What To Do When a Plumber Does Not Turn Up

What to do in the first hour when a plumber has not arrived

Call the landline or office number, ask three specific questions, and write the answers down with the time. Ask who is allocated to the job, where that engineer is now, and what time they will be at your door. A firm running its own diary answers all three immediately, because a dispatcher can see it. A firm that cannot answer any of them is not running a diary you are in.

Do not spend the hour ringing an engineer mobile that goes to voicemail. An engineer under a floor in someone else's kitchen cannot answer, and that tells you nothing either way. The office is where the information lives, and the office is also who you will be arguing with later if a deposit needs returning.

Then send one short message confirming what you were told. Something as plain as a note saying you were booked for the morning, nobody attended, and you were told on the phone at a stated time that an engineer would arrive by a stated hour. You are not being difficult. You are creating the only record that will exist if the revised time also passes, and it takes a minute.

• Ring the office or landline, not only the engineer mobile
• Ask who is allocated, where they are, and what time they will arrive
• Write down the answers and the time you were given them
• Send a short email or text confirming what you were told
• Set yourself a cut off time and say out loud what you will do when it passes

If you have taken a day off work or paid someone to wait in, say so on the first call and ask for it to be noted. It changes the tone of the conversation and it matters later if you are asking for a deposit back.

How long should you wait before calling it a no show?

Give a two hour arrival window one hour of grace, then treat it as a no show unless someone has told you otherwise. Traffic across London is genuinely unpredictable, parking on a Victorian terrace can take twenty minutes, and a job that opens up into a seized valve will overrun. None of that is dishonest. What is not acceptable is silence, because a dispatcher knows an engineer is running late long before you do.

The number that matters is not lateness, it is notification. A firm that calls you at half nine to say the first job has gone badly and they will be with you at two has behaved properly. A firm that lets a morning slot expire in silence and only speaks when you chase has told you something about how many people are actually on the road.

For an emergency booking the clock is much shorter. If water is coming through a ceiling, the honest answer to give up on is anything past an hour with no engineer name and no location. Isolate the supply at the stop tap, put buckets and towels down, and start calling someone else while you wait. Nothing stops you cancelling the second firm if the first one appears.

Why plumbers miss appointments, and which reasons are fair

There are four common reasons and only two of them are honest. A job overran, a van or a key tool failed, the booking was taken by someone who never had an engineer to send, or the work was quietly deprioritised for something more profitable. The first two happen to every firm. The second two are a business model problem and they repeat.

Overruns are the usual explanation and normally the true one. Hot water work has a habit of expanding. A cylinder swap in a second floor conversion turns into a morning of getting the old vessel down a staircase that was built before anyone imagined it. An immersion heater that should take an hour becomes a fight with an element that has limescaled itself into the boss. A firm with real engineers can tell you exactly which job it is and roughly how long is left.

The third reason is the one people do not see. Some bookings are taken by an operation that sells the job on, or that advertises far more coverage than it can cover, and the appointment only becomes real when somebody agrees to take it. If nobody does, there is no engineer to be late. That is why the question about who is allocated is the useful one. Not being able to name a person at ten in the morning is the answer.

The fourth is rarer and worth naming anyway. A booked repair gets displaced by a bigger job that landed that morning. You will not be told this. You will be told about traffic. The tell is a pattern of being moved twice while the firm stays keen to talk about a replacement rather than the repair you asked for.

What a no show tells you about how the firm is run

A missed appointment is a scheduling fault. How they handle the next twenty minutes tells you whether the business has engineers or has a call centre. That distinction predicts almost everything about the job you were about to let them do in your home.

Watch for who answers and what they can see. A dispatcher with a live diary can name the engineer, tell you the postcode they are currently in, and offer a real revised time. Somebody reading from a script will offer sympathy, a vague afternoon, and no name. The second is not rudeness, it is a person who genuinely does not have the information because the allocation has not happened.

Then watch what they offer. An honest firm that has let you down offers you the next realistic slot and does something about the inconvenience, whether that is holding the original quote, waiving a charge that had been agreed, or putting you first the following morning. An operation that is buying customers and selling them on has no margin to make that gesture and will argue about a deposit instead.

None of this means a firm with a missed appointment is bad. It means the recovery is the interview. Twenty engineers on the road means a morning can be rearranged, and it also means somebody in the office can tell you exactly where they all are. If nobody can, ask yourself what you are actually buying.

• Can they name the engineer allocated to your job?
• Can they say where that engineer is right now?
• Do they offer a specific revised time or a vague half day?
• Did they call you, or did you have to chase them?
• Do they offer anything for the wasted day, or only apologise?

How to get your deposit back after a plumber does not turn up

Ask in writing the same day, state plainly that the appointment was not attended, and give a short deadline for the refund. A deposit is paid for work. If no engineer attended and no work was done, there is nothing for it to be consideration for, and a firm that intends to return it will normally do so once you have asked in a form they can file.

Keep the request factual and short. The date and time of the booking, the fact nobody attended, what you were told on the phone and when, the amount paid and how, and a date by which you expect it back. Add one line saying what you will do if that date passes. Long angry emails get filed under difficult customer. Six dated sentences get paid, because they read like the first page of a claim.

How you paid decides your leverage. Paying by credit card on anything over one hundred pounds brings section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act into play, which makes the card provider jointly liable with the trader for breach of contract, and you claim against the provider directly. Debit cards sit outside section 75 but chargeback may apply and the window is short, so ask your bank early rather than after a month of chasing. Bank transfer leaves you with the small claims track and nothing else, which is exactly why a stranger asking for a transfer before any work is done deserves a second thought.

If a deposit was genuinely for ordered parts, that is a different conversation and can be legitimate. Ask what was ordered, for whom, and whether it can be returned. A specific cylinder or a manufacturer part for a named appliance is a real cost. A round number taken to secure a slot for standard work is not, and should come back.

If the money does not come back, how to complain about a plumber in writing is the next step, and the written record is what makes every later option possible.

• Put the refund request in writing the same day, with dates and amounts
• Give a specific deadline rather than asking them to sort it out
• Credit card and over one hundred pounds: raise section 75 with the provider
• Debit card: ask the bank about chargeback quickly, the window is limited
• Ask what any parts deposit actually bought, and whether it is returnable

Never pay a deposit by bank transfer to a personal account for a firm you have not used. It removes every protection you would otherwise have and it is the single most common way people lose money to a booking that was never going to be attended.

Should you give them a second chance?

Give one second chance if they called you before you chased them, could name the engineer, and offered a specific time. Do not give a second chance after a silent morning followed by a vague afternoon, and never give a third. The pattern repeats because the cause is structural, not personal.

There is a practical reason to accept the second slot where the firm has behaved well. Continuity is worth something. Somebody who has already been told about your system, has the model of the cylinder, and has priced the work is faster and cheaper than starting over with a stranger who needs to see it all again. Losing that is a real cost, so do not throw it away over a bad morning if the recovery was honest.

The reason to walk is different and it is about what happens mid job. A firm that cannot manage its diary will also struggle on the day the work opens up and a part is needed by three o'clock. The second visit that never gets booked, the cylinder left drained over a weekend, the job that is nearly finished for a fortnight: those all start in the same office. A missed appointment before any money has changed hands is the cheapest look you will ever get at that.

A no show and a defective job are different failures, and what to do if a plumber does a bad job follows a different route, because there the work exists and is wrong rather than absent.

How to book so it is less likely to happen again

Book on a named engineer, a written scope and a checkable registration, and ask who to call if nobody arrives. Most no shows are decided at the booking, not on the morning, because the booking was vague enough that nobody was ever firmly committed to it.

Ask for an arrival window rather than a day, and ask what happens if it slips. A firm with real capacity will happily tell you they call ahead, or that the engineer rings when leaving the previous job. A firm that cannot commit to a window will say they will try to fit you in, which is an honest description of a queue you are not in.

Be careful about how you found them. A prominent placement in a directory, a map listing or the top of a results page is usually paid for, often per click or per lead. That is ordinary business and says nothing about whether the firm is good. It does mean a business buying customers carries an acquisition cost, and that cost has to be recovered somewhere, in the rate, in the parts margin, or in an enthusiasm for the larger piece of work. It also means some of those listings belong to operations that take the booking and pass it on, which is exactly the arrangement where an appointment can exist on your calendar and not in anybody else's. Position measures marketing spend, so treat it as a place to begin checking rather than as a recommendation.

Finally, write down what a call-out fee covers before you agree to it. A call-out charge should buy attendance and diagnosis. Ask whether it is charged if nobody attends, which is a question that gets a very clear answer very quickly, and ask how it is treated if the repair goes ahead. Getting that in a message before the day means the refund conversation, if there ever is one, is already settled.

Booking well starts before the phone call, and how to check a plumber on the Gas Safe Register is the quickest of the checks worth running first.

It is also worth being clear about what Checkatrade vs Trustatrader listings actually verify, because a directory badge describes how a firm joined a platform and says nothing about whether anybody will arrive on the day.

On unvented work, confirm at the booking stage that you are getting a G3 qualified plumber rather than discovering otherwise on the day.

• Ask for an arrival window and what happens if it slips
• Get the scope in writing, naming the work and the likely parts
• Check any Gas Safe or unvented competence yourself rather than accepting a logo
• Ask who to phone if nobody arrives, and take that number
• Pay by card, and never by transfer to a personal account

What to do while you wait if there is water or no hot water

Deal with the water first and the appointment second. If anything is escaping, close the stop tap or the local isolating valve, catch what you can, and move anything electrical out of the way. If the leak is above a ceiling that is bulging, do not stand under it, and tell the flat below and the managing agent early, because building insurance usually becomes involved and early notice helps.

If it is an unvented cylinder discharging through the tundish, that is the safety system doing its job and it should not be left running for days. Note whether the discharge is constant or intermittent and whether it happens while the cylinder is heating, because that is the first thing a competent engineer will ask and it narrows the fault to the expansion side or the temperature side before anybody removes a panel.

If the booking was for an unvented cylinder repair, resist the temptation to open the inlet control set yourself while you wait. That work is restricted for a reason and a failed attempt makes the eventual visit longer.

A cylinder that has been drained down and left, or a gas appliance that another engineer has turned off and capped, should not be put back into use to get through a weekend. Leave it isolated and get it dealt with properly, whoever ends up doing the work.