Here’s some further info for those of you that read my blog from last Friday, “Multiple System Failures…”. I have to tell you that every time I walked through the house this past weekend , I saw more and more of the damage that the ill chosen handyman had inflicted on my home and my emotional state of mind. I have been just sick about it. Sick that I let someone take advantage of me as badly as this guy did, sick over the mess he left for me to have to try to have friends, family and additional hired folks to correct and, I guess, finally sick and worried about the other folks that this shyster has or will take advantage of. I live in a senior citizens community and this guy makes his living here on this property. You can’t ride through the area a single day without seeing his truck somewhere in the area and to me that means the potential of other friends and neighbors being taken advantage of. But you know no one had spread the word. No one had posted a notice on the community bulletin board about their problems with him, no one had gotten up at the monthly breakfasts and told their story. Why? embarrassment, shame, and /or fear of his intimidation. These neighbors and friends are like me, most unable to do major things for themselves anymore. Some are widowed ladies who have never been able to do DIY projects and always had a loving husband to take care of the little projects. Some disabled, like me, and know what to do but just can’t pull it off any more. But as I write this blog I tell you the one thing that I am not disabled about, too ashamed of, afraid of or intimidated by, is this guy. As I set out to spread the word about my experience with friends close by I began to see a pattern of his operation. I began to hear of the many horror stories of his misconduct that have gone unreported. I heard that he recently was hired to build a $6000 screen porch and he failed to pull a permit for the construction and when the county discovered the construction the entre porch had to be torn down and the customer is still trying to get their damages back from the guy. He comes in with promises of a great price and instills confidence. As he gets into the job he attempts to change his estimate to get more money. With my job, as an example, he told me he had misfigured how much material he needed and would need more money than the agreed upon price. Fortunately for me I told him a contract was a contract and he would do what he said for the money paid. I am 6’4” and weigh way in excess of 300 pounds and have been known to intimidate folks just by entering a room. Then he tried to change the terms by changing the job, why not use ceramic tile instead of laminate flooring, he just so happened to have a deal on some tile. I found out over the weekend that tile would have come from another neighbors job he was also working on while on my job. Probably got that customer to order more tile than needed and was then going to sell me the ill gotten tile and raise his installation price. I didn’t want tile so that part of his plan didn’t work. Then he tried to charge me for what he called “extra work” that was not in the contract but was tacitly implied like taking the doors down and trimming off the bottoms, having to move the appliances, having to disconnect the icemaker line on the refrigerator. The list went on and on. He tried to make me feel ingratiated to him for all the things he did for “free” for me. Ultimately though what he did to get what he deemed fairness when I wouldn’t give in to him was to just plain perform shoddy work and cause damage wherever he could. As I related on Friday, he damaged the toilets, ruined the prefinished moldings, sprung at least one door by bending a hinge so that the door would not close, took down a safety railing on one of my entrance steps and failed to replace it and last but not least abandoned the job without replacing moved furniture leaving my house disheveled and causing me to have to remain out of my home for six days instead of the promised three while friends and hired professionals helped put things right. My form of fairness returned for the many problems he left for me is to make sure I can tell as many people in the area about him and by telling YOU what to look for and what not to do in the future when dealing with this type of business man. I am posting notices, going to speak to the monthly community meeting, and I am posting a complaint about him on “Angie’s List”. For those of you that may not be familiar with “Angie’s List”, it is an internet site that allows for postings of complaints and recommendations of local business, medical professionals, contractors etc in the hopes that other folks can be spared the heartache and monetary loss a culprit like my guy can inflict.
Paybacks are hell!! I feel better already.
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