Hi Trevor,
Thank you for taking the time to reply.
Yes, invoices were in his companies name.
So it does seem we were both right! We did have an initial verbal agreement that we would do it my way, but it was also mentioned at the time that he would confirm with his accountant that this would be ok.
I think what happened is, his accountant is employed to save him money, not me. So because there was no legal reason to approach it my way, they weren’t going to.
Which is actually fine tbh, if they just said that. My major issue was that I was being told I was just outright wrong, both legally and on my maths, but refused to discuss why. Just “this is the way it works, stop talking about!”
Rather than just telling me they wanted to do it in the companies favour, not mine, because it benefits the company and I had already been paid enough. (job took me a lot longer than expected, but whatever lol)
He did have a couple of unexpected costs during the project on his side too, so this really was an attempt to cover those costs, by going back on our initial agreement. But he just didn’t say that at first, he wasn’t being completely upfront about why the situation had changed.
That upsets me way more than missing out on a few quid.
We have spoken and resolved it now, and he did in fact confirm everything I have said above. He did see an opportunity to do it in his favour and went with it, but lied to me about the reasons why.
So from now on, any work we do I will just buy materials myself and charge his company and I’ll be a lot more wary of verbal agreements.
all’s well that ends well.
Thank you for your help on this one.