SPOODZ said:
I'm going to dispute the first days labour on the grounds that they said they wanted to come back another day- if i'd know they'd charge me £45 for that I would have had them out there diggin in the b****y rain.
I don't see how you could have achieved that. You have my sympathy with the unexpected large bill, SPOODZ, but it's all too easy to forget that these tradesmen were offering you a service, which is a very different thing to you employing someone and having some control over when they choose to work. A service is something whose terms you implicitly accept when you engage the service provider, so the moral of this story is to ask about rates before the job starts.
When I feel that the job needs two people, on safety or any other grounds, then I bring someone with me. And if we're both there then we're both working and therefore I charge for both. Time has to be accounted for and paid for in order for the business to keep trading.
Where these guys went wrong was in the management of your expectations. If they thought that the job was about to get expensive, relative to the apparent effort being put into it, then maybe, just maybe, they should have told you exactly that, to give you the choice over whether or not they came back.
BTW, if you don't pay the entire bill then you'll be in breach of contract, and consequently, regardless of whether or not they pursue you for the money, neither of those plumbers will be inclined to come out to your next emergency.