Terminate a contract with a contractor. What are my options?
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Terminate a contract with a contractor. What are my options?
We recently hired a roofing company who has screwed up royally in my opinion and is trying to charge us a lot of extra fees that weren't in our agreement.
I want to understand my options.
Hello ******! 1. Have there been any prior issues or breaches that led to your decision to consider termination? 2. Did you communicate any concerns or requests for repairs or changes to the contractor before this decision?
Hi, the roofing company has been very unresponsive and hard to deal with - which we have thought about terminating the contract before but didn't. The most recent issue (roof issue) where they are now trying to charge us way more than the contract is what is leading me to understand my options. I also think the work they have done so far is bad work. I have told them we want to terminate the contract, but they are saying we'll still owe the money to them. I feel a bit stuck. Do I have any legal options on how to handle this?
Ok thanks! Just a few more questions. If I may, have you found a 2nd contractor who has given a quote on how much it will cost to fix the job? How much did you originally spend on the job?
We have started talking to a couple other contractors but haven't received a formal quote yet. Should we do that? Why would that be helpful? The original quote for the roof was $35k but the contractor is trying to add an additional $10k to the quote now. I would assume a new contractor would have to fix some of the work that has previously been done too
Got it! The short answer? You have a breach of contract action. A breach of contract just simply means that one party was obligated to perform, and they have either not performed or have said that they will not perform. So here is what you need to do: 1. You can just hire a new contractor to finish out the job; 2. Look at your paperwork to see if they have a bond. A bond acts like insurance wherein you can file a claim and the bond company will pay you out money to get the job done. 3. You can file a lawsuit in your local court. If you’ve already sent a bunch of letters, then the truth is this is the only way to compel them to do anything. In construction contracts where the contractor has breached the agreement because they failed to timely perform or performed shoddy work, the owner is generally entitled to recover the difference between the original contract price and the actual cost to complete the project (even with a different contractor) in conformance with the parties’ agreement. The reason it is important to get a quote for a new contractor is because if you sue or even if you file a claim against their bond, then you would need a new contractor to give you a sense of how much it would cost to resolve this. Does that help clarify things? I want to make sure I didn’t leave anything out.
Yes thank you. I need to think more about this and will come back to you if I have any more questions. Thanks for the help here.
Sure! I hope I’ve provided the information you were seeking. If you need more help, please let me know so l can continue to assist you. Thank you for using contractscounsel.com!
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