Tradie Did a Bad Job? Your Rights Under Australian Consumer Law

When a tradesperson or service provider does a poor job — crooked tiles, a leaking roof repair, a landscaping job abandoned halfway — you are not limited to leaving a bad review and moving on. Under the Australian Consumer Law (ACL), services supplied by a business come with consumer guarantees that apply automatically, no matter what the quote or invoice says.

This guide explains those guarantees in plain language, what remedies you can insist on, and the steps that actually get results — from a written remedy request through to your state consumer affairs body and tribunal.

The three guarantees every service must meet

• Due care and skill (ACL s.60) — the work must meet the standard of a competent provider in that trade. Careless mistakes, damage caused during the job, or a result a competent tradesperson would not have delivered all breach this guarantee.
• Fit for the purpose you made known (ACL s.61) — if you explained the result you needed before hiring them and the service fails to achieve it, the guarantee is breached.
• Supplied within a reasonable time (ACL s.62) — where no completion date was agreed, unreasonable delays, no-shows, or a job never started after payment can breach this guarantee.

What you can demand

For a failure that can be fixed and is not major, you can require the provider to remedy it within a reasonable time — redo it, finish it, or put it right at their cost. If they refuse or fail to, you can have someone else fix it and recover the reasonable cost from the original provider (ACL s.267).

If the failure is major — the result is unsafe, or so bad that a reasonable person would never have engaged them knowing the outcome — the choice of remedy is yours: cancel the contract and seek a refund, or keep the work and claim compensation for the drop in value. You can also claim reasonably foreseeable consequential losses in either case.

The steps that get results

1. Document the work now — dated photos and videos of the defects, before anything is repaired or altered.
2. Put your remedy request in writing with a clear deadline. Say exactly what you want: fix, finish, redo, or refund.
3. Get an independent assessment or rectification quote from a second licensed provider — it converts a contest of opinions into evidence.
4. If they refuse or ignore you, lodge a complaint with your state consumer affairs body (Consumer Affairs Victoria, NSW Fair Trading, etc.). It is free.
5. If that does not resolve it, apply to your state civil tribunal (VCAT, NCAT, QCAT) — designed for consumers without lawyers, with modest filing fees.

Build your complaint with FairClaim

FairClaim is a free-to-start tool that lets you describe what happened in your own words, checks your facts against the ACL services guarantees, and produces a professionally structured complaint you can send to the provider or lodge with consumer affairs yourself.

Frequently asked questions

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