Being a contractor is a tough job.
When you’re in the process of remodeling a house, you’re spending a ton of time and money to get the job done, usually doing everything you can to make the homeowner happy.
And when you’re finished, you just want to get paid for your work, and move on to the next.
However, if a customer is dissatisfied with the job that was done, you might just have to respect that and fix what needs to be fixed.
A Colorado woman ran into a similar situation with a contractor who remodeled her bathroom.
And needless to say, the contractor took it to the next level.
According to KKTV 11 News, Amber Trucke, a resident of Colorado Springs (I feel like we’ve gone here a lot lately), hired Dream Home Remodels to work on her bathroom, as well as replace an exterior door, 2 ceiling fans and some other minor work.
Trucke stated that she had invoices saying that she had paid over $3,000 of the $7,500 bill. Only problem, she didn’t want to pay the rest of it until she could “make sure she was happy with the work.”
When the bill wasn’t paid in full when the job was done, the contractor decided to take matters in his own hands and “repossess” the work they put into it…
By barging his way into the house with a sledgehammer, and destroying all of the work he and his crew had done.
In the video, you hear the contractor say:
“We put weeks into this, thousands of dollars into this.
Let me tell you something. No contractor in the state of Colorado will fix that when they found out that I took it back because she refused to pay me. No one.”
The man absolutely wrecked the bathroom, leaving it worse than when he began the job.
Trucke stated:
“I haven’t actually cried about this yet. I think it just hit me… I don’t have the words for what happened in this room. For the $3,300 I’ve already paid, I now have nothing.
I was not going to pay them until I saw the actual finished product, and the showerheads had just been put on and the adhesive had to cure for 24 hours. So I wanted to make sure the plumbing worked.
They moved my plumbing around. They move the drain. So I wanted to make sure that worked.”
The company released this statement:
“After several weeks of Communication broke down and resulted in our company repossessing a tile shower. It has never happened before and is not something that is made regular practice.”
Police are investigating if what the contractor did was a criminal or civil matter.
Ok, let’s try and figure this out…
Woman signs contract to have contractor remodel the bathroom. Woman pays half, contractor remodels said bathroom. Woman wants to make sure “she’s happy with the work” before she pays the rest off. She doesn’t sound unhappy with the work, just unsure, communication breaks down, payment obviously doesn’t get made, and contractor busts up the bathroom.
So my only question… how long does it take to make sure you’re “happy with the work”?
Can’t you just walk in the bathroom, take a look around, and write a check? She says it was the drain and plumbing… turn on the water?
If this is the first time this company has ever done this, I’m going to assume they asked her more than once for payment before resorting to actions like this. So how long did she hold out… a few days? A few weeks? She never says she was unhappy with the work…
Granted, that doesn’t give him license to go into her house and bust up the bathroom, but something seems off here. Seems like they were getting stiffed, she didn’t have the money, she stopped responding to phone calls… contractors rely heavily on reputation to keep business booming so in my mind, something fishy is going on here.
You be the judge…
