Terms and conditions

Every visit and every job that comes about through this site, inside the municipality (gemeente) of Zeist: Zeist, Den Dolder, Austerlitz and Bosch en Duin. We do not drive beyond that boundary, so beyond it no job comes about either. Anything departing from these terms holds only where it was agreed in so many words.

From the moment you say yes to the visit, on the phone or at the door. Breakdown work gets no written quotation beforehand: producing one takes longer than the problem allows. What stands in its place is on this site, namely the figures themselves, and at the door you hear what the fault appears to be and roughly what that comes to.

If somebody rings on behalf of another party, a tenant for a landlord or a committee member for an owners association (vereniging van eigenaars), the party giving the instruction is the party the invoice is addressed to. That is settled on the phone rather than afterwards. In the flats of Vollenhove and Zeist-West several dwellings share one soil stack, so the note records where the blockage sat and at what distance, which turns the conversation about who pays into a conversation about a measurement.

Coming out is € 45 per visit. An hour is € 65 to € 85, according to the work. € 25 joins that before 08:00, after 18:00 and on Sundays. Dutch VAT (btw) sits inside all of those. The first hour is charged whole even if it is not used up; after it the clock moves in blocks of 15 minutes.

If more surfaces while the work is under way, you hear it there and then, with a figure attached. From € 400 upwards nothing proceeds without your yes. Say no and you settle the call-out plus the time already spent, and that is the end of it.

Gas pipework beyond the meter that requires a separate Dutch certification, and the refrigerant circuit of a heat pump, which needs a certification we do not carry; you hear that on the phone rather than in your hallway. Installations that cannot be reached safely also fall outside.

Making good after a repair is not silently included. Tiling, plastering and closing up a chase are separate work and are agreed separately. Around the Slotlaan and the Broederplein one thing is added to that: those buildings are protected, permission for anything done to the building itself rests with the owner, and pipework there gives way to the building rather than the reverse. Where that makes the sensible route the longer one, you hear it before a price is attached.

Completed repairs carry three months of guarantee. The same fault at the same point brings us back, and coming out stays off that bill. Parts we supply carry the guarantee of their manufacturer.

What the guarantee does not reach: a fresh blockage at another point, frost damage, damage caused by somebody else's work, and a pipe you were told at the first visit was finished as a whole. One case is written out here because it happens more in this area than elsewhere. Where a camera has established root ingrowth and the repair of that section did not go ahead, a later blockage at that same point falls outside the guarantee. Clearing it was the work; the root was the cause, and the root was still there.

Cancel before anyone has set off and it costs nothing. Once the journey has started, the call-out charge goes on the bill. In this area that difference is larger than it looks: Austerlitz is 40 to 80 minutes away, and that time is then genuinely gone. One phone call the moment you know it is no longer needed saves both sides money.

Afterwards, either by payment request (betaalverzoek) that opens straight into your banking app, or by invoice with fourteen days to pay. Cash plays no part and nothing is taken up front for work that has not started. Hours and parts each get their own line, so the total can be checked and so a landlord or a claims handler has something usable.

Damage that follows directly from a fault in the work carried out, up to at most the amount of the invoice for that job. Damage that was already there before we came falls outside it, and so does consequential loss such as lost income. Report damage within fourteen days of noticing it: after that it is no longer possible to establish what caused what.

Report a complaint within fourteen days of the visit, at info@zeist-loodgieter.nl or by phone, and you get a substantive answer within five working days. Dutch law applies. The Dutch text of these terms is the version a dispute is judged on; this English one is here to be read.