Two things matter the moment a contractor fails to turn up: document the missed appointment straight away, and put your complaint in writing with a clear deadline for a response. Ireland’s Consumer Rights Act 2022 treats the service you agreed to, including timing and attendance, as part of what the trader owes you. Everything else, letters, chargebacks, small claims, follows from getting that first record right.
TL;DR:
- Document the missed appointment immediately through written communication with a clear deadline, and photograph the site to preserve evidence.
- Keep all records, including contracts, invoices, and contact logs, and verify the contractor’s credentials before proceeding.
- Send a formal demand letter requesting resolution within 5 to 10 business days, and consider a chargeback if payment was made by card.
- If necessary, file a small claim for disputes under €2,000, but start pricing a replacement professional simultaneously to avoid delays.
- Book a verified professional through instant-booking platforms to ensure quicker service while resolving disputes with the original contractor.
Table of Contents
- What to do when a contractor doesn’t show up: your first-hour checklist
- Your legal position in Ireland: the Consumer Rights Act 2022 and CCPC advice
- Demand letters, chargebacks and the small claims procedure
- Replacing the contractor without paying twice
- Preventing the next no-show: vetting, contracts and booking habits
- Why a vetted, instant-booking platform shortens the gap
- Talking to the contractor before you escalate anything
- Why contractors disappear, and the warning signs that come first
- Checking reviews and references properly, not just glancing at star ratings
- Reporting a contractor who behaves unprofessionally
- Where the real gap in this advice sits
- Get a verified pro booked while you sort out the rest
- Sources
- FAQ
What to do when a contractor doesn’t show up: your first-hour checklist
The first two hours after a missed appointment decide how strong your position is later. Ring the contractor once, wait a reasonable interval, then follow up in writing so there’s a timestamp on record.
- Call first, then message. Phone the contractor on the day. If there’s no answer or no credible explanation, send a text or email confirming the missed appointment, the date, and the time you’d agreed. This creates a dated paper trail even if the call itself goes unanswered.
- Write a short formal notice. Keep it factual: the dates missed, what you’re asking for (a new start date, a refund, or completion of remaining work), and a deadline, typically 5 to 10 business days, to respond.
- Photograph everything relevant. Empty driveways, unfinished work, materials left on site, anything that shows the state of the job on the day work should have happened.
- Log every contact. Note the date, time, method, and outcome of each call, text, or email. A simple spreadsheet or notes app entry works fine.
- Store it somewhere safe. Email yourself copies, or save to cloud storage, so the timestamps can’t be disputed later.
If you’re unsure whether the person you hired holds proper credentials in the first place, it’s worth checking their contractor licence before things go further.
Pro Tip: Screenshot your text messages the day they happen. If a dispute reaches the small claims process months later, a screenshot with a visible timestamp carries more weight than your memory of “sometime in March”.
Your legal position in Ireland: the Consumer Rights Act 2022 and CCPC advice
Under the Consumer Rights Act 2022, a service must conform to the contract you agreed. Timing and attendance aren’t side issues. They’re part of what the trader promised to deliver, and a repeated failure to turn up can amount to a failure to provide the service at all.
The Competition and Consumer Protection Commission sets out a proportionate approach rather than jumping straight to legal action:
- Explain the problem clearly to the trader, in writing where possible.
- Keep every record: contracts, invoices, messages, photographs.
- Give the trader a genuine opportunity to fix the issue within an agreed timeframe before escalating.
A single missed date isn’t automatically abandonment. The distinction that matters is whether the contractor gives a credible explanation and firm replacement date, or simply stops communicating. If you hired a main contractor who then brought in subcontractors, the CCPC’s guidance on buying services is clear that the business you contracted with usually remains responsible for a subcontractor’s failure, not the sub.
There’s also no fixed number of days that automatically counts as an unreasonable delay. Whether a delay defeats the contract depends on what was agreed, the reason given, and the purpose of the job, so a two-week slip on a kitchen extension reads very differently to a two-week slip on a leaking roof.
Demand letters, chargebacks and the small claims procedure
Once you’ve documented the no-show, work through remedies in order of proportionality rather than going nuclear immediately.
- Send a written demand. State what happened, what you want (completion, refund, or partial refund), and a deadline of 5 to 10 business days.
- Ask about chargeback if you paid by card. Your bank or card provider assesses chargeback claims based on the evidence you supply, so have the contract, invoice, payment confirmation, and proof of the missed appointment ready.
- File a small claim if the demand fails. For qualifying disputes, Ireland’s small claims procedure applies to consumer claims worth €2,000 or less.
Filing costs €25, and a respondent who loses typically has 28 days to comply once judgment is made. Larger or structurally complex jobs, a botched extension foundation, say, usually need a solicitor rather than the small claims route, since the value and technical complexity exceed what that process is built for.
Replacing the contractor without paying twice
Hiring a replacement is often the right call, but rushing it can cost you evidence and money you’ll never recover from the original contractor.
- Photograph the site before anyone else touches it. Dated images of exactly what’s finished and what isn’t are your strongest evidence if the dispute goes further.
- Keep the original scope of works and every invoice. You’ll need these to show what you’d already paid for versus what’s still outstanding.
- Get a written assessment from the new contractor. Ask them to note what’s incomplete, what’s defective, and what’s simply unfinished. This separates the original contractor’s failures from normal work-in-progress, which matters if you later try to recover costs.
- Stage your payments. Pay in instalments tied to milestones, and hold back a small retention until the work is checked and signed off.
- Only authorise emergency work if safety demands it. If a property is left exposed, an open roof, disconnected plumbing, reasonable protective measures are justified. Keep every receipt and notify the original contractor about urgent steps taken.
Pro Tip: Never sign off on major remedial work before documenting the site, unless there’s a genuine safety risk. Once new work starts, the evidence of what the first contractor actually left behind disappears fast.
Preventing the next no-show: vetting, contracts and booking habits
Most no-shows aren’t random bad luck. They follow patterns you can screen for before signing anything.
Check licences, insurance, and recent project photos before hiring, and always ask for at least two references you can actually ring. Verifying a tradesperson is legitimate takes twenty minutes and rules out the operators most likely to disappear mid-job.
Your contract should specify a firm start date, milestone dates for multi-stage jobs, and a written cancellation or no-show policy, ideally with a trip fee if the contractor cancels late without notice.
Confirmation habits help as well. A reminder text the day before, or a calendar invite the contractor accepts, creates one more paper trail and one more nudge that reduces the odds of a missed date. Some home-service businesses now use dedicated answering services to log every missed call, which is worth asking about if a contractor seems to be juggling too many jobs at once.
Why a vetted, instant-booking platform shortens the gap
A no-show costs you time as much as money, and time is exactly what a directory search burns through while you wait for callbacks that never come. Platforms built around instant booking and pre-vetted professionals cut that gap, because the verification work is already done before you need it.
When you’re choosing between a fresh search and a platform with same-day availability already built in, the platform route usually gets a professional to your door faster.
Talking to the contractor before you escalate anything
Most no-shows resolve without a letter or a claim form, if you handle the conversation right. Skip the accusatory opening. Instead, state the facts: the date and time you’d agreed, that no one arrived, and that you’d like to understand what happened.
Avoid saying anything that sounds like a threat before you’ve heard their explanation, don’t accuse them of dishonesty outright, and don’t demand an immediate answer on the phone. A contractor juggling three sites and a supplier delay behaves very differently to one who’s simply stopped answering. Ask directly: what happened, when can they realistically come, and will they confirm that new date in writing?
If they give a credible reason and a firm new date, that’s usually worth accepting once, particularly for smaller domestic jobs where delays from weather, materials, or a sick tradesperson are common. If the same excuse repeats without a firm commitment, that’s your signal to move from a phone conversation to the written notice described earlier, with the specific dates and a deadline attached.
Keep every exchange, even the friendly ones, in writing where you can. A text confirming “great, see you Thursday at 9am” is worthless as evidence if it only ever existed as a spoken promise on the phone. The goal of this stage isn’t to win an argument. It’s to establish, on record, whether you’re dealing with a genuine hiccup or a pattern.
Why contractors disappear, and the warning signs that come first
Contractors go quiet for a mix of reasons, some understandable, some not. Overbooking is the most common: a tradesperson takes on more jobs than they can realistically manage, then triages by whoever complains loudest. Cash flow problems on other jobs, staff shortages, and underestimating how long a previous job would take all follow close behind.
The warning signs usually show up before the first missed appointment. A contractor who’s vague about a start date, who won’t commit to anything in writing, or who takes unusually long to reply to booking messages is often already juggling more than they can handle. Watch for a pattern of rescheduling before the job even starts, that’s a stronger predictor of a future no-show than almost anything else. Requests for a large upfront payment before any work has started are another flag, since it removes their incentive to show up promptly.
Contractors who communicate proactively, even with bad news like “running two days late on the last job”, tend to behave differently to ones who stay silent until you chase them. The silence itself is often the tell, not the delay.
Checking reviews and references properly, not just glancing at star ratings
A star rating on its own tells you almost nothing about reliability. What matters is the text underneath it: look specifically for mentions of punctuality, communication, and whether the contractor finished on the date they promised.
Recent reviews matter more than old ones. A contractor with excellent reviews from three years ago and a cluster of complaints in the last six months has changed, for better or worse, and you want to know which. Cross check reviews across more than one platform where possible, since a single site’s reviews can be thin or unrepresentative for smaller local tradespeople.
References beat reviews when you can get them. Ring at least one past customer and ask a specific question: “Did they turn up when they said they would?” That single question filters out more unreliable contractors than any star rating. Recent project photos, ideally with the customer’s confirmation the work is theirs, add another layer of verification that a review alone can’t give you.
Reporting a contractor who behaves unprofessionally
If a contractor’s behaviour goes beyond a single missed appointment, repeated no-shows, ignored complaints, or refusal to engage with a written notice, there are routes for raising it beyond your own dispute.
Start with the CCPC, which accepts consumer complaints about traders and uses them to build a picture of repeat offenders, even though it doesn’t resolve individual disputes directly. If the contractor belongs to a trade body or association, most maintain a complaints process for members, and a complaint on file can affect their standing or membership. Keep your own documentation, the same photos, messages, and timeline you built earlier, ready to submit, since most reporting bodies expect evidence rather than a verbal account.
For anything involving unlicensed electrical or gas work, safety regulators have their own reporting channels, and a complaint there can matter more for protecting future homeowners than for resolving your own dispute.
Where the real gap in this advice sits
Most guidance on contractor no-shows stops at “document everything and write a firm letter,” which is correct but incomplete. The genuine gap is speed: the CCPC process and the small claims route are both sound, but they’re slow by design, and a homeowner sitting with a half-finished bathroom doesn’t have weeks to wait for a written response deadline to lapse.
The conventional advice underrates how much leverage a firm deadline and a credible alternative give you simultaneously. A demand letter lands differently when the contractor knows you’ve already lined up a replacement quote. That’s not aggression, it’s just accurate signalling that you’re not stuck waiting on them.
What I’d prioritise first, ahead of the legal letter-writing, is parallel action: document the no-show, yes, but also start pricing a replacement the same day. Don’t wait for the 10 business day deadline to pass before you know what plan B costs. Homeowners who treat the legal process and the practical replacement as sequential steps lose the most time. Run them side by side.
— Thomas
Get a verified pro booked while you sort out the rest
Some platforms offer a vetting process for professionals and provide instant booking with real-time availability, unlike relying solely on directory callbacks or waiting for contractors to answer phone calls.
If you’re dealing with a no-show right now, book a verified professional for same-day cleaning, boiler servicing, or general home repairs while your dispute with the original contractor runs its course. Larger jobs benefit from comparing quotes directly through the platform, and staged, secure payments mean you’re never handing over the full amount before work is checked. For a quick second opinion on a job that’s gone wrong, an Ask a Pro consultation starts at €39 to €59 depending on the specialism, giving you expert input before you commit to a full rehire. Check how Workily’s vetting works, then book your replacement pro today.
Sources
For the legal detail behind this article, go directly to the primary sources: the CCPC’s guidance on buying services and disputed card transactions, Citizens Information’s small claims court page, and the Consumer Rights Act 2022 itself.
FAQ
What Should I Avoid Saying to a Contractor Who Didn’t Show?
Avoid accusations of dishonesty or threats before you’ve heard their explanation, since most no-shows have a mundane cause like overbooking rather than bad faith. Stick to facts: the agreed date, what happened, and what you need to happen next.
How Long Can a Builder Legally Delay a Job?
There’s no fixed number of days that automatically counts as an unreasonable delay under Irish law. It depends on what the contract specified, the reason given, and the purpose of the work, so a short slip on a non-urgent job is treated differently to any delay on urgent repairs.
What Happens if a Contractor Fails to Perform the Agreed Work?
Under the Consumer Rights Act 2022, the service must conform to what was agreed, including timing where that was part of the contract. If it doesn’t, you can seek a remedy through a written demand, and escalate to small claims or chargeback if that fails.
How Do I Express Disappointment With a Contractor Without Damaging My Case?
Put it in writing, calmly and factually: dates missed, impact caused, and the remedy you want by a set deadline. An angry phone call feels satisfying but leaves no record, while a written complaint does exactly what the CCPC recommends for a genuine attempt at resolution.
Can I Use Workily if My Original Contractor Ghosted Me?
Yes. Workily’s instant booking lets you find a verified replacement professional the same day for services like cleaning, boiler work, and general repairs, rather than waiting on a new round of callbacks.
How Much Does It Cost to File a Small Claim in Ireland?
Filing a small claim costs €25, and it applies to qualifying consumer disputes worth €2,000 or less. If judgment is made against the trader, they typically have 28 days to comply.
Is the Subcontractor or the Main Contractor Responsible if They No-Show?
The main contractor you signed with is usually responsible for a subcontractor’s failure, according to CCPC guidance, since your contract sits with them, not the sub. Direct your written complaint and any deadline to the business you actually hired.
