What to do if your builder leaves without finishing his job?

Unfinished work and broken contracts happen far too often and the best thing to do is lay foundations to avoid finding yourself in this situation. If you follow the best practices guide here, then you will most likely avoid finding yourself in this situation. Humans are driven by self-interest, and your goals and priorities are often not the same as those of another person or firm. Another tendency is for people to want to avoid confrontation or the discussing of uncomfortable topics such as money. Put the two together, and you often have people working together on shaky foundations. Normally, these issues are dealt with by processes that have been set at larger firms, but when dealing on a person by person basis, these processes are often by-passed. So what can you do?

If you haven't started with the builder yet

This is the best position to be in. Before you start you can implement all the best practices that you need to ensure the work contract is on stable footing. For example, be sure to go through all the best practices mentioned in article we wrote on how to choose your builder. Go through in detail all the specs and outcomes that you want, the milestone that should be reached, the timeline that will be adhered to, the payment terms, the speific and detailed outcomes and make sure you have a signed work order or sales contract. All of these things are extremely important to ensure that the incentives are aligned, that your expectations of what will be done are in line with what your builder also believes. This is crucial to avoiding disagreements, and potential arguments and unilateral ending of the work by one party, you or the builder.

What to do if your relationship with your builder has already broken down?

This is when the tricky part of dealing with human pscyhology is initiated. Aside from the normal tactics of trying to get a third party to arbitrate, such as another person who is not directly affected by the work, such as your wife or husband, or whomever the tension is not between. This kind of verbal intervention is the 1st stage in trying to smooth things over and for most people this is the common sense approach to take.

If your verbal arbitration attempt has failed, then you can resort to legal measures fairly quickly. If you had set the ground work with written and signed contracts, then this will be relatively easy and you can initiate a claim at the small claims court for a relatively small amount of money. The process is fast and should goed someone into action fairly quickly.

Citizens advice recommends

Citizen's advice recommends a range of actions based on your rights as a consumer. There are various laws that have been passed to ensure that services delivered match the prices that have been paid. Of course, like all things, at this stage, it is crucial to have paperwork that can prove your point of view. Again, we can only stress how important it is to have a few fomalities on paper and signed before initiating any work. In any case, in a business transaction, no money should every change hands without an invoice. This should be your golden rule. You will be amazed at how quickly an invoice can be generated if you hold off payment until once is received.

How did you pay?

If you paid cash in hand, you will have some problems. If you paid on debit card or credit card, then you may have some recourse with the ability to create a charge back with your payment provider. This will create a dispute with the supplier which then will require written evidence from both sides. If you paid on receipt of an invoice, then you can use the small claims court to quickly get the case moving.

It's not an ideal situation

If you are in this situation, we feel sorry for you. We know that it is not a great place to be, for both you or your builder. Many of these issues stem from incorrect expectations that were not probably smoothed out before the onset of work. In cases where you hired a few cowboys on a cash in hand basis and they've disappeared before doing the work after claiming they needed to be paid to buy the materials, then this is a grave error of judgement on your part. Without legal recourse, and without written contracts, it will be extremely hard to recover. Whilst this news isn't what you want to hear, it will make you much better prepared in the future and will make you more discerning and cautious and more inclined to request the formalities involved of paperwork, expectation settings, spec docs for outcomes and agreed payment terms. For example, if your builder insists on needing to be paid to buy materials, get the materials supplier to invoice you directly, and pay that invoice directly to the supplier. Often there is a markup on the materials that your builder is charging you with, and that should be expected, so agree to pay that 'handling charge' to your builder separately. Remember, in all transactions, there is a value chain and simply by attempting to cut all costs to the bone, may not lead to the best outcomes.