Playbook, electrical contractor
The work was done, the answer was unwelcome, and now they want the money back
Refund requests to an electrician rarely follow a failure. They follow an answer. A periodic report comes back with items on it, or a charge point survey concludes the supply will not take one without an upgrade, and the customer feels they paid for a yes and were handed a no. In both cases the thing bought was the finding, which is an awkward thing to say gently and a very easy thing to say badly.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for refund requests holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- What was bought in these cases is an inspection or a survey, which is to say a conclusion, so an unwelcome conclusion is delivery rather than failure, and the reply has to hold that line without sounding pleased about it.
- A charge point survey that ends in a supply upgrade sends the customer to the network operator, whose costs and timescales belong to somebody else entirely, and the refund request is very often an objection to that news rather than to the survey fee.
- Refunding installed electrical work is not like returning a product: the installation is in the building, it has been notified where that applies, and a certificate has been issued in somebody's name against that address.
- Rights against the seller of goods and a guarantee on workmanship are different things with different remedies and different people responsible, and somebody asking for money back on a fitting that failed after a year is usually reaching for the wrong one.
How it arrives
- can i have my money back for the report
- the survey says i need a supply upgrade i want a refund
- i paid for a call out and nothing got fixed
- the light fitting failed after a year can i get a refund
- do you refund the survey fee if we go ahead
- i was charged the minimum for ten minutes work
What has to be indexed for this to work
| What a report or a survey buys, said before it is bought | That the outcome may be that work is needed, or that the supply will not take the load, and that the fee covers the inspection rather than any particular conclusion. One paragraph, on the same page as the price, where it counts as a term rather than as an excuse. |
|---|---|
| Your refund position, by category | Surveys, reports, call outs where nothing was found on the first visit, and installed work. Four separate answers, because they are four genuinely different situations and a single refund policy will be dishonest about at least two of them. |
| Your guarantee on workmanship against a manufacturer's cover on a product | Which is which, and who to approach for each. Customers arrive holding one word and meaning either, and sorting that out is most of the value in the first reply. |
| Who to contact, and how long a decision takes | A person, an address and a period. A refund request that disappears into a general inbox becomes a card dispute, and a card dispute costs more than the refund did. |
The reply
I can set out how the fee works but I cannot make any decision about your money. The inspection fee covers the inspection and the report that comes out of it, including where the report finds items, and that is set out on the page the price is published on [1]. If the survey concluded that the supply needs upgrading, that is applied for from the network operator rather than done by us, and the costs on that side are theirs rather than ours [2]. If you want it looked at properly, leave me your name, an email and the address and it goes to the person who deals with refunds.
It states the limitation before the argument, so the explanation cannot be mistaken for a decision. The term is quoted from the page where the price sits rather than paraphrased, which is what stops it reading as something invented for this conversation. The supply upgrade sentence moves the real grievance to the party it actually belongs to without blaming the customer for the confusion.
Where it stops
The trigger. Any request for money back, on the first message, and immediately any statement that a payment is going to be disputed with a card provider.
This needs a person, and it is not something I can decide or process. Leave me your name, an email, the address the work was at and briefly what you would like to happen, and I will send it straight over.
It stops answering before it guesses, says who will pick it up, and asks for the one thing that makes a reply possible. Nothing about it reads as a dead end.
Never say this here
Out of bounds
- Never agree that a refund will be given, or hint that one is likely, since the money belongs to the firm and nothing here can see what was done or what was charged.
- Never say a report was correct or that the items on it were justified, because that is a judgement about an installation nobody in this conversation has looked at.
- Never treat a product failure and a workmanship claim as the same thing, as they involve different parties, different periods and different remedies.
- Never state a refund timescale, because there is no payment system in view here and a date given in chat is the date somebody will hold you to.
Questions
- Is it fair to say an unwelcome report still counts as delivery?
- It is, and it is far easier to say when the page carrying the fee said it first. The sentence to write is that the fee covers the inspection and the report whatever the report finds. Written before payment it is a term. Written afterwards it is an excuse, and it sounds like one.
- Could it process a refund if we connected payments?
- No. It cannot take a payment or return one in any configuration, and it has no view of what was charged. The most useful thing it does here is get the address and the job into an email fast enough that the customer does not go to their card provider first.
- What about the customer who says nothing was fixed?
- That one needs the terms to have described what a first visit buys, which is time and a diagnosis rather than a repair. Where that is written down the answer is a quotation from the page. Where it is not, it is a conversation with a person and the assistant should get out of the way quickly.
Keep reading
- Everything for a electrical contractorCall out charges, EV charger enquiries and landlord certificates are answerable. A described electrical fault is an escalation, not a question.
- Handling refund requests in generalA refund question is really about eligibility and timing. What to index, what the reply may promise, and where it has to reach a person.
- The guarantee on the labour is not the guarantee on the boxYour workmanship, the manufacturer's cover on the unit and the certificate behind the installation are three things with three routes.
- Parking is not a courtesy on a job with a cable drumExternal work needs the van within reach of the cable run, often a suspended bay, sometimes a tower. None of that is a convenience.
- The survey is short if the things it needs to see are reachableThe board behind the coats, the loft full of boxes and the meter cupboard key are what turn a survey into a second appointment.
Try it on your own material
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