All Forum Posts by: Chris Smith

Ok thank you. We have been getting advice to pay the remaining of the contract and see what happens, but I am not sure if I want to deal with that because we can't get a sold answer without paying for an attorney. We had a consult, but the information was limited although they provided the same advice.

But the contract also didn't say that it would change without notice only that it could.

They were onsite for 3 days and looking over the final invoice they were already over budget halfway through Day 2 and per the owners permission he kept track of the time and told the foreman how much time is left on the project.

Also the reason we were wondering is the degree to which is over. If they were over 5-10%, we would have accepted it, but his estimate was off by 35% cost and 78% in labor and had ample time to inform us. They wouldn't have been just sitting around waiting.

Seems like decent landscapers have good incentive to underestimate the work because they know they will make it up in the end. That is why we consider bait and switch.

Hello,

We had some landscaping work done. We signed an estimate that was part contract labor and part fixed fee. Total project 3.68 days, 1.68 days for the contract labor. The main terms roughly say "Contract Labor items estimated 1.68 days (13 hours) @ $xx day/rate. ..... the total listed above is only an estimated total, and can sometimes change. No where in the contract does it say that the cost will change without notice.

We get the final invoice and it is $3000 (35%) over the estimate price with a note saying the job took longer due to roots on the property. Based on the finalize invoice that is about 10 hours over bringing the total contract labor hours to ~23 hours. We disputed the overage because they did not notify us before hand.

He provided a slight discount bringing the overage down to $2000 (~20%) over the estimate, but basically says we are on the hook for the overage and that he had no duty to submit a change order since the scope didn't change (although the discovery of excess roots seems like a scope change). The whole project took 3 days so less than the total estimate, but labor items were almost double. This feels like a bait and switch.