Need advice. I bought CPVC and the plumber used copper.

When customers have offered to buy all the materials for a rough plumbing job, I've turned them down.
I would never expect to wait around for someone else to do my shopping.
When I do rough plumbing, I have enough on the truck to do enough work for a week or two. A homeowner isn't going to know what to buy when it comes to pipe and fittings.

A bad experience with the homeowner that didn't want to pay for what I pulled from my fitting trays, fitting buckets and pipe on my roof rack, was feeling that he should get those things for free, since I already had it on the truck.
I pay $7.28 for a 3/4 brass union. The job I'm talking about was a complete rough-in for a three bath home. The rough material came to thousands of dollars. I did finally make him realize that "every" customer pays for their own fittings, and there is no "free" stuff that "somebody else" has paid for out of the kindness of their heart. Do people really think that we overcharged the previous customer and had "left-over" material that's been paid for? That's just goofy. What we do have is material on the truck that we haven't sold yet. In retail, that's called inventory.

But like mentioned above, you're on shaky ground if you are changing the contract without conferring with the customer, either oral or written. And you can't go back and undo the work. Once installed, it's done.

In the original case here, I wouldn't have even started the job.
The plumber made a mistake by agreeing to do the work.

Terry said:

the homeowner that didn't want to pay for what I pulled from my fitting trays, fitting buckets and pipe on my roof rack, was feeling that he should get those things for free, since I already had it on the truck.

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Yecch. Some people are morons. It's a weird aspect of our culture that some folks think that they are somehow entitled to get stuff for free.

It's like when we owned restaurants, I educated the staff on what a serving of mayonnaise, barbecue sauce, meat, bread, etc., actually cost us -- wrote it right on the jars -- because most staff actually think that it's basically-free because you are "buying in bulk". I'm not kidding. It was a shot in the dark, but I was pleasantly-surprised that when people realized that this stuff actually cost money, most were much more respectful of the product and became more sensitive to not wasting it. They also understood why we saved unserved cooked meat and vegetables to use in soups, stews, etc. -- because it gives us a chance actually to sell something that we have paid for and otherwise would have to throw away. Food cost, estimated and actual, in raw dollars and percentages, is an obsession with any good chef, but unless the chef impresses that same passionate obsession on his workers, they usually remain clueless.

I agree with Terry on this one. The guy that did the plumbing made a tactical error. Communication is always the 1st step is avoiding these issues. I'm a bit leery as to wether or not the guy doing the plumbing was actually a plumber or just a handyman/contractor that probably had no business plumbing in the 1st place in which case i'm happy he got the short end of the stick LOL

quote; If the customer wants PEX or cpvc it's not up to the plumber to decide what to do when your back is turned.

No, but we can refuse to do the job if we do not want to use that material. After all, WE have to guarantee the job and service it for one or two years, so if I am not comfortable with the material, I will NOT use it. I either do NOT tell the customer what I am going to use, or spell it out in advance and he can either agree or call someone else. I do not "negotiate".