Incompetent Plumber and SNIPEF

[anne2408]

Over the last year we have had a plumber do several jobs for us. We initially (stupidly) paid him £8,000 and last October he tried to charge us a further £18,000. He has left us with work that needs to be put right and it appears that he has done work that didn’t need doing in the first place because he advised us that it did need to be done.
He threatened to take us to court as we refused to pay him more than a further £7,500. On the advice of another plumber we took the case to SNIPEF (as he is a member of this organisation) back at the beginning of November. There were two panel meetings before they decided that the work probably did not meet building regulations or best practice. The plumber appealed this decision so we then had to wait for a further panel meeting. This panel meeting rejected the appeal and made this decision final. We then had to wait a further four weeks for an inspection by the SNIPEF appointed technical advisor. Two days before this inspection was due to take place we got home on the evening to find a message left on our answer machine informing us that the plumber would also be in attendance. We phoned SNIPEF the following morning (by now the eve of the inspection) to stress to them that we would not have this man back on our premises under any circumstances. They had already been made aware several times that we would not be allowing this plumber back on our premises, we had even put it in writing back in November. Also there had been no mention at all that they would insist on the plumber being in attendance until two days before the inspection was due to take place. We advised them that we would be amenable to a representative of the plumber attending but not the man himself. Because we refused admission to the offending plumber, this long-awaited inspection was cancelled by SNIPEF. This morning we received a letter from SNIPEF informing us there was nothing else they could do and that the case was closed. So it has basically taken them six months to do NOTHING.
Does anyone know where we would stand if we tried to take SNIPEF to court for causing us all this wasted time and further unnecessary distress. We contacted a surveyor who gave us the details of a specialist in the field. This man attended and inspected the work on Friday and is now in the process of preparing a report for us. Would we be able to claim these costs back from SNIPEF?
Any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Many thanks.

 

[Porque223]

"We advised them that we would be amenable to a representative of the plumber attending but not the man himself. Because we refused admission to the offending plumber. . ."

What are your objections to having the plumber there?

 

[anne2408]

After over a year of living "rough", not being able to continue getting the place sorted and made habitable, having to put up with this mans lies and incompetency, having this man try to steal my life-savings, putting up with the winter gales blowing down the open chimney place that he had knocked out, causing damage to the new ceilings due to all the water leaks, not to mention costing us a fortune in lost water (we are metered) what do you think? The list is endless. The above is just the bare bones.

If this man comes anywhere near me, I will not be responsible for the consequences!

 

[Porque223]

It is to his advantage if you come across as unhinged. But he should be allowed to a site inspection and to answer the complaints against him.

Get a bunch of neutral parties or sympathetic neighbors or a lawyer to accompany this man through the house. Everyone will be better behaved in front of a crowd.

 

[Norcon]

You say he knocked out the chimney place.

Why did you ask him to do that?
I assume you mean the "Fireplace".

 

[anne2408]

We phoned SNIPEF back on the advice of our solicitors and agreed for the plumber to attend but they refused to reinstate the inspection and since then they have closed the case. I was going to go into town for a coffee and leave my partner to deal with the inspection.

The chimney place was widened to take a solid fuel stove but this is another nightmare tale. He failed to measure correctly and the stove he provided was too large for the fireplace. He arranged for the back of the fireplace to be knocked out (the chimney is between two rooms) so we had a large hole in the wall of the adjacent room. The stove was still too large. The builder he got to enlarge the fireplace left the lintel resting against the wall and never reappeared. We had to pay another builder to make the wall secure and finish off the fireplace. The plumber eventually took this stove away and, following three days of blizzard conditions and no heating, we have now got a much smaller log burner which the second builder fitted for us.

 

[Norcon]

I see. So there are a couple off builders involved here also.
Not just a one man band house basher.

So it was the plumber who employed the services of these builders then?

Maybe its trading standards you should be talking too instead of snipef.

 

[anne2408]

No, the plumber is a company in his own right but he provided the first builder who abandoned the job and the lintel after dismantling the existing fireplace and knocking through the wall. The second builder was recommended by the joiner and we paid for his work separately and we have absolutely no complaints about him. In fact, I have no complaints about the joiner, roofer or electrician either. They did their work in a reasonable time, at a reasonable standard and at a reasonable cost. This plumber is the first tradesman I have ever had an issue with in my whole life and I retired last year. This move to the country was supposed to be us living a stress-free life and it has been anything but.

 

[anne2408]

We went to trading standards after we received the first letter from his solicitor threatening us with court action if we did not pay the amount owing (this solicitors letter was received within the seven days which he had given us to pay, i might add). We acted on the advice of trading standards which was to send him a cheque for the amount we thought the work was worth, outlining why we were not paying the full amount. However, he was not happy with this and continued to threaten us with court action which was why we approached SNIPEF (after being advised to do so by another plumber).

 

[Porque223]

Threats cost him nothing.
In a somewhat similar situation my lawyer advised me to wait to be sued and then countersue, so that everyone (in my case, three parties) involved would then have money on the table.
Nobody sued so my lawyer advised me to make a small payment each month to show good faith. It took me 12 years of payments to retire the debt but in effect it was an interest-free loan to me from one of the parties.

This is a typical Game Theory problem.

Over here the courts are clogged so it's mediation or arbitration as a first try for this type of thing.

 

[Norcon]

For £26k what all did he do?
Can you list it out?

I assume he was supplying gold plated basin and bath taps.
Can you put a cost on what he supplied?

What all did he do wrong?
Post up some images of his work.

 

[anne2408]

The first £8,000 covered the cost of fitting a new combi-boiler and oil tank as well as supply but not fit 4 radiators. The second bill (£18,000) consisted of fitting the said radiators and replacing the plastic piping with copper (only because he insisted that the plastic was corroded and needed replacing - this is now questionable), installing a new mains pipe down the drive (he dug up the patio paving slabs, the porch floor and the path between the porch and the patio and left these in a mess and not reinstated) and fitting a standpipe and fitting the new bathroom. He was also supposed to be fitting a solid fuel stove to run the central heating but the stove he supplied was too large and not appropriate for what we wanted, which was to be able to have a source of heat in the event of a power cut (he knew this right from the start). And we had no electricity for three days during the blizzard in March which meant we had to live through blizzard conditions with no source of heating. We supplied everything for the bathroom ourselves (i.e. bath, shower cubicle and tray, basin and pedestal, toilet and cistern, electric shower, wall and floor tiles and towel radiator), taps and appropriate wastes. He only had to supply the pipes, adhesives and grout. The joiner fitted the shower tray (as it needed to be raised because of the level of the wastes) and the wall panels for the shower and we have paid the joiner already for this work. He has also not left the external walls where the waste pipes were taken through in an acceptable state of repair - there are large gaps around the pipes. We endured numerous water leaks while he was here and also since he "completed" the work. We had to call another plumber out three times and it was found that where the copper pipe connects to the plastic (which according to his bill was ALL replaced with copper) no inserts were used and where compression fittings were used these were only finger-tight. We had the combi-boiler installation inspected by an engineer from the manufacturer and there are problems with the boiler installation, e.g. the soakaway for the condensate is right next to the wall instead of the regulation 500 mm. And these are just the main points. SNIPEF agreed that the work did not appear to meet building regulations or best practice (they have seen all the photographs - and there were plenty of them). The expert witness who we are paying for ourselves (after SNIPEF cancelled their inspection) and who has actually seen this plumbers work first- hand also says that there are aspects of his work that do not meet building regulations. It is going to cost us money to have all this put right and, until they closed the case on us, SNIPEF were saying that the plumber was going to have to put these jobs right at no cost to ourselves. The plumber is a member of SNIPEF incidentally so they would probably have ended up paying for this themselves. It seems to me SNIPEF were too quick to close the case, not giving us a chance to change our mind about the plumber attending the inspection nor did they even inform us that if we didn't allow him to attend then they would close the case.

 

[Norcon]

You were fleeced.
Don't pay another penny.

Does the stove you ended up with heat your hot water as you wanted?

 

[anne2408]

We have no intention of paying another penny if we can help it.

No, the stove we ended up having installed is only a log burner which only heats the room but at least we can have heating in the event of another power cut, which is useful especially in blizzard conditions.

 

[Norcon]

You must be up in Scotland.