What to do if a builder has ripped you off

Before you start, two honest notes

The first is about where you live, and it matters more than it sounds. The United Kingdom is four nations and three legal systems, and almost nothing below works identically across them. The routes here are written for England and Wales. Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own consumer services, their own procedures and their own time limits, and where the difference is dangerous rather than merely different I have said so in the text. If you are in Scotland or Northern Ireland, start with your own service below. Everything about evidence, and about how you paid, applies to you exactly as written.

The second is about us. Pinnacle of All Trades helps homeowners find tradespeople we have vetted. We do not recover money and we cannot act for you. I am not going to pretend otherwise to somebody in the state you are probably in. What follows is what I would tell you across a kitchen table, and none of it needs you to use us.

One more thing, and it is not a disclaimer for the sake of it. Consumer law changes, and the deadlines and limits attached to the routes below change with it. I have deliberately not printed a single limit, deadline or fee on this page. Emergency numbers are the exception, because a page that tells you to call somebody urgently and then makes you go and look the number up is no use to you. Every link goes to the organisation that maintains the current answer, and the date this page was last reviewed is at the top. We review it again whenever the law or the circumstances it describes change. If you are relying on a limit or a deadline, get it from the link rather than from me.

• Citizens Advice consumer service, for England and Walesopen_in_new (opens in a new tab)
• consumeradvice.scot, the consumer service for Scotlandopen_in_new (opens in a new tab)
• Consumerline, the consumer service for Northern Irelandopen_in_new (opens in a new tab)

Before you say anything to them

Two things come before even this, and only two. If the work is unsafe, deal with that first, below. And if you paid by bank transfer, ring your bank before you start gathering anything: a transfer can sometimes still be recalled, and that window is measured in hours rather than days, while everything below will still be here this afternoon. For everyone else, this is the first thing, and specifically it comes before the conversation where you tell them you are unhappy. Once an argument starts, things get tidied away and accounts of what was agreed start to differ. What you collect now is worth more than anything you can collect afterwards, and it is the part people most often tell me they wish they had done.

None of it costs anything and all of it takes an afternoon.

• Photograph everything, including the work that is fine. Wide shots first, then close ups.
• Write down what has happened so far, in order, with dates, while you still remember it.
• Gather every payment record, and note exactly what you paid, when, by what method, and to which account name. How you paid decides which routes are open to you.
• Collect every message. Texts, WhatsApp, emails, voicemails. Screenshot them and back them up somewhere that is not the phone.
• Find the quote, any contract, and anything they wrote down about what was included.
• Establish who you actually contracted with. A limited company, a sole trader, or a name on a van with nothing behind it are three different situations later on, and the answer is usually on the quote or the invoice.
• Put anything you agreed verbally into a short email to them, saying what you understood was agreed. Whether or not they reply, there is now a record.
• Note who has been on site, and on what days.

Work out which situation you are actually in

People arrive here with very different problems and the right first move is not the same for all of them. Read the one that fits.

The work is dangerous. Go straight to the section on unsafe work. That is a different route and it is faster than any of the others.

They took a deposit and never started. This is mainly about getting money back, so the section on how you paid is your first stop. Report it as well, because somebody who has done this to you has very likely done it before.

They started, took stage payments, and walked off. You have a money problem and an unfinished house at the same time. Get somebody independent to survey what has actually been done and what it will cost to put right, in writing, before you agree anything further with the original builder.

The work is finished but it is bad. This is a dispute about quality, and the law is more on your side than most people realise. Under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 a service must be carried out with reasonable care and skill, and where it has not been, your statutory remedies are repeat performance, meaning they put it right at their cost, and failing that a price reduction. Ask for repeat performance in writing and name the Act. Where the problem is that they never finished rather than that the work is poor, the statutory remedy is a price reduction rather than repeat performance. That is not the only thing you can ask for, and on an abandoned job it is often not the biggest: you can also claim damages, and the usual measure of those is what it costs you to have somebody else finish the work properly. That is the figure the independent survey above is for, and it is why getting it in writing matters before you agree anything.

• Consumer Rights Act 2015, the remedies for a poor serviceopen_in_new (opens in a new tab)
• RICS: find a chartered surveyoropen_in_new (opens in a new tab)

Getting money back depends on how you paid

This is the part most often got wrong, including by people trying to help you, so it is worth being precise. Two different things get run together here and they are not the same.

Section 75 is a legal right, under the Consumer Credit Act. It makes your credit card provider equally liable with the builder for a breach of contract or a misrepresentation. Two things about it are worth knowing and are routinely missed. The claim can be for your whole loss rather than only the amount that went on the card, so a deposit paid on a credit card against a much larger job can reach the whole job. And the limits are set by the price of the work itself, not by how much of it you put on the card, with both a lower and an upper bound. That upper bound is the catch for this audience. A large building job can fall outside Section 75 altogether however you paid the deposit, and once it does the card provider is not liable for what the builder did, so chargeback is the only card route left. Be careful about assuming a big job can be split to get under the limit. The Ombudsman has refused more than once to let one building job be divided into separately priced phases for that purpose. Genuinely separate contracts, a kitchen and a loft agreed and priced apart, are a different matter and each stands on its own price, so if that is your situation it is worth asking rather than assuming the whole lot is out.

If the work was financed with a loan rather than a card, which of two opposite positions you are in depends on where the loan came from. Finance arranged through the builder to pay for that specific job can make the lender jointly liable in much the same way a credit card does, and there is a further provision that can reach above the Section 75 limit, for a breach of contract rather than for anything you were told, and only once you have tried the builder yourself and got nowhere. A general purpose loan from your own bank, which you could have spent on anything, gives you neither of those: your claim is against the builder alone.

Chargeback is not a legal right. It is a rule of the card schemes, so it covers debit cards as well, and it works by reversing the payment. It recovers only what went on that card, and its deadlines are tighter than Section 75's.

Which is open to you depends on the card, the price of the work and how long ago you paid. I am not printing those numbers here, because they change and because getting one wrong costs you the route. Citizens Advice keeps both current.

If you paid by bank transfer or in cash, neither of the above is open to you, which is why the survival kit says pay by credit card where you can. Tell your bank anyway, and tell them today: if you were deceived into making the transfer, that is authorised push payment fraud and it has a route of its own, and speed matters because money can sometimes still be recalled. Be aware that banks treat a genuine dispute with a real builder differently from a scam, so say plainly which you think it is.

If your card provider or your bank turns you down and you think they are wrong, the Financial Ombudsman Service will look at it and it is free. You have to complain to the firm first and get their final answer, or wait the period they are allowed, and there is a deadline for going to the Ombudsman after that answer. Both are on their site.

• Citizens Advice: Section 75 and chargeback, if you paid by cardopen_in_new (opens in a new tab)
• Financial Ombudsman Service decision of May 2022 (PDF): a building job priced in phases was one contract for Section 75open_in_new (opens in a new tab)
• Financial Ombudsman Service decision of June 2025 (PDF): a conservatory priced in sections was one item for Section 75open_in_new (opens in a new tab)
• Financial Ombudsman Service: time limitsopen_in_new (opens in a new tab)
• Section 75A of the Consumer Credit Act, for finance arranged to pay for the workopen_in_new (opens in a new tab)
• Payment Systems Regulator: getting money back if you were tricked into a bank transferopen_in_new (opens in a new tab)

Who to report it to, and what each of them can actually do

People are often surprised and then disappointed here, so I would rather say it at the start than let you find out.

Trading Standards does not get your money back. That is not what it is for. It enforces consumer law against businesses, and it builds cases out of patterns of reports, so your report may be the one that makes a pattern visible. That is genuinely worth doing and it is not a route to a refund. You do not contact Trading Standards directly: in England and Wales you go through the Citizens Advice consumer service, in Scotland through consumeradvice.scot, and in Northern Ireland through Consumerline.

Those same three services will also give you free, impartial advice on your own situation, which is worth more than anything a page can say, because they can ask you questions about your case. If you do one thing from this section, do that one.

Where this is fraud rather than a contract that went wrong, report it as fraud. Taking a deposit for work never intended to be done is a crime. In England, Wales and Northern Ireland that goes to Report Fraud, which replaced Action Fraud at the end of 2025. In Scotland, report to Police Scotland on 101. Be clear-eyed about what this is: Report Fraud is a reporting and intelligence centre rather than an investigating body, reports feed a national intelligence bureau, and many individual reports are never investigated. It is still worth doing, for the same reason as the Trading Standards report.

Your local council's building control team matters where the work needed Building Regulations approval and either never got it or does not meet it. That is a separate route from any money claim and it is about the house being safe and being sellable later. Be warned that it can cost you money rather than save you money in the short term: putting unapproved work right usually means applying for a certificate after the fact, paying for it, and sometimes opening completed work up so it can be inspected.

If the builder belonged to a trade body or an insurance backed guarantee scheme, meaning a warranty underwritten by an insurer so that it still pays out if the builder goes under, that scheme will have its own complaints process and it can be quicker than anything else here. Check the scheme's own register rather than the logo on the paperwork.

• Report Fraud, for England, Wales and Northern Irelandopen_in_new (opens in a new tab)
• Citizens Advice: report to Trading Standardsopen_in_new (opens in a new tab)
• GOV.UK: find your local councilopen_in_new (opens in a new tab)

If the work is unsafe rather than unfinished

This does not wait for any of the above.

If you can smell gas or you think there is an escape, stop reading and call the gas emergency service now. In Great Britain that is the National Gas Emergency Service on 0800 111 999. Northern Ireland has its own service and its own number, 0800 002 001. Open doors and windows, turn the gas off at the meter if you can reach it safely, do not touch electrical switches, do not use a naked flame, and make the call from outside or away from the leak. That is an emergency line and it is not the same thing as reporting the builder.

Reporting the builder comes afterwards. Gas work must be done by somebody on the Gas Safe Register, and the Register is who you tell about unregistered or unsafe gas work once the immediate danger is dealt with. They can arrange an inspection.

For electrical work you are worried about, do not use the circuit and get a qualified electrician to inspect and report on it.

If you think a structure is dangerous, if something has been removed that was holding something up, or if you are unsure, contact your local authority building control team. Councils have real powers over dangerous structures and they move faster on that than on anything else.

Do not let a money dispute keep you living in an unsafe house while it is argued about. Deal with the danger, keep every invoice and every report, and pursue the money afterwards.

• HSE: gas safety for homeowners, and the Great Britain emergency numberopen_in_new (opens in a new tab)
• Gas Safe Register: report unsafe or illegal gas workopen_in_new (opens in a new tab)
• GOV.UK: find your local councilopen_in_new (opens in a new tab)

Going to court, and the clock you cannot see

A money claim in the small claims track is designed to be used without a solicitor, and for many building disputes it is the realistic route. The fee scales with what you are claiming. Most defended claims now go through mediation before any hearing, which is free and settles a lot of them, so expect that step rather than being surprised by it.

Before you start, send a letter before action. That is the name for it, and it matters: it sets out what you want and by when, courts expect you to have tried, and a surprising number of these end there.

The difficulty is rarely winning. It is collecting afterwards, and this is where the company question from the first section comes back. If you contracted with a sole trader, they are personally liable and they cannot dissolve themselves. If you contracted with a limited company that has since been dissolved, it no longer legally exists and cannot be sued until it is restored to the register, and as a creditor rather than a former director you cannot use the simple administrative route: you would need a court order, which is a solicitor-grade step with its own costs. Establish which of these you are in before you spend anything, because it changes whether pursuing it is worth it at all.

There are deadlines on all of this and they are the thing most likely to quietly remove your options while you are busy trying to get the house finished. The limits for contract claims differ between England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, and the card routes above have their own much shorter ones. Find out early which clock applies to you.

• GOV.UK: make a court claim for moneyopen_in_new (opens in a new tab)
• GOV.UK: restore a dissolved companyopen_in_new (opens in a new tab)
• Citizens Advice: making a small claimopen_in_new (opens in a new tab)

When you are ready to get it put right

Most people in this position need the work finishing long before any of the above concludes, and that is a horrible place to be, because hiring another builder is the last thing you want to do.

When you get there, whoever you use, do every check you would do for a stranger and do them properly this time. Stages. In writing. Credit card. Look the person up, not just the company.

Pinnacle is free for homeowners, and every tradesperson on it has been checked by a person before they are put in front of you. That is the only thing I am going to ask of you on this page.