Consumer Rights Act 2015 for tradespeople: what you actually owe a customer

A mate of mine finished a shower room in Warrington, got paid, and heard nothing for six weeks. Then an email landed saying the customer wanted the whole job stripped out and a full refund because one row of tiles had a lippage he could feel with his thumb. The email quoted "my rights under the Consumer Rights Act" twice and mentioned Trading Standards once.

He rang me in a state, convinced he owed the man £4,000 back. He didn't. He owed him one visit and about half a day's work.

That gap, between what a customer thinks the Act says and what it actually says, is where most trades lose money or lose their nerve. Here is the real position.

Who the Act covers, and who it doesn't

The Consumer Rights Act 2015 governs contracts between a trader and a consumer, from 1 October 2015 onwards. If you are a sole trader or a limited company doing work for someone in their own home, you are the trader and they are the consumer. That is you on almost every domestic job.

It does not apply where your customer is a business. Main contractor, letting agent, commercial landlord, another trade you are subbing for, none of those are consumers. Those jobs run on ordinary contract law and, for late payment, the Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998.

The awkward middle case is the private landlord. A landlord who owns one flat and rents it out is generally acting in the course of a business, so the Act usually doesn't apply. A homeowner having work done to a house they also happen to let a room in usually is a consumer. If it matters to a live dispute, that one is worth a call to Citizens Advice consumer service rather than a guess.

The four things the Act says about your work

Sections 49 to 52 are the whole of your obligation on the service side, and they are short.

• Reasonable care and skill (s49). The work must be carried out to the standard of a reasonably competent person in your trade. Not the best in the county. Not a specialist you never held yourself out as. Current Building Regulations, BS 7671 for electrical work, Gas Safe requirements, manufacturer instructions, those are the yardsticks a court or an expert will reach for.
• Information is binding (s50). Anything you said or wrote about the service or about yourself is part of the contract if the customer took it into account. "It'll be done by the Friday." "That's a 20-year warranty on the membrane." "I'm NICEIC registered." Say it, own it.
• Reasonable price (s51). If no price was fixed, the customer pays a reasonable price. This is the section that bites when you work off a verbal "we'll sort it at the end" and then bill £3,800.
• Reasonable time (s52). If no time was fixed, the work has to be done in a reasonable time. Reasonable is judged on the job, the trade, and the circumstances, so a two-week delay on a rewire waiting for a DNO appointment is very different from a two-week delay because you took a bigger job.

Notice what is not in there. Nothing about a job being flawless. Nothing that makes you an insurer for the building. Nothing that requires you to guarantee your work for six years, whatever a customer tells you they read online.

What the customer gets when something is wrong

This is the part worth committing to memory, because it is the part customers get wrong most often.

First: repeat performance (s55)

If the service falls short of reasonable care and skill, the customer's first remedy is to require you to do it again, properly, at no cost to them. You must do it within a reasonable time and without causing significant inconvenience. You cannot charge for it and you cannot charge for the materials.

The flip side is that this is your right too. The customer cannot skip straight past you, get a second firm in at £2,000, and send you the bill, unless repeat performance was impossible or you refused or dragged it out. Offer the return visit in writing, promptly, and you have protected yourself.

Then: price reduction (s56)

A price reduction, which can in principle be up to the full amount, only comes into play where repeat performance is impossible, or where you have not completed it within a reasonable time and without significant inconvenience. The reduction has to be an appropriate amount, meaning it reflects the shortfall. Chipped grout on one row does not equal a free bathroom.

Materials you supply are goods, and goods have their own rules

When you supply the taps, the boiler, the consumer unit or the tiles as part of the job, those are goods under sections 9 to 11. They must be of satisfactory quality, fit for any particular purpose the customer made known, and as described.

That means if you fit a customer-specified extractor and it is dead out of the box, that is on you as the supplier in the first instance, not on the customer to chase the manufacturer. You then go back up the chain to your merchant, which is exactly why keeping the invoice for every material line matters.

Two timings to know on goods:

• 30-day short-term right to reject. Faulty goods inside 30 days of supply, the customer can reject them and get their money back for those goods.
• Six months. A fault appearing in the first six months is presumed to have been there at supply unless you can show otherwise. After six months, the burden flips to the customer.

Where the customer buys the goods themselves and you just fit them, the goods rules sit with the retailer who sold them. Your exposure is the fitting. Get that split written into the quote and it settles most arguments before they start.

The 14-day cancellation rule that catches good firms out

This one isn't in the Consumer Rights Act at all. It sits in the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013, and it is the most expensive thing on this page.

If you agree a job in the customer's home, or at a distance by phone, email or WhatsApp, the customer has 14 days to cancel without giving a reason. You have to give them written notice of that right, plus a cancellation form, before or at the time of contract.

If you don't give the notice, the cancellation period extends to 12 months and 14 days. A customer can, in the worst case, cancel after the work is finished and recover what they paid. It is also a criminal offence not to give the required information, enforceable by Trading Standards.

If the customer wants you to start inside the 14 days, which most do, get their express written request to begin during the cancellation period. Then if they cancel part way through, they pay for the work done up to that point.

Worked example: a £6,400 bathroom and a leaking waste

Take Adam Wójcik trading as Wójcik Plumbing. Full bathroom refit in Stockport, quoted and accepted in writing on 2 March 2026. Labour £3,900, materials £2,500, total £6,400 including VAT at 20%. Work finished 20 March, paid in full on 22 March.

On 11 April the customer emails: a slow leak from the bath waste has stained the kitchen ceiling below. She wants the bathroom taken out and £6,400 back.

What she is actually entitled to, in order:

• Repeat performance (s55). The waste connection is a workmanship issue. Adam returns, lifts two panels, remakes the joint, tests it. Half a day of labour at his £240 day rate, so £120 of his own time, plus about £15 of materials. He carries that cost. He does not invoice for it.
• The ceiling below. Consequential damage caused by the defective work. Cutting out, boarding, skimming and two coats, quoted locally at £380. That is a claim against his public liability policy if he wants to use it, though with a typical £250 excess most firms just pay it and keep their record clean.
• A price reduction (s56). Not available here, because repeat performance is entirely possible and Adam offered it within 48 hours of the email. If he had ignored her for three weeks and she had paid another firm £600 to fix it, that £600 becomes his problem instead.

Total real exposure: £515, made up of £135 to put the leak right and £380 to make good the ceiling. Against a demand for £6,400. The difference between those two numbers is entirely down to answering the email within 48 hours and offering the return visit in writing.

One more line from that job worth copying. Adam replied with the two dates, then added: "Once the waste is remade I'll fill and leave the bath standing for two hours and send you a photo of the joint dry." That photo, timestamped, is what closes the file.

What NOT to do

1. Don't refund on the first angry email. A refund handed over before you have inspected anything is an admission you did not need to make, and it removes your s55 right to fix the work yourself for a fraction of the cost.
2. Don't put "no refunds" or "all sales final" in your T&Cs. Part 2 of the Act voids terms that try to exclude your statutory obligations. An unenforceable clause does nothing except make you look like you were trying it on if the paperwork is ever read out.
3. Don't skip the cancellation notice on doorstep and phone jobs. It takes one clause on your quote. Leaving it off exposes you to a 12-month-plus cancellation window and a Trading Standards offence.
4. Don't promise timescales verbally. Section 50 makes what you said binding. "Done by Friday" said on the doorstep carries the same weight as a written date, and you will not remember the conversation as clearly as the customer does.
5. Don't leave the job without a signed sign-off. One sheet, dated, listing what was done and confirming the customer has seen it working. It doesn't remove their rights, and nothing can, but it fixes the condition of the work on the day you left. Snags raised six weeks later then have to explain themselves.

Where the Act stops

Worth knowing the limits, because customers rarely quote these bits back at you.

Wear and tear is not a defect. Sealant needs replacing eventually. Grout discolours. A £29 mixer from a merchant's budget range does not last as long as a £180 one, and if the customer chose it against your advice, in writing, that is on the specification and not your workmanship.

Design decisions the customer insisted on are theirs, provided you flagged the risk. Section 49 protects the reasonably competent tradesperson who advised against something and was overruled. The word "provided" is doing the work there, so put the advice in an email.

And there is a clock. In England, Wales and Northern Ireland a claim must generally be brought within six years of the breach under the Limitation Act 1980. In Scotland it is five years under the Prescription and Limitation (Scotland) Act 1973. If a customer comes back after eight years about a job with no ongoing guarantee, that is a conversation, not a liability.

If a dispute does harden and money is owed to you rather than by you, the route is Money Claim Online for England and Wales, or the Simple Procedure through the Scottish Courts for Scotland. Most disputes settle long before then, and the ones that settle fastest are the ones where you offered the return visit early and kept the emails.