Customer-Supplied Materials Acceptance

Purpose

The moment a customer-supplied part is installed, the shop owns the outcome. Not legally in every respect, which is a question for your own attorney, but operationally and in the customer's mind completely: they will call you when it leaks, they will call you when it stops working, and the receipt with somebody else's name on it will not change that conversation.

This procedure guarantees that every customer-supplied item is inspected and either accepted or declined at the door, before the old part comes out, with the reason written down. The failure it prevents is the tech who opened the box mid-install, found the wrong size or a missing gasket, and then had to choose between a water-off house at four in the afternoon and installing something they knew was wrong. That choice always goes the same way, and it is how a shop ends up warranting a part it never sold.

Scope

Covers any material, fixture, appliance or device the customer buys and the shop installs: faucets, lights, fans, locksets, disposals, toilets, blinds, hardware, flooring, and anything shipped direct to the customer.

Explicitly not covered:

• Materials the shop supplies. Those carry the shop's own sourcing and its own warranty position.
• Landlord or property-manager supplied stock on a standing account, where the acceptance terms are set in the service agreement rather than at the door. Different conversation, same inspection.
• Whether a manufacturer warranty or an implied warranty reaches the shop at all. That is a legal question about a sale the shop was not party to, governed by the law of the state named in the purchase terms, and it goes to the reader's own attorney. What follows is the operational side, which the shop controls entirely.
• Deciding to install something you believe is unsafe. No acceptance record makes that acceptable, and the stop rule in step 3 is not negotiable by a customer signature.

Roles and responsibilities

The procedure

1. Confirm before you unload that the items on site are the items the job was quoted against. Read the model number on the carton against the work order, count the pieces, and confirm the customer has everything and not most of it. Acceptance: every line on the work order matched to a physical carton, by model number, before the truck is unloaded. Wrong looks like counting boxes and assuming contents, which is how a two-fixture job becomes a one-fixture job at hour three. Stop rule: a missing item is a scope change, so call the office before starting anything that depends on it.

2. Open every carton fully and inspect the contents before removing anything from the wall. Check for shipping damage, for a retaped or previously opened box, for included hardware, gaskets, mounting plates and instructions, and for the finish actually matching what the customer ordered. Acceptance: all included parts present against the instruction sheet's parts list, no cracks, chips or distortion, finish correct. Wrong looks like a box that was opened and returned to the store with the mounting hardware missing, which is common on plumbing fixtures and is invisible until the fixture is already up. Stop rule: missing parts or damage means the item is declined or held, and the old fixture stays where it is. Hazard: unboxing large ceramic and glass items is a cut and crush risk, so cut cartons away from your body, keep the item on the floor rather than a vanity edge while inspecting, and get a second person on anything you cannot control one-handed.

3. Check for a listing mark on anything electrical, gas-fired, or pressure-bearing, and treat its absence as a hard stop. Look for a mark from a nationally recognized testing laboratory, meaning UL, ETL, CSA or similar, on the product itself rather than only on the carton. Acceptance: an NRTL mark found on the device, photographed. Wrong looks like a direct-import fixture whose only marking is a printed carton label, which is common on online-marketplace lighting and is not a listing. Stop rule: no listing mark, decline the item outright and do not install it even if the customer insists, because NEC 110.2, in the edition your building department has adopted, makes equipment acceptable only if approved and an unlisted device has no approval basis; 110.3(B) then governs how a listed one must be installed and an inspector, an insurer or a fire investigator will ask who put it in. Hazard: an unlisted device inside a ceiling or wall cavity is an ignition source you cannot see or service, so this decline is a safety decision, not a warranty one.

4. Verify fit against the actual installed condition, measured, not remembered. Faucet hole spacing against the sink deck, rough-in against the flange, box size against the fixture canopy, blind width against the opening, door swing against the frame. Acceptance: the critical dimension measured on site and written next to the item's specification. Wrong looks like a 4 in centerset faucet against an 8 in widespread sink, discovered after the supply lines are off. Stop rule: any mismatch, stop before demolition and give the customer the exchange conversation while their old fixture still works.

5. Accept or decline each item in writing, item by item, with the reason. One line per item on the ticket: accepted, declined, or held pending exchange, plus the reason in plain language a stranger can read. Acceptance: every supplied item carries a disposition and a reason, signed by the customer, or annotated "customer declined to sign" with the time. Wrong looks like a single blanket line covering four items, which tells nobody later which one was the problem. Stop rule: a customer who will not accept a decline gets the lead on the phone from the site, and the tech does not install a declined item under pressure.

6. State the warranty position out loud before installing an accepted item, and write down what you said. Say plainly which part of the outcome the shop stands behind and which part it does not: the shop warrants its own labor and installation, and a defect in the item itself is a claim the customer makes to whoever sold it. Acceptance: the sentence recorded on the ticket and the customer acknowledging it before work starts. Wrong looks like raising this after a part fails, which reads as an excuse whatever the paperwork says. Stop rule: none, but a customer who disagrees with the position gets the lead before installation, not after.

7. Photograph the item's data label with the model and serial before it disappears into the wall or under the sink. Get the label, the model number, and the serial, plus the listing mark from step 3. Acceptance: a legible photograph of every data plate attached to the job record. Wrong looks like a warranty claim eighteen months later where the label is behind a mounted fixture and nobody can read it without pulling the fixture. Stop rule: label unreadable or absent on a device that should carry one, back to step 3.

The record this produces

One acceptance block per job, with one line per item, and it is the shop's whole position if the item fails later:

• Item, model number and quantity, matched to the work order.
• Condition on arrival: carton state, parts present against the instruction sheet's list, damage found.
• Listing mark found or not found, with the photograph, for anything electrical, gas-fired or pressure-bearing.
• Fit check: the dimension measured on site against the item's specification.
• Disposition and reason: accepted, declined, or held pending exchange.
• The warranty sentence said, and whether the customer signed or declined to sign, with the time.
• Data label photographs for every installed device.

The office reads this when the callback comes. The lead reads it before quoting that customer's next job, because a customer who supplies materials once will supply them again, and the pattern of what arrived wrong is worth knowing.

Worked pass: three supplied items, one bathroom

Booked as a half-day with three customer-supplied items: a vanity light, a lockset for the bathroom door, and a lavatory faucet.

Step 1: all three cartons present, model numbers matching the work order. Step 2: all three opened. The lockset was complete with strike, screws and instructions. The faucet had its supply lines, gaskets and instruction sheet. The vanity light was complete too, so on parts alone all three passed.

Step 3 failed on the vanity light. The carton carried a printed compliance-looking label, but the fixture itself had no NRTL mark anywhere: not on the canopy, not on the socket housing, not on the driver. A carton label is not a listing, and this fixture had a fixed integral LED driver going into a sealed canopy against a bathroom ceiling. Declined outright. The customer's first reaction was that it had good reviews and had already been paid for, which is the reaction this stop rule exists to survive, and the tech called the lead from the hallway rather than arguing it. The lead's position, given to the customer in one sentence: the shop cannot install a device it cannot verify was tested, in a ceiling nobody will open again for a decade.

Step 4 caught the second one. The faucet is a 4 in centerset and the existing lavatory is drilled 8 in widespread. Held pending exchange rather than declined, because the item is fine and simply does not fit this sink. That distinction matters on the ticket: declined and held are different words with different next actions, and the customer's exchange window depends on which one is written. Caught before the supply stops were touched, so the bathroom stayed usable overnight.

The lockset ran through steps 5 through 7 clean: accepted, warranty sentence said and recorded, installed, data label photographed.

Net for the visit: three items inspected in about twenty minutes, one installed, one declined on safety, one exchanged in two days and installed on a short return that was scheduled rather than emergency. The version of this day without step 3 ends with an unlisted fixture in a bathroom ceiling, and the version without step 4 ends with the water off and a customer being asked to drive to a store.

Read back against the general section: step 3 says the stop is not negotiable by a customer signature, and this pass held that line under exactly the pressure the rule anticipates. Step 5 says every item gets its own disposition and reason, and the three lines here read accepted, declined, and held pending exchange, which is why the office could book the return without calling anybody.

References

• National Electrical Code, Article 110.3(B), requiring listed or labeled equipment to be installed in accordance with its listing instructions, in the edition adopted by your state or local building department.
• OSHA's nationally recognized testing laboratory program, 29 CFR 1910.7, for what an NRTL mark means and which laboratories hold recognition.
• Manufacturer instruction sheets, which are the source of the parts list used at step 2 and the rough-in dimensions used at step 4.
• Whether a manufacturer or implied warranty reaches your shop on a sale you were not party to is a question for your own attorney, under the law named in the purchase terms.
• See related: work beyond scope authorization in the field, for what happens when a decline turns into a change of scope.