I am asking a question as to who would be liable to pay this invoice.
I was notified the following day that my tennant had to call an emergency plumber out due to a leak in the property. This resulted in an invoice of £500 plus.
The issue is that process was not followed, the 24 hour maintenance team for my letting agent were not informed. They would have arranged a visit or at least shut the water off.
There’s a few issues around this invoice. The firm appears to be based 80 miles away, they not appear on any quick search engine for a local emergency plumber to the area of the property. The invoice stated they stopped the leak and drained all the water on the floor.
This was in fact not correct as the plumber the following day sent me a video of the pipe leaking and proceeded to fix the issue. There was an issue with fittings in an awkward place.
Some things don’t quite add up to me. Being an on call engineer previously in a different trade, why didn’t they actually fix the issue there and then? The incentive is to do the job if you can from a financial point of view.
Tenant payed this invoice and signed off on the work and is now asking me to refund them. Who is liable to pay? The agreed process was not followed. I personally feel this may be a trading standards issue as the company in question has a few reviews stating the engineers pressure customers into inflating claims which they can later claim back from house insurance ect.
Bit of advice would be much appreciated. First time being a landlord as I couldn’t sell my property at the time.