Is this reasonable?

[Vaughan Moody]

Our tenant accidentally broke a kitchen cupboard door. It snapped off vertically down the middle when he went to the kitchen in the dark in the middle of the night and when he turned to walk back, he walked into a little cupboard door which pushed it back against an edge of the wall, which caused the wood to snap. Anyway, the cause of the break doesn’t matter too much. The tenant admitted it was his fault.

When we were getting our own kitchen remodeled in our house a few months ago, we asked the contractor if he would be able to possibly fix that cupboard door at our rental property. Surprisingly, he said he would fix it for free for us. So we gave our tenant his phone number, and he arranged a day for it to get fixed. We told the tenant that luckily this guy was fixing it at no cost. (So therefore we wouldn’t have to pass on the cost of the repair to him ie. the tenant).

Now, several months later, I contacted the contractor to ask if he would be to provide a price estimate for a different job at our house. In his reply, he said that he never got paid for the repair of the kitchen cupboard door, so it will be $300 for that. My wife and I were both present when he said he would fix the door for no charge, so it’s not like there was a misunderstanding.

We feel bad that he did it for free, and he deserves to be paid for his time/effort, but if we pay him, now we have to go back to our tenant several months after the door was fixed and say “actually, we got charged after all, so now we need to pass that cost along to you”. They probably won’t like to hear that.

Would it be reasonable or unreasonable to tell our tenants they need to cover the cost of the repair, several months after we had told them this guy would repair it for free?

I’m pretty sure we could get a receipt, to show them the charge, when we pay him.

If this info helps with any advice given in anyone’s responses, they are good tenants.

Thanks in advance for any advice/thoughts.

[Nathan Gesner]

Quote from @Vaughan Moody:

The contractor agreed to repair it for free. He's changing the terms of the agreement, and you can choose to accept it or reject it.

I don't think it's fair to pass this cost onto the tenant just because you are unwilling to stand up to the contractor.