The Prior Company's Repair Was Wrong: Do You Say So Decision Tree

Why this matters

Your diagnosis leads to an uncomfortable conclusion: the repair the last company performed is the actual cause of the current problem, not a coincidence, not a separate new fault, but a direct result of work that was done incorrectly. The customer is standing right there. What you say next affects whether they trust your finding, whether they have a real path to get their money back from the prior company, and whether you expose yourself to a dispute if you overstate what you actually know. This is a diagnostic conclusion that needs to be delivered with the same rigor you used to reach it.

Start here: is there an active hazard

If the prior repair created or left behind a genuine safety hazard, address the hazard before you address the conversation. De-energize, isolate, relieve pressure, or otherwise make the immediate area safe, then explain to the customer what you did and why, in plain factual terms. The hazard response does not wait for you to decide how diplomatically to phrase your findings.

Step 1: confirm it is actually the prior repair, not a coincidence

Before you say anything to the customer, make sure your diagnosis is solid. A new fault appearing some time after a repair is not automatically caused by that repair; equipment fails for its own reasons too. Confirm the connection with evidence: the fault traces directly to the specific work performed (a connection made incorrectly, a part installed backward or undersized, a step skipped that the symptom now shows was needed), not just to timing. "It broke after they were here" is not the same as "the way they installed this component is the direct cause of this reading."

Step 2: describe the condition, not the competence

When you do explain your finding to the customer, describe exactly what you observed and measured, not your opinion of the prior technician or company. "This fitting was installed without the required support and has been under stress since, which is consistent with the crack I'm finding" is a factual, defensible statement. "Whoever did this had no idea what they were doing" is an opinion about a person you likely never met doing work you did not watch, and if you are wrong about the full context, it can expose you to a claim of unfair or false characterization of a competitor's work. Stick to what you can show.

Step 3: decide how much detail the situation calls for

• If the customer has no realistic path to recover costs from the prior company (informal work, no records, long past any recourse), a brief factual note of what you found is usually enough; extensive detail mainly serves to relitigate something the customer cannot act on.
• If the customer may have recourse (a warranty, a licensed contractor, a recent invoice, a real complaint path), give them enough specific, factual detail and, where useful, photographs, that they can actually pursue it. This is the situation where your documentation does the customer real practical good.
• If your own company or a colleague did the prior work, escalate internally rather than handling it solely at the customer's kitchen table. The response (how you frame it, whether you comp anything, how you make it right) is a business decision, not something to improvise on-site.

Step 4: give them the fix, not just the finding

A customer hearing that a prior repair was wrong needs to immediately hear what happens next: what you recommend, roughly what it involves, and that you can proceed once they approve it. Do not leave the conversation at "they did this wrong" without following it with "and here is what corrects it." The diagnosis is only half the value you are delivering in this moment.

Recap

1. Handle any active hazard first, regardless of who caused it.
2. Confirm the causal link with evidence, not just timing.
3. Describe the physical condition you found; do not characterize the prior technician.
4. Match the level of detail to whether the customer has a real path to recourse.
5. Always pair the finding with the fix, so the customer leaves the conversation with a next step, not just bad news.

References

• Trade-standard practice for documenting and disclosing defective prior work
• State contractor-licensing and consumer-protection guidance on defective-work disclosure (varies by state)
• See related: Found a Prior Tech's Error: Fix vs Flag vs Document Decision Tree; Starting a Diagnosis Fresh Instead of Trusting Someone Else's Notes