A bill arrived for work that was not in the quote. Which part do you owe?

Work that was not in the quote is not chargeable by default. The contractor had to tell you in time, and in Sweden before starting at all; a late warning can cost them the payment. Read what your contract promised first: where it commits to a result, much billed as an extra may sit inside the price.

What your contract promised decides what counts as an extra

Whether a line is an extra at all is settled by the shape of your contract, before anyone asks who caused the work. The quote you accepted is that contract, whatever it is headed. Hallå konsument is the Konsumentverket’s consumer service, and it sets out two shapes a contract can take. Where the document itemises the job step by step, the reading is strict: “Är avtalet utformat på så sätt att varje delmoment är specificerat bör generellt sett allt utöver vad som specificerats utgöra tilläggsarbete” (Hallå konsument), so anything beyond the specification is generally additional work. Where instead the document commits to a result, the reading runs the other way: “Är avtalet skrivet på så sätt att uppdraget är att uppnå ett visst resultat kan man argumentera för att allt som krävs för att uppnå det resultatet ingår i tjänsten”, everything needed to reach that result can be argued to sit inside the service. Dutch law reaches the same point through the statute’s own wording: art. 7:755 lets a contractor claim more for “door de opdrachtgever gewenste toevoegingen of veranderingen in het overeengekomen werk”, additions or changes to the work agreed, so what the agreed work was is the prior question there too.

Replace the bathroom is a result. Supply and fit the bath, tile the walls, box the pipework is a specification. A document can be both: a result at the top and a list underneath. Where the two disagree, the argument is about which of the two the invoice is being measured against, so ask the contractor that before arguing any single line.

Take six lines off a renovation invoice and they sort into different questions:

• Additional labour, 6 hours. The job taking longer than estimated is their estimating risk. Against an estimate it runs against that estimate’s own cap rather than arriving on top of it.
• Second coat of paint, not quoted. Against a specification naming one coat, an extra you should have been asked about. Against decorate the room, already in.
• Removed asbestos flue found behind the boiler casing. A discovery, and a separate question from both of the above.
• Re-ran the waste pipe after first run failed inspection. Not an extra at all. This is the job being done twice.
• Upgrade to the tap you chose on site. The clearest case of a chargeable change, because you asked for it.
• Skip hire. Whichever way it goes, the contract decided it before the skip arrived.

One of those six is straightforwardly yours and one is straightforwardly theirs. The extra hours, the second coat and the skip turn on what the contract promised, and the asbestos is the hard case, which the two markets answer differently.

In the Netherlands, the change and the discovery take different routes

Dutch law splits the reasons a bill can grow into separate articles, and each one lands differently. Where you asked for the change, the contractor may claim more “wanneer hij de opdrachtgever tijdig heeft gewezen op de noodzaak van een daaruit voortvloeiende prijsverhoging, tenzij de opdrachtgever die noodzaak uit zichzelf had moeten begrijpen” (art. 7:755 BW): they had to point out in time that the price would rise, unless you should have grasped that yourself.

A hidden condition goes through a different door. Where cost-increasing circumstances arise or come to light after the contract without being attributable to the contractor, it is a court that may adjust the price on the contractor’s claim, and only if the contractor need not have reckoned with the chance of such circumstances when pricing the job (art. 7:753 lid 1 BW). A discovery behind the wall does not hand anyone a pen. One case does allow an adjustment without a court, and it is narrow: where the increase follows from incorrect data you supplied that mattered to the pricing, unless the contractor should have spotted the error before pricing (art. 7:753 lid 2). Both routes are conditional on a warning given as soon as possible, “zo spoedig mogelijk”, of the need for a price rise (art. 7:753 lid 3), so a contractor who never warned has neither.

The Dutch consumer authority puts the consequence in a line you can use in a letter: if the contractor did not warn you about the extra cost, or warned you too late, you do not have to pay for the extra work. “Waarschuwt de ondernemer u niet voor de extra kosten? Of deed hij dit te laat? Dan hoeft u het meerwerk niet te betalen” (ACM ConsuWijzer). Where you agreed a fixed price, the same page goes further: you do not pay the extra work, and the contractor still has to do the job even if it turns out worse than they thought. “Sprak u een vaste prijs af? Dan hoeft u het meerwerk niet te betalen. De ondernemer moet het werk uitvoeren, ook als het tegenvalt.”

An indicative price is a different instrument from a fixed one, and it carries its own ceiling. A richtprijs is the Dutch estimate, and art. 7:752 lid 2 says it “met niet meer dan 10% mogen worden overschreden”, exceeded by no more than 10 per cent, unless the contractor warned you as early as possible of a further overrun so you could limit or simplify the work. The ACM restates the cap for the case where no timely warning was given: “Dan mag hij maximaal 10% meerwerk op de rekening zetten.” Read that as a ceiling rather than an allowance: without a warning, 10% of the richtprijs is the most that may be added. The same page names the other half of a richtprijs, which is a right to pay less where the job came in cheaper, “U betaalt dan alleen de werkelijk gemaakte uren en materiaalkosten”. A fixed price does not give you that.

One defence has a settled answer. Where the contractor says your measurements or your drawings were wrong, the ACM notes who carries the expertise: the contractor is the expert, and in case of doubt must check your information themselves. “De ondernemer is de deskundige. Bij twijfel moet hij zelf uw informatie controleren.”

In Sweden there are two grounds for a supplement, and a discovery is not one

Swedish law reaches the same reader with a shorter list, which changes the answer instead of simplifying it. The Konsumenttjänstlag gives a trader a right to a price supplement on two grounds: where they performed tilläggsarbete in accordance with 8 §, or where the service became more expensive “på grund av omständigheter som är att hänföra till konsumenten och som näringsidkaren inte bort förutse när avtalet träffades” (38 §), circumstances attributable to you that the trader should not have foreseen when the contract was made.

A condition nobody caused is on neither ground. That list has no counterpart to the Dutch court route, so a hidden discovery becomes chargeable in Sweden by one path: the procedure. Where a need for connected additional work emerges during the job, “skall näringsidkaren underrätta konsumenten och begära dennes anvisningar” (8 §), the trader must notify you and request your instructions. They may go ahead without your instructions in two cases, and both need you to be unreachable: where the price of the extra work is trifling or low against the price of the agreed service, and where there is special reason to assume you would want it done.

What happens when that step is skipped is stated by the regulator, not left to be inferred from the statute. Hallå konsument: “Huvudregeln vid tilläggsarbeten är att näringsidkaren i så fall ska underrätta dig och begära dina anvisningar innan något arbete får utföras. Gör de inte detta har de inte heller rätt till betalning för arbetet.” No notification, no right to payment for the work. The same service puts the basic rule plainly: the company must always consult you before additional work is done.

Sweden’s ceiling on an estimate also sits at a different number from the Dutch one. An ungefärlig prisuppgift may not be exceeded “med mer än 15 procent”, unless another price limit was agreed or there is a right to a price supplement under 38 § (36 §). Where you have the agreed price in writing, the Konsumentverket says that is usually what you pay: “Har du ett skriftligt underlag på vilket pris ni kommit överens om? Då är det oftast det priset du ska betala” (Konsumentverket).

Ten per cent against fifteen, and a hidden-condition route that exists in one code and not the other.

Work done twice is a different question from work added

Repair of the contractor’s own defect asks who pays for a job done twice, which is a different question from what the price may grow to. Sorting it into the same list as the changes you asked for and the things nobody knew about is how it reaches the invoice unchallenged.

Where the work was done badly because of defects or unsuitability in the materials or equipment the contractor used, the consequences are on the contractor’s account (art. 7:760 lid 1 BW). You may also require the defects to be put right within a reasonable time, unless the cost of doing so bears no relation to your interest in repair over damages (art. 7:759 lid 2). Two clocks govern how long that stays available: a claim for a defect in delivered work is time-barred two years after you protested about it (art. 7:761 lid 1), and in any event twenty years after oplevering, the handover, for building work, ten in other cases (art. 7:761 lid 2). The two-year clock is the operative one; the twenty years is an outer ceiling, not a period during which a claim stays live on its own.

On the Swedish side the principle comes with a carve-out that keeps it honest: “Avhjälpande skall ske utan kostnad för konsumenten. Detta gäller dock inte kostnader som skulle ha uppkommit även om tjänsten hade utförts felfritt” (20 §). Remedy is free of charge, except for costs that would have arisen even had the work been done faultlessly. A part you were always going to buy remains yours; the return visit to fit it properly does not. On timing, notice given within two months of your noticing the fault is always in time (17 §). The outer limit for complaining is three years from the end of the job, or ten where the work was on land, on buildings, or on other installations on land, in water or on other fixed property. That ten-year limb yields to a guarantee rather than outlasting one: 17 § closes “såvida inte annat följer av en garanti eller liknande utfästelse”, and 61 § carries the same proviso for a småhusentreprenad, a separate Swedish regime with its own ten-year clock running from the final inspection that signs the job off. If you have been told the decade survives whatever the contractor’s own garanti says, that is the wrong way round. What a warranty covers is worth reading alongside these statutory rights, not in place of them.

The date you concluded the contract decides which Dutch defect rule applies

Dutch defect liability turns on when the contract was concluded, and getting this wrong flips the default. The current rule is that for building work the contractor is liable “voor gebreken die bij de oplevering van het werk niet zijn ontdekt, tenzij deze gebreken niet aan de aannemer zijn toe te rekenen” (art. 7:758 lid 4 BW): a defect not spotted at handover stays the contractor’s, unless that defect is not attributable to them.

That provision does not reach every contract. The transitional article enacted with the Wet kwaliteitsborging voor het bouwen says so directly: “De artikelen 758, vierde lid, en 765a van Boek 7 zijn niet van toepassing op overeenkomsten van aanneming van werk die zijn gesloten vóór de inwerkingtreding van artikel III van de Wet kwaliteitsborging voor het bouwen” (Staatsblad 2019, 382). For contracts concluded before that article came into force, the older rule governs instead, and it runs the opposite way: “De aannemer is ontslagen van de aansprakelijkheid voor gebreken die de opdrachtgever op het tijdstip van oplevering redelijkerwijs had moeten ontdekken” (art. 7:758 lid 3), the contractor is discharged for defects you should reasonably have discovered at handover.

Where the boundary falls can be bracketed by the published consolidations of the Civil Code. The lid 4 wording is absent from the text in force to 31 December 2023 and present in the text in force from 1 January 2024. So the date on your contract, rather than the date on the invoice or the date of handover, is what you check before relying on either rule. The same boundary carries art. 7:754 lid 2, which requires the lid-1 warning, the one about errors in the assignment or unsuitable materials and plans you supplied, to be given in writing and unambiguously, “schriftelijk en ondubbelzinnig”, for building work. That writing requirement is tied by its own words to the lid-1 warning. The price warnings above sit in different articles, and those articles require the contractor’s warning to be timely without saying it must be written. Put your own instructions and agreements in writing anyway: that is your evidence, not something the statute demands of the contractor.

You may be thinking EU law already settles this

The Consumer Rights Directive does require express consent to extra payments at the quote stage. That duty is a poor fit for the invoice on your table. Article 22 reads: “Before the consumer is bound by the contract or offer, the trader shall seek the express consent of the consumer to any extra payment in addition to the remuneration agreed upon for the trader’s main contractual obligation” (Directive 2011/83/EU). The words fix the moment. The duty attaches before you are bound, and its second limb addresses default options you would have had to reject to avoid the charge, at the pre-contract stage. A bill arriving in week three of a renovation is a different event, and the rule that governs it is national.

Scope is the second reason to be careful. The Directive excludes contracts “for the construction of new buildings, the substantial conversion of existing buildings and for rental of accommodation for residential purposes” (Art 3(3)(f)), while its recitals bring back in “those related to repair and renovation of buildings other than substantial conversion”. The same recital sets that bar high: “A substantial conversion is a conversion comparable to the construction of a new building, for example where only the façade of an old building is retained.” Which side of the line your own job falls on is a characterisation nobody performs for you in advance.

A quoted item that never arrived means you owe less, not more

Scaffolding priced in the quote and never erected is part of the agreed job that was not performed, so the question is not whether you owe more but whether you owe the whole of what was quoted. It gets argued on the wrong ground because it looks like an extra, and it is not a change you asked for, not a hidden condition and not a defect.

Both systems let you raise that against the bill instead of paying first and pursuing it later. Dutch limitation rules expressly leave untouched “de bevoegdheid van de opdrachtgever om aan een vordering tot betaling van de prijs zijn recht op vermindering daarvan door gedeeltelijke ontbinding van de overeenkomst of op schadevergoeding tegen te werpen” (art. 7:761 lid 4 BW): you may set price reduction or damages against a claim for payment. In Sweden, “Konsumenten får hålla inne så mycket av betalningen som fordras för att ge honom säkerhet för hans krav på grund av ett fel hos tjänsten” (19 §), you may withhold as much of the payment as secures your claim. That is a different lever from the retention a payment schedule builds in at the start: the retention is agreed in advance and released on sign-off, while this one attaches to a fault and is available with the invoice already in your hand.

Worked example: Margriet in Utrecht and Ragnar in Uppsala

Margriet and Ragnar each agreed an indicative price for a bathroom refit, and in each case the fitter found a rotten joist under the floor, replaced it without calling, and put it on the final bill. Same facts, two countries, two answers.

Margriet’s contractor agreed a richtprijs and never warned her the price would run further. That silence closes both of the adjustment routes in art. 7:753, because lid 3 makes each of them conditional on a warning given as soon as possible, and the joist was a cost-increasing circumstance attributable to nobody rather than a change she asked for. Her exposure is capped, not removed. With no timely warning the ACM puts at most 10% of the richtprijs on the bill, and nothing above that cap has anywhere to come from.

Ragnar’s contractor gave an ungefärlig prisuppgift. Under 36 § that may not be exceeded by more than 15 per cent, a wider band than Margriet’s. The joist is where the two markets diverge: the Swedish list offers no ground for a cost increase attributable to nobody, so the replacement is chargeable as tilläggsarbete or not at all, and 8 § required the contractor to notify Ragnar and request instructions first. That did not happen, and Hallå konsument states the consequence, that there is no right to payment for the work. So Ragnar can refuse the joist outright where Margriet can only cap what it costs her.

Neither of them needs to know what a joist costs to write that letter. What each needs is the agreed price in writing and the line on the invoice they were never asked about.

What to do with the invoice on your table

Work through it in this order.

1. Find your contract and read what it promised: a result, an itemised list, or both. That decides which lines can be extras at all.
2. Ask for an itemised invoice in writing. In Sweden it is yours by right (“Tänk på att du har rätt att få en specificerad faktura”, says the Konsumentverket), and asking is free.
3. Mark each disputed line as one of four things: a change you asked for, a condition nobody knew about, their own work done twice, or something quoted that never arrived.
4. Note the date you concluded the contract, not the date of handover. In the Netherlands it decides which defect rule applies.
5. Write to them naming the lines and the reason for each. Say which part you are paying and which you are withholding, and say when you will pay the undisputed part.
6. Pay the undisputed part on time. The Swedish lever is to withhold as much as secures your claim, which is a measure of the disputed lines, not of the whole invoice.
7. Keep the reply. Where a line is conceded in writing, that is the record you will want if it goes further.

If you are reading this before the work starts, the lever is further upstream. A mandate sets the ceiling and obliges the contractor to stop and put any overrun in writing, which turns the price arguments above into a question you answer instead of an invoice you receive. Setting one is work you do once, before a single line of it is in dispute.