Cowboy traders charged me £5k to fix my roof - how can I get justice from the con men?

Dear Rocio,

How do we take the fight back to crooks, con men and cowboy builders?

Name and address supplied.

Rocio says: When local traders knocked on Mr Smith’s (not his real name) door offering to paint the wooden canopy on his roof, he accepted. After all, half of the paintwork had come off and it needed a once-over.

Unexpected – but so far, so convenient. Yet when the trader, once on the roof, started banging on it, Mr Smith and his wife were concerned. The trader had, Mr Smith believes, deliberately damaged the roof so he could intimidate Mr Smith into paying much more for him to fix it.

The job, the trader said, would now cost more than £5,000. In the end, Mr Smith, who is in his seventies, paid the trader and his two friends – who by now were crowding around him intimidatingly