons instead. Addressed to woods elsewhere.
Work was done, never received an invoice asking for payment. Or an email. Or a phone call. Got summons instead. Addressed to woods elsewhere.
ok so the obvious questions are:
work was done in June, until October you were happy. Why did you not think it was odd you had not received an invoice?
Having then eventually received an invoice (regardless of the address being wrong) why 4 months later have you still not paid the invoice? Why are you introducing new faults to object about - even in this thread you’ve added an issue about sockets.
how have you notified the supplier about your perceived breach of contract with door and socket faults?
what resolution do you want given there is some dissatisfaction with some of the work?. Do you think the court is going to say you do not need to pay a penny?
OP we are trying to help. I might even sympathise. But are you saying “you didn’t pay in June as you were still waiting for the invoice in December? By the time the summons arrived you were no longer happy with the work. At mediation you declined to pay the full amount due to stress and issues with the door?”
ok so the obvious questions are:
... how do you send a letter to a forest?
ok so the obvious questions are:
... how do you send a letter to a forest?
To be fair you can send a letter anywhere by putting an address on it, regardless of whether it's a real one - there's no address autocorrect. We rely on the letter sender using the correct address. His point is that they didn't get the address correct on the summons so he assumes they didn't with the invoices.
ok so the obvious questions are:
... how do you send a letter to a forest?
that’s probably very easy - as reeksy says sticking an address on the envelope is easy. Delivering it is the hard part!
but it’s very likely the invoice and summons were not sent by the same person. The wrong address may well be an autocomplete error from a postcode lookup.
So, you didn't pay the bill, so your defence for not paying should be based on breach of contract, for unsatisfactory work?
Did you inform them that you wouldn't pay until the sub-standard works were corrected, and can you prove that? Could get messy if not and you could have played it better, but you really need to get a concise timeline of who/what/where/when.
So did you pay up?
So if you had received the invoice in June/July, would you have paid it in full at that point, or some of it, or none of it?
The idea that you would have works 'finished' in June 2024 but not be wondering where the bill was in December is stretching it a bit. Even someone as disorganised as me would be chasing the builder significantly earlier than this, even if I just wanted additional snagging sorted.
Asking for a discount for hurt feelings over the summons and coming up with a list of hitherto-unmentioned issues seems to be pushing things a bit.
Gary is in fact an elf and the woods in question are the North Pole. The letter is actually addressed to Father Christmas, The Woods instead of Father Christmas, the North Pole (global warming innit). Some stupid elf has not made the connection but Gary is smarter than the average elf and the summons is in fact a demand for presents that were not supplied.
You are Father Christmas and I claim my £5 (correctly addressed invoice en route!)
So if you had received the invoice in June/July, would you have paid it in full at that point, or some of it, or none of it?
The idea that you would have works 'finished' in June 2024 but not be wondering where the bill was in December is stretching it a bit. Even someone as disorganised as me would be chasing the builder significantly earlier than this, even if I just wanted additional snagging sorted.
Surely when the builder pops round in November this might have cropped up as a topic for conversation
Have you had complete radio silence between June and November?
insulate 3 walls in our garage
So how does insulating 3 walls in a garage lead to condensation dripping off the sockets and what difference would sealing socket boxes make. Genuine question. Where is the moisture coming from?
I've recently had a kitchen fitted with a few other bits and pieces done. Each time a tradie completed their part, I asked them about payment. Most said they would send an invoice, usually via email. If I hadn't received anything after a week, I would have been chasing them!
We had a job priced up. They said they couldn't do it for a few weeks but we said that was fine. Came home a few days later to find they'd done it (it was outside with easy access). Pinged them a message to say thanks for getting it done quickly and to send an invoice. Nothing back. Sent them a few more messages, no replies. Never heard from them again. Was only a few hundred quid but haven't heard from them since.
So how does insulating 3 walls in a garage lead to condensation dripping off the sockets and what difference would sealing socket boxes make. Genuine question. Where is the moisture coming from?
Has it been properly dried out from the flooding incident?
We had a job priced up. They said they couldn't do it for a few weeks but we said that was fine. Came home a few days later to find they'd done it (it was outside with easy access). Pinged them a message to say thanks for getting it done quickly and to send an invoice. Nothing back. Sent them a few more messages, no replies. Never heard from them again. Was only a few hundred quid but haven't heard from them since.
I'd say if you are happy with the job you'll want to use them again in future for something else, it's well worth you effort to keep them sweet and make sure they get paid.
But if they are consistently ignoring your request for invoice /payment I wouldn't lose any sleep over it.
Flakey trades persons go both ways.. Sometimes they are too busy so I'd just be ready to pay them straight away if/when they eventually get back to you!
I might be over-simplifying here but is the best course of action just to re-establish communications with the builder directly?
He assumed you weren't paying so likely sent the small claim summons purely to try and jolt you into action (noting in reality you hadn't received the invoices).
He is surely able to withdraw the court claim so maybe just speak to him and clarify that the invoices were wrongly addressed and you will now pay- subject to him addressing the snags in the work which you now realise exist after the weather changed.
I guess he may have some thoughts on the snags issues (or not) given that you had already approved the finished work but it seems a lot easier to speak to him direct than continue via the court process.
So, by insulating the garage you've made the wall behind the insulation colder meaning that without ventilation any moisture in the air might condense on the blockwork. It is th sort of thing that might happen or might not but you should have been made aware of the risk.
I'd find the builder, hand him a cheque for the full amount and buy a dehumidifier.
