Ripped Off Again

Well it has happened again. My good nature has been taken advantage of again and I have been left with a mess.

This time it was Brian, someone we thought was our friend (this time Casey has been screwed over too), has left us in the lurch.

You see he is pissed off with me because I hung up on him. He called about 3 to 4 weeks ago to say he was leaving to pick up his wife in Canada. Well he had promised to have the duplex finished and the water connected in the day spa. Neither were done.

What is even more annoying is we had paid him for a full days work at the duplex. That week he got 4 hours done. At least that is what he told us then, now he says he only owes us 4 hours of work.

I wish he could see things from our perspective. We made it crystal clear if he could not do the project in just over a month, and for $10,000 we didn’t want it done. We were very open about our financial situation, we could not afford a cent more. All we ever heard during the job is that he wasn’t making any money and gas prices were killing him. well we had told him for the preceding 3 months that we would leave the empty side of the duplex open for him to stay in so he would not have to commute. He never did, because his over-bearing controlling wife wouldn’t let him. Rather than tell us this before the lob started, so we could get a tenant, he kept that to himself until he started the job.

Well now over 3 months later, there are still a couple of small items to be done. We know he has done a great job, it looks amazing. We really appreciate the work he has done. What we don’t appreciate is paying him the balance of the $10K so he could pay his helpers, then he doesn’t go out to finish the job for over a week.

Seeing I hung up on him, he expected an apology. None is owed. He should be apologizing to us for all the half finished and unfinished projects. Let me note them here so I do not make the same mistake again with him or anyone else.

1. The shed roof that was screwed up by his helpers. He promised to fix it for free, over 12 months ago. In the mean time the winter rains have repeated flooded the shed as the roof line no longer overhangs properly.
2. The Day Spa. Oh boy where do we start? It never started well.We paid him $1000 last year when we were in Australia, he cashed the checks but did not lift a finger up there at all. He started th eproject in late June 2007. He did a great job on drywall and insulation, but preceding winter we repeatedly asked him to get it sealed up, it never happened. I sealed it up myself with about 2 days of work. All we have needed is the water connected for the last 2 months. So we bit the bullet and organized a plumber through our General Contractor. Well the plumber pointed out he had not used pex but pvc (not what he told us). PVC is crap and used in mobile homes, lasts about 5 years tops. So we are ripping it out and doing it properly. we should be able to do a soft opening by July 1st.
3. Our pantry, still unfinished but more because we wanted him to move to money making renovations.
4. Trim work on the exterior unfinished.

However if he would show up more often all of these projects would be done. We let our friendship get in the way of telling him what we thought. We bent over backwards to be flexible and help him out. We paid in advance of work being done. We would be lucky if he would work even a 4 hour day. There were times he either had a memory like a sieve or he plain lied. Once he charged us for 8 hours when he went out for 3 hours with his wife (we weren’t at home that day). How do we know that? Well after being suspicious as not a hardly anything was done or looked different we checked out our security footage.

My problem is I become friendly with people. Then people take advantage of that. In this case Brian no longer put in full days, disappeared sometimes for weeks without so much as a courtesy call to say he had family issues, or was sick.

I really believe in karma. Karma will get him. Just like it will get other people for doing bad things.

Moral of this post is to use a licensed contractor. You really do get what you pay for. A contractor would have cost 3 times more but it would have been done and earning money months ago.