Single-family house, approximately 160m², Bauhaus style; first draft according to our wishes

I quote: - Invoice: without legal basis, no contract, I reject invoice as without legal basis - Without an approvable draft, no contract for work, therefore no claim to fee - If draft is approvable, then fee, otherwise not, based on gross construction sum (which does not yet exist...) - The only thing he can get: material expenses (printer, paper, postage...)

I don't know what you communicated on the phone, but there obviously was a contract. You had your floor plans reviewed here. What you are doing now is shabby,

I have absolutely zero transparency about how much he charged for each service phase since I also don't have an offer. One could suspect calculation here, if one were malicious, by him now subsequently evaluating the phases as he pleases.

Now you are the malicious one!

We had another offer and could therefore evaluate the offered €60,000 and had agreed on a flat rate of €55,000 by phone.

If the architect, as I now just assume, sent the offer via email and you then negotiated and concluded by phone, this is likely a distance contract. If you were not informed about your right of withdrawal in this regard, you could still revoke the contract now and the architect would then not be entitled to any fee.

At €55,000 flat rate for service phases 1-8, €13,200 corresponds to about 23.5% of the total fee, which in turn corresponds quite exactly to service phases 1-3. I do not know exactly what happened with you, but in my opinion you are still in the area of "preliminary planning" (service phase 2), and fancy CAD drawings do not change that. Just feed the search engine with the terms "Teilleistungstabelle, Siemon" and compare. I see a maximum fee of about €5k here.

Thank you for the feedback. I will call the architect today and see how we can come to an agreement.

That he has done something is unquestionable. To what extent it is worth €13,000 is debatable.

My concern is not to play dirty here (Kalkül, Fernabsatzgesetz), but for the poor state of the planning, I do not want to pay this amount.

I will see to what extent we can come to an agreement.

13,000 is about one third of his total fee. For what?

Service phases 1-3 are worth 24% of the total fee. That would be €13,000 out of the agreed lump sum fee of €54,000.

et, could you still revoke the contract now and then the architect would not be entitled to any fee at all.

Excuse me?! Even in a "distance contract" the mutually granted benefits must be reimbursed.
Moreover, it should be clear that a fee cancellation will 100% end up in a legal dispute. You start that with professional advice and not because a forum user once typed something.

Hello everyone,

very nice floor plans, we saved them immediately.

By the way, we just received an invoice from the architect amounting to 13,200.00 EUR. He accepts the termination of the contractual relationship, even though he cannot understand the reasons for it. Based on our verbal lump sum agreement (55,000 EUR), he would charge us for his fees incurred so far.

Is that lawful? I mean: a) there was no written offer, b) no signature accepting the contract, and c) all drafts were not as we wanted them, we had to complain repeatedly and the state was still poor. I could see a trick here.

What do you think? What is the legal situation?

The consequence after termination is billing according to the fee regulation. However, I find 13k€ very presumptuous. 13k are roughly up to service phase 4 (at least for me), you are far from that yet. Billing up to service phase 3 would be okay.