When work goes wrong: your rights and the order to escalate

Most jobs that go wrong go wrong quietly. Nobody is being dishonest; the work is just not what was agreed, and the conversation about it keeps getting postponed. The useful thing to know is that you have a specific set of rights here, that they are stronger than most people assume, and that there is a sequence to follow which the later steps expect you to have followed.

You have a contract, even without paperwork

When you buy a service you enter a service contract with the business. The CCPC is clear that you can enter one just by paying, or agreeing to pay, for a service, even if you never signed anything. A verbal agreement with a tradesperson is a contract.

Under it, the service must be provided with reasonable care and skill by someone with the necessary skills, must be of good quality and live up to any claims the business made about it, must be provided in accordance with the law and any code of practice for that type of service, must meet the standards of any professional body the business says it belongs to, must use materials that are fit for purpose and match what was described, and must meet anything else specifically agreed, including a completion date.

Two points that surprise people:

• A business cannot use a disclaimer to opt out of its obligation to provide the service as agreed.
• You have up to six years after you received the service to expect the business to resolve an issue with it. The CCPC does note that the more time passes, the harder it becomes to show the problem is the provider’s fault.

“Provided in accordance with the law” is doing real work in a trades context. If the job included restricted electrical work, it had to be carried out and certified by a Safe Electric registered contractor. If it included gas work, it had to be done by a Registered Gas Installer. Work that was not is not merely disappointing; it fails a term of your contract.

What you are entitled to, and in what order

The remedies have a sequence built into them.

1. Repair first. The starting point is having the service brought into conformity with what was agreed. The business should fix the issue within a reasonable period, free of charge, and without significant inconvenience to you. It gets the chance to put things right before anything else applies.
2. Then price reduction or termination. Where the problem cannot be fixed, or the business will not fix it, you become entitled to a proportionate reduction in the price or to terminate the contract and get a refund.
3. Straight to step two where the fault is serious. Where the lack of conformity is serious enough, or the service or the materials resulting from it are unsafe, you do not have to go through repair first.

Two practical levers sit alongside this. If a service was only partly provided you may be entitled to a proportional refund, and if it was not provided at all you may be entitled to a full refund or to cancel. And if you have not paid in full, you can withhold payment until the issue is resolved, which is the single strongest reason not to pay everything up front, and the reason a payment schedule staged against progress matters more than any other clause in a quote.

There is no fixed number of repair attempts written into the Act. It is judged on the circumstances, including whether you could reasonably be expected to keep confidence in the trader’s ability to fix it, which weighs heavily where the same fault keeps coming back.

The order to escalate in

Each step assumes you did the one before it. Skipping ahead usually sends you back.

1. Raise it directly, and do it early. Ring or call in, describe the specific problem, and say what you want done about it. Most issues end here, and a tradesperson who has not yet been paid in full and wants the rest of the money has every reason to come back.

2. Start keeping records now, not later. Dated photographs of the defect, the quote, any texts or emails, receipts and what was said on each call. This is unglamorous and it is what decides matters if it goes further.

3. Put it in writing. If the informal approach does not resolve it, make a formal written complaint. Set out what was agreed, what happened, what you want, and a reasonable deadline. The CCPC publishes editable complaint letter templates that set out your consumer rights for you, which saves both drafting time and the argument about whether you asked properly.

4. Get an independent opinion if the fault is technical. Where the dispute is about whether the work is actually defective, on a roof, a screed or a damp problem, an engineer’s or surveyor’s report changes the conversation from opinion to evidence. Note that you cannot recover the cost of such a report through the small claims procedure, so decide whether it is worth it.

5. Go to the relevant regulator where one exists. This is separate from getting your money back and it is about safety and legality, not compensation. Unregistered restricted electrical work can be reported to Safe Electric. Gas safety concerns go to the RGI scheme, overseen by the Commission for Regulation of Utilities. Locksmith licensing goes to the Private Security Authority. You can also report the business to the CCPC, which does not resolve individual disputes but does act on patterns.

6. Small claims. The small claims procedure lets consumers and businesses resolve disputes without a solicitor, for claims of €2,000 or less, where both parties live or are based in Ireland. It explicitly covers services not completed or carried out as agreed, and the Courts Service gives hiring a painter or a plumber as its example. Claims must be made within six years of the purchase or incident. You apply online through the Courts Service Online website or on a form at your local District Court office, and there is an application fee. A small claims registrar contacts both sides and tries to settle it without a court hearing.

7. Above the small claims limit, take legal advice. Larger disputes fall outside the procedure and become a District or Circuit Court matter, where the arithmetic of costs against the amount at stake starts to matter.

What small claims will not cover

Worth knowing before you build your expectations around it:

• Claims over €2,000.
• Debt claims, personal injury claims, hire purchase and leasing agreements, insurance claims, and claims against Government bodies (city and county councils are not excluded).
• Your time. You cannot claim for the hours you spent dealing with the issue.
• Emotional distress.
• The costs of making the claim, including an engineer’s report or witness expenses, and the application fee itself.
• Cases where either party is based outside Ireland. Within the EU excluding Denmark, the European small claims procedure applies instead. It does not apply to the United Kingdom, including Northern Ireland.

Your claim is generally limited to what you paid or what you have spent putting it right, so keep the receipts for remedial work.

The three things that decide how this goes

Do not pay in full up front. Retained money is leverage that survives every other mistake you might make. A payment schedule staged against progress is the most useful protection available to you and it costs nothing to ask for.

Write things down at the time. Not when the relationship sours. A dated photograph taken the week the work finished is worth more than a confident account given six months later.

Give them the chance to fix it, in writing. It is the first remedy under the Act, the small claims registrar will ask, and it is also, most of the time, how the problem actually gets solved.