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female
age
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anonymous
writes:I have been with my partner for 10 years, we live together.The relationship is a bit rocky. He is a builder. I own a rental flat that needed some work doing to it. He did the work and has now sent me an invoice for his labour, for quite a large sum . (I have paid him for materials)I feel this is out of order and he should have done me a favour, or at least mates rates.I'd be interested to hear other people's views on this please
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female
reader, Ciar  +, writes (14 August 2020):
 I'm of the same mind as some of the others, that you should have agreed to a price before the work was started, and not expect him to help you profit at his own expense.
As one or two of the other aunts have pointed out, it would be different if this was a residence you both shared, he lived with you for a discounted price, and in exchange he performed some work at a discounted price.
There is an old saying about not mixing business and pleasure. This is the reason.
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female
reader, anonymous, writes (13 August 2020): Just a few days painting is not the sort of work that a builder would normally bother with. Builders build and decorators decorate. A job that is only a few days is not worth their while anyway. But you still should have asked him how much it would cost. It would have been more sensible to ask one of your family or a friend to do that, you do not need a professional at professional prices.When you are renting out a place it is urgent - I know I have a lot of property I rent out - so time is of the essence. Some partners might have said look I can do this over a few weeks here and there. But then you lose two weeks of renting out.Renting out properties is something which works well if you are sensible. Whenever one of my properties becomes available - which is usually because an old person has died - I make sure that I get another as quickly as possible, and make sure they will stay for at least five years - that is easy to do if you look at their background and lifestyle carefully before accepting them and do not take the first person who wants it.One of my properties is right next door to my house.So I can keep an eye on it. My guy is a builder and he would have done some painting in my flat for free. But builders do not normally do decorating jobs. And if they did you would still pay them for two or three days work. IF you were a man I am sure you would not expect it free, this sounds like poor little me I am a helpless woman.And yes it is true that builders etc try to take advantage of women on their own, that happened to me a lot before I met my builder who then became my partner.He is now painting the whole of the outside of my ten bedroom house, an enormous job. He would not normally do painting jobs, but it needs doing and we do not trust the so called decorators who offered to do it to do it well.But I insist on paying him and that is all worked out in advance. He has turned down other jobs that pay well to do it. Neither of us is trying to take advantage of the other.You ought to be more concerned with the fact that your relationship is in such a state that you cannot communicate and do not seem to care about each other. That is far more important.
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female
reader, anonymous, writes (12 August 2020): Sorry but after 10 years together this really shouldn't be an issue. You should have boundaries with income and expenditure etc set by now. If it is your flat in sole name then you should pay for the maintenance of it and you should have discussed with him before he did the work what he would charge to do it. I would have expected mates rates at the very least to be honest if I were in a 10 year relationship.
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female
reader, anonymous, writes (12 August 2020): Let us look at this the other way around. If this guy wanted to rent your place from you, would you give him a discount on the rent? I doubt it. You would say well I can get x amount of dollars every month from someone else and I have expenses. What is the difference?
When you are arranging for work of any sort to be done for you - by anyone - you get the price etc first. You do not get them to do the work and then complain at how much it is. You could have got other quotes from other builders, that is what most would have done.
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reader, anonymous, writes (12 August 2020): I notice you're in the UK. I am too, and I have a LOT of experience of building works - for my own homes and I worked for a property developer in the past. I've done a lot of building work myself but, as a not particularly muscular woman, there are times when I've had to ask someone stronger than me to step in, and / or there have been times when I've simply needed another person - some jobs simply cannot be done with one pair of hands.
The building industry is THE most corrupt and unregulated industry that there is. It is absolutely full of people trying to make a fast buck. Some of them are lovely people, some are highly skilled, some are rip-off merchants, and some have sold their soul to the devil because they only care about profit. At times, I have laughed with my own partner about this because it can be extremely difficult to find reliable, trustworthy builders. When I did work for a property developer, I initially didn't understand his methods at all: he would never pay anyone on time, he always said he had no money, he constantly interrupted my team's work by sending my workmen onto other projects - it drove us all crazy and we didn't understand it at all. Now, I see that he simply couldn't trust anyone and wouldn't let anyone get too comfortable or know anything of his business because he feared being ripped off. And he would sometimes say to me that he really wished someone would just phone him and ask him if he wanted to go out for lunch or anything - anything that didn't involve someone wanting something from him. He had no friends, and a solicitor wife who kept (most of) his activities just within the law, but not all of them.
My friend in Berlin is horrified by some of the stories I've told her about the way builders behave in the UK; over there, everything is strictly regulated and the standard of work is generally much higher.
So, without wanting to tar everyone with the same brush, this kind of exploitative mentality is perverse in the building industry - and I think your partner - and possibly you unwittingly - are caught up in that. Without having agreed a price beforehand, and without checking the quality of his work, legally you don't have a leg to stand on. As others have pointed out, he may well be behaving passive aggressively by taking on the work and then upsetting you with the bill for it. OR he may honestly believe he deserves the money. BUT, I can say hand on heart that almost all ALL builders believe they deserve whatever price they charge - and their rates may as well be pulled out of thin air. Another thing that is extremely common is for male builders to feel very entitled to bully a lone female when they work for her - something in the psyche of these 'men' tells them that, because they are male and you are female, they are doing you a massive favour and even if they charge you extortionate prices (as they often do) somehow in their heads they are doing it for you for free and have always done 'extra' work that they are not charging you for. If you question it they can turn very nasty. If they feel you are taking advantage of them (even if you genuinely are not) they will pull the kind of tricks that your 'partner' has pulled on you.
What's very, very telling is that neither of you were able to discuss this prior to him doing the work, even after being in a relationship for ten years. It both does and does not surprise me - in a healthy relationship of course you'd be able to sort this out in advance. BUT in a 'relationship' with a builder, nothing would surprise me any more. If he thought that you could somehow offset the cost of paying him by requesting the amount be deducted from your taxable income (ie. if you do end of year accounts) then he should have said so. And he also should have made clear to you that he was going to charge you. But the onus is also on you to direct matters, and project manage everything, from start to finish, including getting costs. If it was not purely a business transaction and you thought, in your mind, that he would do you a favour, then you still should have clarified this with him, and possibly asked to 'trade' skills and labour, partly or wholly - think about whether you do him any favours in return - do you help him in comparable ways? Women's labour is typically undervalued, so it wouldn't surprise me if there are things you do to help him that he hasn't even thought to put a price on.
I wouldn't even say, in the UK, that getting 3 estimates prior to a job will necessarily help you out. The ONLY way to get good workmen is through word of mouth and through trial and error, weeding out the bad workers. You won't know if anyone's work has been worth any cost - high or low - until you see the quality of the work and the consistency. A huge amount depends on the character and personality of the builder involved. Rarely will you find a completely fair, honest and reliable one.
Another factor is what exactly did he do? If the work required official regulation by a council - eg. if it was an extension, or involved structural changes or change of use of part of a property or if the property is in a conservation area - then it should have been signed on and signed off by the council; but, even then, builders are able to get away with all sorts of tricks to fool council officials and the council officials very, very often turn a blind eye to things that they shouldn't.
Why are you in a relationship with this person? If the relationship is rocky, as you say, then his current action seems to be a way of forcing you to appreciate him and passive aggressively telling you that he feels under-appreciated. Maybe you do under appreciate him - but, with that said, and as I've said above, builders tend to be an entitled breed, who very, very easily feel under-appreciated. Very few of them have gone through any formal training and tend to 'learn on the job' through male family members, friends and so on. This lack of formal education can mean that they tend to overvalue their work very often. Most builders I've known are in it for the money, and want the freedom, ultimately, to work to their own rules.
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female
reader, Youcannotbeserious +, writes (11 August 2020):
 I have a question about this property and your answer would determine MY response: who gets the income from the property you rent out? Is this "your" money (as in yours alone) or do you share it with your partner?
If the former, then this is your venture and you should pay your way, although a mates' rate discount would have been nice. If the latter, then he should have taken than into account and definitely not charged you what he would charge a regular client.
I wonder, is it possible that you didn't realize how much work would be involved?
If you feel strongly about him treating you like a regular client, in future you need to treat him as a regular contractor; ask him (and one or two others) for a full quote for the works you need and then pick the one who you feel is offering the best deal.
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female
reader, anonymous, writes (11 August 2020): How long did this work take? If it was a week that is a week he could have spent earning a decent income elsewhere? Most builders insist on sourcing the materials themselves - that takes the same time as you paying for them or him paying for them out of the income. You would not know what items he needs unless you are a builder too.
I am the total opposite of you. My guy is a builder. We have been together for seven years. He is generous to a fault, sometimes too generous for his own good. When we met and had only been dating about a month all of my fences out the back blew down and needed to be replaced urgently. A lot of fences, a time consuming job, something you do not trust to just anyone. He hates doing fences. But if this was not done urgently my dogs could have gone out into the road and got run over.
While there were no fences I had to keep them indoors, which is not fair to them or practical.
Because a lot of peoples' fences had blown down in the area it was hard to get anyone who had time to do it, they all had a long waiting list.
My guy cancelled another job and rushed to do it.
He spent days doing it and made a great job of it.
Far better than most so called fencers would have made.
He did not ask me for a penny. But because I am a businesswoman and a fair person, and I know that time is money and he could have been paid to work elsewhere - or had a rest - I insisted on paying him full price.
Perhaps because I am fair and think of other people too this is why we are still together years later.
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female
reader, anonymous, writes (11 August 2020): There must be costs involved in this, paying staff, equipment, goods etc which he has to pay for out of the money you do or do not pay him. If he then does the job for free he is out of pocket as he is still paying costs.
It was wrong of you to ask him to do the job without sorting out the costs first. It makes more sense to get in a stranger to do the job because when pleasure and business mix they do not mix well. One always expects too much of the other. One reason I would never get family or friends to do a job for me is because if they make a mess of it, or over charge me where does that leave me? Am I supposed to be grateful that they shaved a tiny bit off the cost, even though another person would have done it cheaper than them and made a better job of it? Unless your partner had done this sort of work before and you knew for a fact his prices were fair and he did a good job why ask him to do it - unless you are hoping he will drop the price or do it free? That is a huge ask. And not something a sensible person takes for granted.
Business is business and love is bullshit. Would you share the income from your business with him or just the expenses of the business?
This reminds me of a woman I met recently who had a small hotel. She was the sole owner. She took a fair bit of money from it. To save money she did all of the cooking and cleaning etc herself. She then met a man and they started to date. It was a bit iffy because it was new. He had his own business. He owned fancy expensive posh big cars. People would hire him to drive them for a funeral, wedding etc. At the weekend he would be working, because those are the busiest most popular times, so he saw her during the week. He was getting on a bit and quite tired and considering retiring. But every time he saw her she would go on and on about how she expected him to help her clean the rooms, cook the meals and wash up after people had eaten and weed the garden! Of course, for her this would be great, she would save money on paying staff. But what was in it for him? Nothing. He was due a few days rest. He could have spent more time improving his own place. He could have seen his family and friends. So the wise man ended the relationship.
I never ever do work for family or friends and most of my friends do not know what I do - so that I do not get asked to. I do not need to work at all, I choose to when I choose to, and turn many clients away.
You cannot expect a partner to prop up your business or put a lot of money in your pocket just because it suits you. What would you do in return? Perhaps if you were an ace accountant and you offered to do all of that free for him for so many years - something worth the same cost - but not where it is all give from him and take from you.
If the relationship is iffy/rocky it is even more important to sort it out before you choose that person to do the job.
If I were your "partner" - soon to be ex partner - I would be livid to think you expected so much.
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female
reader, CindyCares  +, writes (11 August 2020):
 I don't think he owed you a favour per se, just because you are dating. That's how he makes a living ; the hours / days he devoted to your project are hours and days he would/could have given to other regularly paying customers. If you were dating a plastic surgeon, you would not demand him to give you a 10.000 £ facelift for free , right ? I mean, he could give you one, if he felt generous and wanted to give you a very special gift- but he would not be *owing* you a free surgical operation, and a free use of his time, skills and experience.
I agree with you, though ,about " mates rates ". One would think it's no such a big deal to offer a little discount to your close friends and, more so, to your significant one !
I suppose that , because the relationship is rocky and you may not feel that much in sync right now, he may have decided to accept the job but to treat you just like any other new and unknown client. Yeah, not very nice of him.
But , what can you do ?... I'd do nothing. Show class, be the better person, and pay up his invoice. And remember, next time you need any job done- never assume anything, never give anything for granted; always ask an estimate first, before you give the OK to the works you want done !
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female
reader, anonymous, writes (11 August 2020): Hi, thanks for your answers, much appreciated. I didn't make it clear, but it was just a couple of days painting etc he did, not major work taking weeks of his time
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female
reader, Honeypie  +, writes (11 August 2020):
 I agree that you can try and negotiate the price down especially if you paid for materials.
However, WHO does business like this? Who doesn't get a quote first? And then (even if he Is your partner) check out what other people would charge?!
You made the PRESUMPTION that he should do it for free or for peanuts because he is dating you. Even if that meant turning down other potential earning projects. That makes no common sense financially. AT all.
Though I DO find it odd that he is "almost" OVERCHARGING you, that there is no "friend's or family discount" either.
THIS - ALL of this potential drama could have been avoided IF you two had MADE an agreement on price BEFORE the project started. If he had given you a quote and you AGREED to this.
He probably also know that the work he did is money YOU will recoup fast, as you can charge a higher rent (over time) if the rental property is in better condition. So he might just see it as a minor expense for you.
You two obviously have separate finances since you aren't married (which is probably smart) but it might also means he presumes you can afford this better than you think you can.
Talk to him, sort it out.
If he won't go lower, you pay him and then DO NOT use him again, without having a bid, a contract, and 3 other estimates.
On a personal note, I'd be pissed too. I would not find it OK for my partner to try and "rip" me off because he is my partner.
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reader, anonymous, writes (11 August 2020): I'd try to negotiate the bill down. He's being spiteful, and took the job with the intent to stick it to you.
If you've been having disagreements recently; this shouldn't come as a shock or surprise. If he won't negotiate; you'll have to workout a repayment-agreement for whatever you're unable to pay immediately. He made-out an invoice; and can sue you for the unpaid bill.
If he won't be reasonable, I'd see a lawyer to determine what to do; because there was no signed contract, or he didn't offer you an estimate in order to negotiate the cost of his labor. You weren't given a chance to seek bids; but you walked into this blindly.
You don't go-in expecting a break; because the contractor is a friend or relative. They can put you in a bind; if there is any kind of misunderstanding or disagreement pending, during the time the work is completed. At least he finished the job, and didn't just leave you with an unfinished construction job. He could put a labor-lien on the property, if you refuse to pay him!
You don't presume you'll get perks or discounts; when it comes to significant construction work. He did a professional-job. He's not a weekend do-it-yourselfer! If he hired help, that would be a part of the amount he billed you for.
If he satisfactorily completed a significant amount of work; and billed you for it, he deserves to be paid. If he reneged on doing it at a discount, the burden of proof falls on you!
Get three estimates from other qualified contractors to determine a fair price for the job. If he padded the price to bilk you; I guess you'll have to work it out in-front of a judge.
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female
reader, anonymous, writes (11 August 2020): I don't know what kind of relationship you have, a part from that rocky bit.
Here's what I mean. My husband and I are married and we share everything. We have a joint account. When I used to earn cash, I kept it in an envelope in a drawer and we both used the money. We make all our financial decisions together. We have both a flat and a house together (took joint loans). I fought like a lion for over 10 years so that he can get his rightful share of his inheritance. He renovated my apartment when we were living together there as gf and bf (walls, parquet...) and asked no money for it.
We have spontaneously started organizing our finances like that and it has worked for us for twenty years and we wouldn't have it any other way.
But we have many friends that have separate accounts, they loan and repay each other for smallest of things like a par of socks if one of them has forgotten their wallet. They refuse to buy an apartment together, but can have a kid together. They pay separately for their holidays etc. And it works for them.
My point is, we all know what to expect because we have been clear with our arrangements.
How come that after 10 years you didn't know what to expect? How come that you haven't talked about it in advance? If he planned to bill you, why hadn't he presented you with an estimation beforehand (that's what you do when doing business)?
Has he ever done any work for you and asked or not asked for money?
What I find weird is not that he asked for money (even though I have a completely different thing going on with my hubby), but that you didn't talk anything over even though you live together and had plenty of opportunity.
What I see here is a problem with communication.
Maybe there's resentment between you two.
Whatever it is you need to talk.
If you're the only one who owns the rental and profits from the money it earns, maybe he see it as your thing. And I could understand that. Especially if the work he did was extensive and required a lot of his time, time he could have used to earn money elsewhere. But. This is something he should have made clear.
So it's on both of you, this problem you have.
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