I have a building contractor who is not finished with the job, ignoring my calls, and did a bad job. Help!?
Question:The building contractor has been paid in full (which was a bad move) and I feel he doesn't have any incentive to come back and finish the job, plus take care of things that weren't done right the first time. FYI - the job was to put all new windows in the home, cover the home in new siding, put a new metal roof on the home, and a few other extra things. We have had siding pieces that just fall off (no wind or rain that would have ripped it off). It just simply fell off. Their answer to repairing it, is to just use screws. The screws are put in on the outside of the siding and are exposed. It doesn't look right.
The contractor and the siding company are ignoring my calls and I don't know what to do. HELP!
Answers:
Have a lawyer write a real nasty letter threatening to sue and as you know never pay in full .30 % down is what I require and keeping 10% at the end to make sure all cleanup is done is not unheard of. You might try calling another contracter to finish up. The siding companies competition is a good one. But you need to put the heat on and don't let up. investigative reporter, local newspaper bbb etc, if you see their trucks around town or thier signs aproach the new customer and make them aware of what happened to you Have a friend call them out to do an estimate and then have the friend tell them they don't want to hire them because they heard about your situation. Hire a private investigator to follow them and make life miserable. Order a subscription of gay magazines and have them sent to the owner of the siding co house and the contracter too, thier wives will love that
Bring it to one of those news shows where they go and help you. Channel Nine has I-Team and Channel Five has Arnold Diaz.
Do u have the contract in writing? A proposal and acceptance from his company? If you dont have something in writing you may not be able to do anything... if you do have it in writing, then u can take u cancelled check showing paid in full and the contract to small claims civil at the police dept and see what they tell you or if you have a lawyer, go to him/her and explain this, they can help you. If this is a legitimate company that does work elsewhere? Call the Better Business Bureau, report them, call the local tv stations etc and most tv stations have a 'bad business' segment where they expose businesses who do not do what they say they will!! Put some heat on these guys, they will fix it, refund the money or get someone else to finish it just to get the heat off of them. Good Luck!
Call your better business bureau and your state attorney.
In Mo. it*s Jay Nixon and he does a terrific job.
Sounds like you have really been ripped off. Does he have a local address you can go to or just a phone number?
I would also call your local television channel that does reports on that sort of thing, bab publicity gets a lot farther than a phone call. If nothing else you may stop his clock as far as ripping off others. P.S. Take pictures you may have a lawsuit.!!
Contact the better business bureau in writing. They will then contact the contractor. It is amazing at the results I have had with this. Be very cordial and specific and express your disapointment at the lack of quality and concern of the contractor. If the BBB is as good in your area as it is in mine, you should be contacted by the contractor in no time. I believe doing on the web works best. I believe the address is www.bbb.org. Good luck.
Not sure where you are - I'm in Australia and an architect - but I would go to the building accreditation board or some such and make a complaint. If you have a contract with a builder it should specify the acceptable level of completion. Builders generally have to have insurance. You could sue or threaten to sue I guess - best to get some advice locally from the builder's regulatory body first - and they might have insurance too - but in the first instance they should be able to give you advice and also maybe bring pressure to bear on the contractor. Next time - NEVER pay the full amount until the works been done to your satisfaction, and the builder is off the site and has cleaned up - and usually there is a period of time called the defects liability period for about 3-6 months after the end of construction during which the builder is liable to rectify faulty work. Good luck mate!
Take some very clear pictures of the work and repairs and a copy of your contract to an attorney. It is obvious that the contractor wants no more to do with you and will not be properly finishing the job.
Once you paid him off, he was finished with the job. I made the same mistake myself once. He smiled and said, "If you give me that check, you'll never see me again". He wasn't lyin'.
If the repairs are going to cost over $10K or so, you may find a lawyer willing to sue. Otherwise, it will be cheaper to chalk it up to experience and hire someone else to finish the job. At least, that's the way it works here in NY. Small claims court is an unenforceable farce.
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