annull devis?

[juin]

We signed a devis in may 2007 with a local French builder recommended by Mairie for a new roof including 3 velux and paid 5000 euros deposit. No dates were on the devis but verbal agreement to start 2nd or 3rd week in June and would take about 3 weeks.. The work was started in July and they finished the work except veluxes by August break . They had removed old veluxes and tiled over openings. Builder came in August with invoice for all the work except velux and asked for payment which I gave him. I asked when the veluxes would be installed and he said 15th September as they were "petite travaux". He has not arrived and we have been trying to contact him unsuccessfully for over a week, left mssg etc as I am in England and OH is in France and needs to come back. I would prefer for him not to do work now, but how can we annul devis without having to pay? Is there a legal time limit for completion as we need to do work that is now held up and don't want to wait years to complete? Also during the work we were flooded twice and the drains to our new fosse were damaged due to them running over ground with their machine.We repaired damage ourselves as we just wanted the job done and them out of way

[Nick Trollope]

Annul what? You haven't paid for work they haven't done and I presume the work that they did do is satisfactory. What losses have you incurred?

If there were no dates on the devis, then they would be in breach of contract after a period of time deemed "unreasonable" by a court. I doubt if this is 2 days.

Your best bet is to ask them if they want to do the Velux's and if not, get someone else to do them. If they do, then insist that they do them promptly.

As far as the damage to your drains is concerned, then (unless it was obvious/you told them not to go there), I would take this up with your fosse installer, as there are regs about installations where vehicles can go.