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4 Year Old Bill From Our Landscaper! Help!!

Our landscaper suddenly sent us 3 invoices for work he has done almost 4 years ago. The invoices are dated for January 2020 even though the work was done long ago. We clearly don't remember if we paid or not. We have no debt and pay all bills immediately upon receipt. We also pay him automatically monthly. He is billing us for random things and extras work that we did have done. He has handled our yard for 9 years and this has never happened. To say we were surprised is an understatement. We are not sure what to do here. My husband would have paid by credit card for the extra work but he likes to change credit cards because he collects points for travel, so to hint down which one he was using 4 YEARS ago would be very difficult. We want to be fair but even health care has laws in place to protect consumers from late billing. This just seems out of place. Please help... You thoughts?

1 reply

Jan 31, 2020

This does appear to be an odd situation. From a mechanics lien perspective, in addition to considerations about whether o not the work is lien-able in the first place, the date of the invoice has no bearing on lien rights, and the deadline by which any applicable notice or lien would need to be filed dates from the performance of the work. From a practical point of view, this seems like a situation that should be "talked out." Why were the invoices just now sent (or re-sent)? Does the landscaper have books that showed missing payments for the work done in the past, or invoices marked as unpaid for that time? It would likely be beneficial for you to talk to your landscaper to get to the bottom of what is going on here, and why it is just now being claimed that there are unpaid invoices due. Absent actually going back through your records and determining whether payment was actually made, there does not appear to be a simple/easy solution. It is probably unlikely that the landscaper will initiate a lawsuit, but presumably there is some agreement between the parties from which a breach of contract suit could potentially be appropriate.

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