Excessive Engineer Fees

Strokesfan

My solicitor engaged an engineer (of their choice without giving me an option) to certify our property for sale. Anyway long story short - we ended up applying for retention permission for septic tank, wastewater treatment unit, shed etc before the property could be sold.
Two years after this process started, issues are sorted and property sold. Just the engineer bill seems astronomical - I was issued an original bill of €3,850 but when I tried to settle up this bill (and asked if he was willing to come down in price) he came back and said the actual amount owed is €4, 940?! No new bill was issued, I wasn't informed of any additional work that was going to add to the bill.
I'm not trying to duck out of paying him but this seems excessive.
Is this a normal fee for retention permission?
And can he increase the price like that without letting me know?
Am I in a position to negotiate?
Meeting with him and the solicitor on Monday at 12 to go through the charges. I got an email breakdown which seems like he's just made up figures.

Calahonda52

Itemise the "made up figures" please.

Why did you ask him to come down in price?

Do your clients regularly do that to you?

Retention is pretty much the same as full planning app in the sense of what paperwork has to be submitted.
In addition he would have had to come and measure up the existing house, site etc etc and prep drawings: I find this this is a lot more time consuming than preparing drawing in the office, maybe others don't.

Was there VAT on the first bill?

Strokesfan

Someone suggested I should ask him to come down in the price, that's why I asked, it seems very high


Original fees:
Expenses re: Os maps, advertisement, planning retention fee, site note - €200
Planning fees incl. Site visits (20? over 5 days to do percolation, site suitabilty, travel, postage expenses - €2,700
Telephone expenses €200

= €3,150 plus vat (€3,874.50)

Dealing with additional planning information request - €565.50

Fees applicable for the various mapping, checking boundaries and all the work that was done pre planning, fees for this which were not included originally - €500.00 plus vat €615.00

Grand total €5055 approx

Does this sound right? When we were first started planning permission to certify the property for sale, the solicitor said it would cost approx 2,000

Any advice appreciated

Calahonda52

Where did you get the 20? from?

What work was involved in the API request: you can see from the planning application online what they asked and what he answered with?

Who did the percolation test & what did it cost?

You can also see the retention fee: the OS map I think is 80 odd euro
Telephone expenses at 200 seems high in this day and age, given that all calls would have been local/mobile and as a business I trust he has a fixed bill.

The process described has a lot of work to it: did you get a scope of project description from the engineer?
At what point did you know the scale of the problems?

Ps I don't think the stuff looks made up and seems reasonable enough to me

Gumbo

Cost for a Registered Engineer seems normal to me to be honest.

As above, the only thing that looks excessive is the telephone charges.

Retention fees are actually more expensive that planning fees, its like a little slap on the wrists from the council for not applying for planning in the first place.

A lot of running around, surveying, arranging newspaper notice, OSi Maps, Site Notice and lodgement etc