Two months after handover the client sends a photo of a hairline crack above the door and writes that it is under warranty. You remember saying hairline plaster cracks are not a call-out, and that the cabinet belongs to the joiner the client brought. The client remembers you saying the apartment is under warranty for a year. Without a page, both memories are true, and the argument starts.
A warranty is not a speech in the corridor. It is a list handed over with the key, the same day, before the apartment fills with boxes. What is not written sounds later as if everything is included.
What you write on the page
- Which of your trades are covered, and which came from a contractor the client hired
- For how long, as a date, not for about a year
- What is not included: wear, a knock, damp the client caused, a change they made after handover
- How they call you: a message with a photo and the room name, not a Saturday phone call with no place
- Within how many work days you come for a call that is under warranty
Separate a leak from piping you closed from a tap the client bought and the joiner fitted. Both look like a fault in the apartment. Only one of them is a call to you. If the client's material broke because you fitted it wrong, that is yours. If the material arrived damaged and the client asked you to fit it anyway, that is written as an exception.
A date, not a feeling
One year from handover is a date. Write it. Waterproofing can run longer than paint. If that is what you agreed, two dates, not one sentence that covers everything. When the date passes, a new call is paid work, and you say so in the same message, not after you have already arrived.
The defect list from the day before handover sits next to the warranty page. What was closed before the key does not reopen as a call, unless the same place fails again. What stayed open at handover, with a fix date, is not warranty. It is leftover work.
What a call looks like
Ask for a photo, a room name, and when it started. Without that you drive to the apartment and do not know if it is the mark above the sink or the door in the hall. Keep the call on the same job, with the date and the answer: under warranty and a fix is booked, or not under warranty and the reason in one line.
A short page the client received beats a long talk nobody wrote down. It does not replace the agreement. It stops the argument about what was said by the door.
A written warranty shortens the next conversation. A spoken one lengthens it.