In the past we have had great experience with Pascoe's but after yesterday and today we will won't be using them again.

Our water heater went yesterday afternoon, and we got a quote from Pascoe's at the end of the day which we paid a deposit on. That evening we realised that the quoted amount was *double* a previous quote from them for the exact same job, which we'd investigated knowing that our water heater was old and might soon need replacing.

After calling around a few other plumbers, we got quotes that matched Pascoe's original lower quote. We called first thing this morning (7:00am) to cancel the Pascoe's job, hoping to get our $712 deposit back as a goodwill gesture as we have been repeat customers and so far nothing had been done.

The person we spoke to claimed that the parts etc had already been purchased from the supplier, and so they were out of pocket. However we confirmed for ourselves, by calling Pascoes supplier Galvin, that the order for our water heater and associated parts had already been cancelled by Pascoe's, and that Pascoe's had *not* been charged for anything.

Pascoe's then tried to match their price such that if we went with them it would be no worse than us losing our deposit and going with someone else, but at that point we'd rather give our money to a local plumber than give Pascoe's the job so that they could get the rest of our money.

A satisfactory outcome for us would have been for Pascoe's to honour their original quote (which was still more expensive than what other plumbers were quoting, but in the past we have appreciated a small premium in price for the quality and reliability of Pascoe's service), or a refund of our original deposit, given that the whole incident from quote to canellation was well under 24 hours.

I understand the non-refundable deposit thing, but in this case it feels like Pascoes tried to rip us off on the quote (doubling their own original quote), then lied to us about our deposit already being spent on parts when it hadn't been, and then just stood there saying "Well, we've got your money now, and you can't do anything about it.".

They are following the letter of the law, but not the spirit - giving us back our money would not make them any worse off (as they have not actually purchased or been charged for anything related to our job, nor sent anyone out to our house), which is what a deposit is supposed to protect them against.

...and, in the meantime, while we were trying to sort all of this out, another plumber had already completed the job, and (even taking losing the deposit into account) we've saved about $1,200 on Pascoe's original undiscounted quote.

It is unlikely in the extreme that we will be using or recommending Pascoe's in future.