the info you give is abit of a muddle.
did he tell you what his hourly rate was over the phone etc ?
did you sign anything when he turned up to say you agree the houtly rate and his terms/conditions ?
did he keep you informed throughout the job what he was doing or had found ?
was the leak/drip visable under the bath ?
when you say he replaced new seals and cemented the pipe i'm taking it that was the waste, which is useally a straight forward find when running the bath.

you say the ball valve wasn't shutting off properly, so why wasn't a new ball valve fitted ?
was a new overflow fitted or the overflow repaired ?
you should be able to see the overflow coming out through the wall to the outside.

but 5 hours does seem abit over the top for whats been done etc
i would be looking at no more than 2 hours if that was my job.

You also say he turned up at 1030 leaving at 1130 saying he'd be back to finish the job. This is 1 hour we can see he was there. What time did he return and what time was the job complete? I can only assume he charged you from 1030 - 1530 despite not being on the job.....these are questions you should be asking too.

I know its too late to state the obvious but this type of situation really does bring home the message that you need to ask up front what he is likely to charge , although he won't have been able to be specific at least you would have had an idea and he's less inclined to think you are a soft touch. Personally it sounds like each of the two separate fixes should have been £40 to £60 for the labour ( approx an hour for each) - possibly a bit more in London

I think you should hake a point of checking what work he did on the overflow pipe - it soulds like it was leaking into the wall (ie. pipe could be snapped off in the wall) so you need to make sure that he has remedied the overflow pipe rather than just stopped the overflowing otherwise you will have a wet wall again if the ball valve ever fails again. Also - as Hi'Spec m=noticed - I would expect to se material on there for a new ball valve ? Or did he just strip it and replaced the washer ? Or did he do a bodge and bend job on the old one ?

To answer the questions of hi-spec...
He didn't tell me what his call out charge or hourly rate were over the phone. Nothing was signed and there were no terms and conditions. He is a local guy who we called round to find out the problem. He didn't keep me informed throughout the job but that wouldn't have been possible as my fiancee was having an operation and I was at work (military, no phone that afternoon). Our brief to him was to find the cause of the leak. He assumed the leak was from the waste pipe beneath the bath. The point of the leak wasn't visible beneath the bath but the water dripping down by the wall could be seen when shined on by a torch. There are also several other linkages that he cemented. After cementing these he realised that wasn't the problem as the leak was still there and at that point he looked at the cold water tanks in the loft. Once he realised that the ball valve wasn't shutting off he finished work on that day (at what time I don't know as I went straight to hospital after work). I phoned him as soon as possible after work to find out what he had done. He told me that he had investigated the problem and that he would be back tomorrow to change the valves on both tanks and that he could do a service on the boiler at the same time. I told him to stop at that point and asked him what he intended to charge me for what he had done. He initially said he would have to charge for a days work 270 pounds. Straight away I decided that he had achieved very little for what he intended to charge and I told him I did not require him to change the ball valves or service the boiler which is the other thing he offered. I didn't tell him at that point that those were my thoughts.

I subsequently changed the valves with my dad and the dripping stopped. It is a short term solution as we haven't addressed the overflow yet. The plumber kept my house key over christmas and I requested it on several occasions along with an invoice. I wanted him to itemise what he's done but as I stated earlier it just says labour 190, materials 10, a drop of 70 pounds from the initial statement. He dropped my key back with the invoice last night and waited for me to pay him on the spot at which point I told him that I thought what he had done couldn't really have taken 5 hrs and that I would consult some other people first.

>The point of the leak wasn't visible beneath the bath but the water dripping down by the wall could be seen when shined on by a torch

im abit lost on this one, the leaks not visable under the bath, but the water can be seen when shined on by a torch.

is that the room below the bathroom where its visable ?
but the loft tanks are above the bathroom
is it visable on an internal wall ?

so he's checked the bath waste and added some solvent weld to it.
checked the loft tanks and found a faulty or dripping ball valve ? hours work top.

surely if there was a problem on a faulty ball valve he would of changed it then not tomorrow.
service on a boiler, sounds like he's touting for work.

as for the keys
i would never do a job in a customers house who i have never worked for or their family without someone being there.
and customers who i know and do work for the keys get dropped in the letter box same day.
thats just leaving both of you open to all sorts of problems.

but personally i think you have been taken on a merry go round.
offer him a fair price for hours work and send him on his way.
no one will say that takes 5 hours work.

The water was visible on the internal wall of the bathroom behind the back of the bath. It had also started to become visible on our lounge wall on the floor below. The tanks are in the loft.

Thanks very much for your thoughts on this hi-spec, Scotty and H. I will be writing a letter to him to post today.

Nick

So he did not actually fix the problem !! - just did some work on the waste pipework that (he says) needed doing instead . This guy should not be charging £38 / hour as he is obviously a novice .... should have gone to the problem with the ball valve within minutes. I would offer him a no more than half of what he is trying to charge and he should consider himself lucky with that.

Thats correct,

Problem not fixed. I have sent him a letter with my thoughts...
Thanks again for your help