2 min read
What happens when a client denies agreeing to extra work
You did the extra work on a verbal instruction and now the client says they never agreed to pay for it. Here's what happens next, and why you usually lose.
It happens on almost every job at some point. Something on site doesn't match the drawings, or the client wants something changed, and someone says "yes, do it" standing in the kitchen or over the phone. Three months later, the invoice arrives and the client says they never asked for it, or they thought it was included, or they don't remember the conversation the way you do.
At that point you're in a room with no evidence. Under most standard forms of contract, including JCT, a variation needs to be instructed and valued through a proper mechanism. A verbal instruction on site isn't nothing, but if it isn't confirmed anywhere, you're relying entirely on your word against theirs. If it goes to adjudication or a small claims court, the person with dates, photos and a written record wins, not the person who's telling the truth. Those aren't always the same person.
The frustrating part is how easy this is to avoid. It doesn't need a formal instruction pad or a QS on every domestic job. It needs a message sent the same day: "Confirming we agreed on site today to move the stud wall and add the extra socket, additional cost approximately £X, will confirm final figure once done." That single message, kept somewhere searchable, changes the entire conversation later. Most clients aren't trying to rob you. They forget the detail of a conversation that happened while they were thinking about six other things.
If a client does deny agreeing to something and you have nothing in writing, your options shrink fast. You can try to prove it through indirect evidence, other trades who were present, photos that show the change happening, delivery notes for materials that only make sense if the work occurred. All of that is weaker than a contemporaneous written record and far more expensive to assemble after the fact than it would have been to send a message on the day.
This is the exact gap we built the variations and site diary features in Sitestack to close. Every instruction gets logged against the job, with a date, whoever raised it, and photos if there are any, so it's there automatically rather than something you have to remember to do separately.