Dave1963

Wondered if anyone has come across this problem before. I have done quite a lot of work for someone (I am a legal worker and tax Payer) once the job was finished and I gave them my bill which was very reasonable for the amount of work I had done the customer suddenly turned into a total physco. They are refusing to pay for work carried out. Am I within my rights to go to their property and take out all the equipment I have fitted and have receipts for as I have not been paid a cent. Or am I better off going down the legal route. Just wanted to know if anyone else had, had to deal with this situation before.

Dave1963

Forgot to mention I have already started the small claim process but not sure how long this is going to take, so was thinking am I better off taking matters into my own hands. I dont have anything to hide and have plenty of happy customers, pay taxes etc.

Madridboy

Do not step one foot onto their property with the intention of some UK telly style ballif grab. This in itself is a huge fault in Spain. As someone who states they have just been doing legal work for someone you should know this. Go to their address with ALL your facturers and evidence and call the police. This would have to be 100% evidence as just because you have a receipt for something in someones house this does not show 100% evidence in a court that it is the same item. Try the legal route. Get the police there first then if that fails have a lwayer send an official beaurofax to them threatening legal action. This should be enough.

Mitzyboy

Why is he refusing to pay though? Is he dissatified with the work?

snikpoh

As madridboy says, be very careful. If you try and retrieve goods or even go to their house and have a 'heated discussion', they can denounce you and then you're in deep doo-doo!

The police here don't take kindly to that approach even if you are in the right.

The down side though is that the correct route is via the courts and this can take YEARS...

Grebo

Only got caught the once, this is exactly why we take a decent deposit off the customer, before any thing is done or ordered.

Mitzyboy

We still dont know why they refused to pay for it though, so it's difficult to comment

jdr

You do come across professional non payers though.
I had one who accepted the price, but then wanted a breakdown in materials etc later.
He said, I am not paying all that, I could of bought the materials cheaper at Wix´s and picked it up myself with no transport costs.
The builder I was contracting for sorted it out though before I had to go and get paid. ;-))

Dave1963

Thank you for the advice. There was no problem with the work done. They were very complimentary all the way through, no problems at all until it was time to pay. I think as the last post said they may be professional non payers. There was a problem with other work done by someone else which I sorted perhaps they didnt get the other person back because he hadnt been paid either. Hopefully the court will settle it.

jay01

Can he not denounce the customers as non payers for work done as well as follow the legal route, it seems a little unfair that he is the victim by getting ripped off and they get the protection when he tries to recover his losses when they are theives which is what in effect they are.

Not totally sure what denoucing a person means but seems to be the first option in most cases, think I would be happy to tell everyone who they are so no one else gets ripped off.

Sounds more like the UK all the time.