Is a boiler quote legally binding?

Somebody has been round, measured up and left you a price. Before you say yes, it is worth knowing exactly what you are about to create, because it is more binding than most people expect and it binds both of you.

Citizens Advice put it plainly. A quote is a promise from the trader to do the work at an agreed price, and once you say yes it is a binding agreement between you and them, whether it is written down or not.

Source: Citizens Advice, Before you get work done on your home

A quote and an estimate are not the same document

This is the distinction everything else hangs off. A quote is a fixed price, so you know what you are getting and what it will cost. An estimate is a rough guess, and if you accept one you can end up paying more than the figure you were shown.

Both words get used loosely on the doorstep, and plenty of documents use neither. If the paper in your hand does not say quote, ask directly whether the price is fixed and ask for the answer in writing. Three estimates are not three quotes, and lining them up next to each other tells you almost nothing.

Source: Citizens Advice, Before you get work done on your home

The three ways the price can still go up

A binding price is not an unbreakable one. Citizens Advice set out three situations where a trader can charge more than the quote said:

• You ask for extra work that was not in the quote.
• They tell you extra work is needed and you agree to pay for it.
• They made a genuine mistake writing down or calculating the price. In that case they have the legal right to charge what it should have been.

The third one surprises almost everybody, and it is worth understanding rather than resenting. A transposed figure is not a windfall you get to keep, which is another reason a price that looks too good to be true is not money in the bank.

The second one is the one that actually happens on boiler jobs. Which is why the wording of the quote matters considerably more than the number at the bottom of it.

Source: Citizens Advice, Before you get work done on your home

A fixed price is only as good as what it is fixed against

A price binds the person who gave it to the work they described. If the document says supply and fit a combination boiler and nothing else, you have a firm price for something nobody has defined.

This is why a decent boiler quote reads like a scope of work rather than a number, and why the honest ones write down what has been assumed: the flue coming out where it comes out now, the existing gas run being adequate, nothing unexpected behind the old appliance, the pipework being reusable. That is not weaselling. It is the only way anybody can give you a fixed price for a job that partly lives inside a wall.

The quote to be wary of is the unconditional one on a job nobody looked at properly. The conditions have not gone away. They have just not been written down, which means you will meet them on the day rather than tonight.

What should be on the face of it

Citizens Advice list what any quote for work on your home should include. Boiler quotes miss the same two more often than the rest:

• A fixed total price rather than a daily rate.
• A breakdown of the work to be done and the materials needed.
• How long the price is valid for.
• Whether the price includes VAT.
• When the price can go up.

Source: Citizens Advice, Before you get work done on your home

The validity date is the one people ignore, and it bites if you are collecting quotes slowly. Gather three over a month and the first may have expired before the third arrives, which leaves you comparing a live price against a dead one.

There is a sixth thing that is specific to boilers and is not on anybody else's list: the make and model of the appliance, in writing. A fixed price attached to no particular boiler is fixed to nothing at all, because the thing it is a price for can change between signing and fitting.

What a binding quote does not protect you from

A contract is not a competence check. Accepting a quote from somebody who is not on the Gas Safe Register gives you a binding agreement with exactly the wrong person, and it is a two minute job to check before you accept rather than after.

It is also not much use if the business stops trading, which is the real argument for paying by card and keeping any deposit small.

And it does not make the specification right. A binding price for the wrong size boiler is a firm price for a mistake, and you will be the one living with it for the next fifteen years.

You can usually still change your mind

Because a boiler is normally agreed in your home or arranged online, there is usually a fourteen day period in which you can cancel, starting when you tell the installer to go ahead or sign a contract. If you asked for the work to start inside those fourteen days you may have to pay for what has already been done.

So accepting a quote is binding, but it is not a trapdoor. It is closer to a handshake that both of you can be held to.

Source: Citizens Advice, Before you get work done on your home

What we would tell a neighbour

Say yes deliberately, at the kitchen table, not on the doorstep while somebody waits. Get the price, the scope, the make and model, the validity date and the assumptions onto one piece of paper and give yourself a day with it.

If it is all there, accepting it is the strongest position you will ever be in on this job, because from that moment the price is theirs to hold to rather than yours to hope about. If something is missing, the answer is not to haggle over the total. It is to ask them to put the missing part in writing, which a good installer will do without blinking.

This is general information rather than legal advice. If a job has already gone wrong and money is at stake, Citizens Advice will talk it through with you for nothing.