What your phone agrees to: UK consumer law when an AI receptionist books a plumbing or electrical job

When an AI receptionist books a paid call-out for a plumber or electrician, it has made a contract in the business's name. Three pieces of UK law then apply to that call. The Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013 decide whether the customer can cancel and what you must send them. The Consumer Rights Act 2015 turns what was said on the call into terms of the contract. The Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 decides whether the call-out price you quoted was the whole price.

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None of this is new, and it applies the same to a human receptionist, an answering service or a voicemail you ring back. What changes with an AI is scale: it says the same words on every call, so a script that is right protects you on every job, and a script that is wrong breaks the law on every job.

This is a plain-English reading of the rules, not legal advice.

Why the phone call is where the risk sits

Tradespeople already know the call is where the work comes from. In a survey of more than 220 tradespeople by Fix Radio and The Builders Station, 34% said they believed they had lost work because they could not answer the phone, and 60% said they struggled to answer it while working (Fix Radio, 3 October 2022; the methodology is not published). Customers see the other side of it. In an Opinium survey of 2,000 UK adults for HomeServe, 38% said that after asking for a quote they never heard back, despite chasing (HomeServe, 30 March 2023).

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So the pressure to get every call answered and booked is real. Construction has more small businesses than any other UK sector, 885,000 at the start of 2025 (Department for Business and Trade), and most of them have no one to answer the phone except the person holding the tools. An answering service or AI receptionist fixes that. It also means someone other than you is now making promises and quoting prices on your behalf.

Four kinds of trade call, and what each one triggers

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Is a job booked over the phone a distance contract?

Usually, yes. Regulation 5 defines a distance contract as one "concluded between a trader and a consumer under an organised distance sales or service-provision scheme without the simultaneous physical presence of the trader and the consumer". A business that routinely takes bookings by phone, through a receptionist, an answering service or an AI agent, is running exactly that kind of scheme.

The line moves if the price is agreed in person. If the phone call only books a free visit, and the customer agrees the price with you in their kitchen, that later agreement is an off-premises contract: one made in the "simultaneous physical presence of the trader and the consumer" away from your business premises. Off-premises contracts carry the heaviest duty in the Regulations. Under regulation 19, entering into one without giving the customer the cancellation information is a criminal offence.

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The practical split for a phone agent is simple. Either it books a visit and says nothing binding about the price of the job, or it books a paid call-out and gets everything below right.

What happens to the 14-day right to cancel?

For services, the cancellation period ends 14 days after the day the contract is entered into (regulation 30). Most trade jobs booked by phone happen well inside that window, which is where regulation 36 comes in.

Regulation 36(1) says the trader "must not begin the supply of a service before the end of the cancellation period" unless the consumer "has made an express request". For a distance contract that request does not have to be in writing. For an off-premises contract it does, "on a durable medium".

If the customer asked you to start early and then cancels, they pay "in proportion to what has been supplied" (regulation 36(4)). If you never got the express request, or never gave the cancellation information, the consumer "bears no cost for supply of the service, in full or in part, in the cancellation period" (regulation 36(6)). And if the cancellation information was never given at all, regulation 31 stretches the cancellation period by up to 12 months.

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That is the scenario to design against: a customer who has had the boiler serviced or the consumer unit replaced, cancels within the window, and owes you nothing because nobody asked the right question on the phone.

On a call, getting the express request right means asking one plain question, such as "We can come on Thursday, which is inside your 14-day cancellation period. Do you want us to go ahead before then? If you cancel after we've started, you'll pay for the work done." An AI receptionist that keeps a transcript also keeps the evidence that the question was asked and answered.

Do emergency call-outs have a cancellation right?

Not for the emergency repair itself. Regulation 28(1)(e) excludes contracts "where the consumer has specifically requested a visit from the trader for the purpose of carrying out urgent repairs or maintenance".

Two limits matter. First, the customer has to have asked for the visit. A receptionist that talks a routine enquiry up into an "emergency" has not created an urgent-repair contract. Second, regulation 28(2) keeps the right to cancel for services "in addition to the urgent repairs or maintenance requested", and for goods other than replacement parts that were necessary for the repair, when you supply them on that visit. Fix the burst pipe and it is not cancellable. Sell a new cylinder on the same visit and that part of the job is.

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The exception removes the right to cancel. It does not remove the rest: the price rules, the confirmation and the Consumer Rights Act all still apply.

What must the confirmation contain, and can it be a text?

Regulation 16 requires the trader to "give the consumer confirmation of the contract on a durable medium", within a reasonable time and in any case before the service begins. A durable medium is "paper or email, or any other medium that allows information to be addressed personally to the recipient" and lets them store it for future reference.

Email is named in the definition, so it is the safe choice. A text message the customer can keep is arguably covered by "any other medium", but it is not named. For a paid job, the confirmation should repeat the price including VAT, the date, who you are, and the cancellation information (paragraph (l) of Schedule 2), or say why the job has no right to cancel if it is an urgent repair. If the customer made an express request to start early, record that too.

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Can what the receptionist says on the phone bind you?

Yes. Section 50(1) of the Consumer Rights Act 2015 treats as a term of every service contract "anything that is said or written to the consumer, by or on behalf of the trader, about the trader or the service", if the consumer took it into account when deciding to go ahead, or in a later decision about the service.

"By or on behalf of the trader" covers a receptionist, an answering service and an AI agent. So these, said on a booking call, can all become terms:

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There is a protection in section 50(2): the statement is subject to "anything that qualified it and was said or written to the consumer by the trader on the same occasion". A receptionist that says "we aim to be with you within the hour, but it depends on the job before yours" has made a different promise from one that says "within the hour". With a human receptionist that qualification depends on who picked up. With an AI it is either in the script or it is not, on every call.

Separately, section 49 means every service contract includes a term that the trader "must perform the service with reasonable care and skill". The call cannot promise that away.

Does the call-out price have to include VAT and every fee?

The CMA's view is that any price you give a consumer should be the total price. Its price transparency guidance (CMA209, 18 November 2025) says traders "must tell consumers the total price of the product which includes any fees, taxes, charges or other payments... that the consumer will necessarily incur" (paragraph 3.11), and that "any prices offered or directed to consumers include VAT (where applicable)" (paragraph 4.7) (CMA209).

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This is the DMCC Act 2024's ban on drip pricing, "where shoppers are shown an initial price for a product, but more fees are added ('dripped') as they proceed with their purchase" (CMA, 7 April 2025). The CMA now enforces it directly, and its summary guidance puts the maximum fine at "up to 10% of your turnover, or £300,000, whichever is greater" (CMA summary, updated 7 January 2026).

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One caveat, because it matters. CMA209's examples are adverts, websites, menus, emails and texts. It does not deal with a price spoken on a phone call. Its definition of an invitation to purchase is information that "indicates the characteristics of a product and its price" and "enables, or purports to enable, the consumer to decide whether to purchase", which is a fair description of a call-out price given to someone deciding whether to book. The safe reading is that the rules apply to the call.

In practice:

• Quote the call-out fee including VAT. "£80 plus VAT" becomes "£96".
• Include mandatory extras the customer cannot avoid, such as a fixed out-of-hours supplement or a parking charge you always pass on.
• Where the full job price can't be known, say how it will be worked out: "£96 for the first hour, then £60 an hour including VAT, plus parts at cost." CMA209 paragraph 4.10 allows this where the price "cannot reasonably be calculated in advance".

Extras need a clear yes. Regulation 40 says no additional payment is due unless "the trader obtained the consumer's express consent" before the customer was bound, and consent cannot be "inferred from the consumer not changing a default option". An out-of-hours supplement mentioned in passing, with no question asked, is not express consent.

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A call script that stays on the right side of all three

Seven lines cover most paid bookings. Adapt the wording; keep the order.

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What to ask any AI receptionist for plumbers and electricians

1. Can I see, word for word, what it says about price? Does the price include VAT and every mandatory fee?
2. How does it decide something is an emergency, and does the customer's own request get recorded?
3. Does it ask for an express request when the job falls inside the 14-day cancellation period?
4. What confirmation does the customer get, by what medium, and does it include the cancellation information?
5. Can I change the script myself, and is every call transcribed so I can prove what was said?

If a service can't answer the first question with the actual words, it is quoting prices on your behalf that you have never read.

Where Magixis sits

On a plumbing or electrical call, Magixis takes the caller's name, address and postcode, asks what is happening in plain terms (is water still running, has the stopcock been turned off), and books into your diary with a confirmation to the customer. Genuine emergencies go straight to your on-call engineer with the address. For gas or carbon monoxide alarms it gives no troubleshooting: it tells the caller to get everyone out, not to touch switches, and to ring the national gas emergency service. Quote requests become a booked survey, not a price.

Every call is transcribed, and on the Pro plan written into your CRM. That transcript is the record that settles a dispute about what was said. Whoever answers your phone, ask to read the price wording before it goes live, and check it against the script above. How it works for trades is on the plumbers and electricians pages, and what happens to the data is on our trust page.

Dates that will date this post

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Every source in this post was checked on 25 September 2026. The CMA's first enforcement decisions under the DMCC Act are the most likely thing to change it, particularly if one deals with prices given by phone.

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