Twin and earth cable price & Electricity certificate

[flyingcat]

Hi, I have some electricity work done for my bathroom by an electrician. On the invoice 16m "10mm twin and earth cable" cost £320 ( plus VAT £56). I asked price question in this forum and told the electrician that the cable price was wrong. Now he revised invoice but still charge me more than I expected. 16m cable cost £161 this time (plus VAT). is this correct? I think 16m 10mm cable would only cost about £35 for retail price.

He also added two extra items on the new invoice called "16mm tails" and "earth strap". I have no idea what they are and couldn't find infor on B&Q website. anyone has a clue?

Another very important issue is: should he provide electricity certificate? The job description is: "Wiring bathroom lights shower sockets earth bonding and removing old circuits". I don't know much about electricity. I wonder if this certificate is required when I want to sell my property in the future? And is this the electrician's responsibility to produce a certificate or it would be extra charge for that? Sorry for so many questions. Thank you for any answer or advice.

 

[Pensdown]

Hi, I have some electricity work done for my bathroom by an electrician. On the invoice 16m "10mm twin and earth cable" cost £320 ( plus VAT £56). I asked price question in this forum and told the electrician that the cable price was wrong. Now he revised invoice but still charge me more than I expected. 16m cable cost £161 this time (plus VAT). is this correct? I think 16m 10mm cable would only cost about £35 for retail price.

10mm² T&E is around £3.50/mtr trade, £4.50ish retail. Did the cost include labour?
The trouble is if you don't agree a price first you leave yourself open to price abuse and there's not much you can do about it.

He also added two extra items on the new invoice called "16mm tails" and "earth strap". I have no idea what they are and couldn't find infor on B&Q website. anyone has a clue?

The tails are the cables between the meter and the consumer unit and the earth strap goes round the water/gas pipe for the earth bonding. The meter tails should be 25mm² not 16mm²

Another very important issue is: should he provide electricity certificate? The job description is: "Wiring bathroom lights shower sockets earth bonding and removing old circuits". I don't know much about electricity. I wonder if this certificate is required when I want to sell my property in the future? And is this the electrician's responsibility to produce a certificate or it would be extra charge for that? Sorry for so many questions. Thank you for any answer or advice

He should have left you with an Electrical Installation Test Certificate (EIC) and then via his competent persons scheme notified the works for Building Regulations sign off.

If he's not listed here http://www.competentperson.co.uk/search.asp then the chances are you will get nothing.

 

[flyingcat]

Thank you so much for the prompt reply.

1) the cost doesn't include labour. Labour was invoiced as a seperated item as £573 (plus VAT£100.28). I checked B&Q website that 25m 10mm T&E cable cost £54.48. That's why I think 16m cable would only cost about £35. Again I don't know much about electricity so maybe cable price shouldn't be calculated using this way.

so should I just pay the invoice or tell him again that I think the price is still wrong?

2) you said it should be 25mm not 16mm tail. this worried me. Is there any chance the electrician used a wrong tail? will it cause any safety problem in the future?

3) thank you very much! I checked the website you gave to me. His business name is listed there. But he completed the job a couple of months ago and didn't say anything about the certificate. I wonder if I should ask the certificate before I pay?

 

[ban-all-sheds]

10mm² T&E is around £3.50/mtr trade, £4.50ish retail.

You need to change your wholesaler - it's £2.50/m inc VAT & delivery from Screwfix, or only £1.86/m if you want to stagger out of B&Q carrying it.

Thank you so much for the prompt reply.

1) the cost doesn't include labour. Labour was invoiced as a seperated item as £573 (plus VAT£100.28). I checked B&Q website that 25m 10mm T&E cable cost £54.48. That's why I think 16m cable would only cost about £35. Again I don't know much about electricity so maybe cable price shouldn't be calculated using this way.

Bigger reels are even cheaper, and that's a perfectly reasonable way to calculate it, but it's also reasonable for him to mark the materials up.

so should I just pay the invoice or tell him again that I think the price is still wrong?

The trouble is if you don't agree a price first you leave yourself open to price abuse and there's not much you can do about it.

2) you said it should be 25mm not 16mm tail. this worried me. Is there any chance the electrician used a wrong tail? will it cause any safety problem in the future?

Why was he doing anything to or with the tails? What work did you have done? I wonder if he was installing/upgrading main bonding (note the earth clamp), which would explain the use of 16mm²...
[edit] No it wouldn't, unless he didn't have any 10mm² on the van. [/edit]

3) thank you very much! I checked the website you gave to me. His business name is listed there. But he completed the job a couple of months ago and didn't say anything about the certificate. I wonder if I should ask the certificate before I pay?

You should have received an electrical certificate, and by now you should have received a Building Regulations completion cert from the council.

The job is not finished until he has issued a certificate, so consider if you want to pay him before he has finished. Some (all??) registration schemes forbid their members from witholding certificates until they've been paid - which one is he a member of?

 

[rssteve]

if you have had any work done to your consumer unit any chance you could post a picture up it will help us advise what works ok etc

 

[ban-all-sheds]

NICEIC is one of the schemes that doesn't allow its members to withhold certificates as part of any payment dispute.

Get a final price agreed, as best you can, and tell him you'll pay as soon as he's finished, i.e. issued the EIC and notified the work to the council. The latter, BTW, is a trivial cost - any NICEIC members here can confirm, but it's a few quid, so don't let him try and screw more money for that. Also notifying Building Control is not optional - he must do it.

 

[skenk]

It's fair enough to mark up materials but those mark-ups are eye-watering. If you're charging a decent hourly rate then mark-ups like that are just plain taking the p***

 

[JohnD]

let me just check

did he charge you a thousand pounds to install a shower circuit?

what did you and he say about price beforehand?

Was he recommended?

Have you done something to annoy him?

 

[flyingcat]

Thanks for all the reply above. I will ask for the certificate before I pay the invoice.

To JohnD: actually I didn't have any quote from him because he was recommended by my friend and he is my friend's brother-in-law. I trust my friend so I didn't ask for any quotation.

The first invocie is as following:

1. Cable 10mm twin and earth (16m, amount £320, VAT £56)
2. Other items (I omitted these as they are small parts, only cost 30-40 pounds)
3. Labour (amount £573, VAT 100.28)
Total: 1090.25 (inc. VAT)

after I made query about the cable price, he explained to me by letter that the first invoice was not completed so have some mistakes and there are two additional items:

1. 16mm tails (2 of them, amount £9.90, VAT £1.73)
2. Earth Strap (4 of them, amount £10, VAT £1.75)
Total: 926.22 (inc. VAT)

But you can see the second invoice only show additional items and still no details of justified cable price. I had to calculate by myself that the cable was charged for £161 this time.

btw, I didn't do anything annoying him. On the contrary, it was a very pleasant experience when he did the job for me. We had nice chat at his lunchtime and tea break. That's why I felt very bad when I received the invoice.

 

[ericmark]

When ever work is done always retail price is charged in theory this is to cover for any faulty parts which in future will need replacing under guarantee. This is across all trades. Cable is sold sometimes for only 25% of the retail price so there can be a huge mark up. So go by the price per meter charged by B&Q and that is about right for retail price.
Yes price seems high to me but he is within his rights to charge retail price for it.
Eric

 

[ban-all-sheds]

Why is the formating on this topic all b*****ed up?

Anyway - AFAIK there is no law preventing people from charging as much as they like for goods and services - the general principle of caveat emptor applies.

But it wouldn't hurt to have a quick chat with TSO, and/or the CAB to see if this could be construed as unfair terms and conditions...

 

[ban-all-sheds]

When ever work is done always retail price is charged in theory this is to cover for any faulty parts which in future will need replacing under guarantee. This is across all trades. Cable is sold sometimes for only 25% of the retail price so there can be a huge mark up. So go by the price per meter charged by B&Q and that is about right for retail price.
Yes price seems high to me but he is within his rights to charge retail price for it.
Eric

But he's not charging retail price.

Retail price, as you say, is what you pay if you just buy off the shelf in B&Q at their normal price, which is £1.86/m.

He's charging £11.82/m, and originally wanted £23.50/m...

 

[Pensdown]

Cable pricing is a funny thing. The Lukins* trade price for "booklet cable**" is extremely high. I don't know what 2.5mm T&E is at the moment but a few months ago it was around £90-100/100mtrs. The normal discount offered by wholesalers starts at around 65% and goes down and down from there.

The prices that B&Q are charging are something like trade less 70-80% but often it's crap cable, i.e the cores are all stuck together.

So in this instanance it could be the sparks has charged full trade + his markup which is not un common, (even though it's very greedy) Most charge cost + their markup - around 25%

* Luckins is the industry price book that 99.9% of wholesalers use.

** Booklet cable is all cables below 16mm. There are not set trade prices for cable above 16mm.

 

[Lectrician]

Our rates are currently (today) £1.65 per meter for 10mm T+E.

Split con used to be cheaper, but is almost £3 pr meter currently.

Sparky is either having a laugh, or has got a typo on his invoice!

 

[JohnD]

I think he's taking advantage.

If the cost of a service is not agreed in advance, it has to be "reasonable" and you are not obliged to pay more than a "reasonable" amount.

Sometimes it takes an outside arbitrator or a court hearing to decide what this "reasonable" amount is