You paid for a finished job. You didn't get one.

Section 49 implies a term into every contract where a trader supplies a service to a consumer: it must be carried out with reasonable care and skill. Section 57 limits how far a trader can exclude or restrict that term, so a line in a quote generally won't remove it. Work falling below the standard a competent tradesperson would meet is normally a breach, whether or not anything was written down.

If the job was agreed without a firm completion date, the law fills the gap: it must be carried out within a reasonable time. What counts as reasonable generally depends on the scope of the work, agreed sequencing, access, supply problems and any variations — which is what answers a flat "there was never a deadline".

The statutory service remedies are repeat performance (the trader putting the work right at their own cost, within a reasonable time and without significant inconvenience) and, where that isn't possible or doesn't happen, a price reduction which can run up to the full amount paid. Section 54 preserves other remedies too, including damages, so this is not always a rigid sequence. Evidence of the opportunity given to the trader is typically something courts consider.

Contract damages generally aim to put you in the position you would have been in had the work been done properly, and the usual starting point is the reasonable cost of completing and correcting it. Courts may also weigh proportionality, betterment and mitigation — where a remedial cost is out of all proportion, the measure can instead reflect the reduction in value. A written quote from another trader is typically central either way.

Where you paid for something and received essentially nothing in return, the law of unjust enrichment generally allows recovery of the payment on the ground that the basis for it failed totally. It typically runs alongside a breach-of-contract claim and can be simpler where a trader took a deposit, never started, and then disappeared — there is little to argue about beyond the fact of payment.

Time generally runs from the breach rather than from when you noticed it, so defects that surface years later can raise harder limitation questions. Evidence — quotes, messages, photographs — also tends to be easier to assemble while the work is recent.