When putting up a fence, it is important to make sure it is done right so that it looks great for years to come.

What happens when the contractor you hire lies about being licensed and has all sorts of trouble?

Nothing good!

That is what the guy in this story had to deal with – check it out.

“Contractor” reported his own fence for a violation with county

Backstory first: I needed to get a new fence built on my property for the back property line and the neighbor on the other side agreed to split the cost.

I decided to do an 8′ tall fence with steel posts for durability since I have dogs.

Sounds like a great guy for the job.

I had asked some friends for recommendations on a reputable contractor and this is where we enter in Tom (name changed).

I had worked with him at a plant nursery for 4 years, he was a good guy, and he was always known for being really handy.

I honestly trusted him as both a friend and a coworker.

He told me that he was licensed under his buddy’s company and I wrongly assumed that meant business partner.

Before fence is built, he did a takeoff from a local lumber place, sent us the quote so we could pay for the materials directly with the lumber place.

Very reasonable.

Then, we signed a “Proposal” stating the price of $1500 that we would pay for his labor/material, payment terms, duration of work, substantial completion date, and there was a blank spot on there for his CA Contractor’s License (He told us he would need to get the # from his buddy), etc.

It was just a standard contract template that you can find online, but I had a lawyer look at it and state that the contract is completely valid.

Myself, my neighbor, a witness, as well as Tom signed it.

He also told us it would take one weekend to complete the work, two 8 hour days and he’d be able to knock it out on his own for the contract price (with us paying for materials directly to put on a credit card but he still included in original contract price).

Oh, he’s one of those types of workers.

First issue was it ended up taking him 3 additional days because he would show up and leave when he wanted, not putting in any full days of work.

Second issue, he had to make multiple additional material runs that sometimes he paid for out of pocket and sometimes we called in and paid for (he forgot nails and caps on the takeoff…. I mean c’mon dude).

He had to rent a tool from Home Depot that he paid for out of pocket, he ended up making multiple trips back and forth for the material because he had a tiny little pickup truck, etc.

This whole time he kept saying, “oh no big deal, it was my mistake, contract price will stay the same. $1500 is firm.”

The total for material ended up being over the $1500 so in good faith, I did end up paying him for all of the materials he spent on his own which was probably over $1600.

Wait…what?

He blew up, tried to use his contract against us when it was in fact against him, and said he was going to put a lien on our house.

He didn’t end up putting a lien on our house, but he did end up calling code enforcement on his own fence for being 8′ tall.

You can only have 7′ tall if it is not backed up to a street.

We got the fence fixed and passed code, fortunately.

Good. He might have saved someone else a lot of trouble.

As for the petty revenge… I ended up contacting the Contractors State License Board to report an unlicensed contractor.

The law is that any work over $500 must be under a contractors license. I sent all of the screenshots of texts, FB messages, contract, and even time stamps of our cameras for how long he worked.

Ended up getting him fined and I believe he can’t apply for his own license now for a certain period of time.

It didn’t do anything other than it felt good to get back at him for reporting our fence lol.

That story took a weird twist, glad it all worked out for him.

I’m sure there are plenty of fun comments, let’s take a look.

Yeah, no reason to complain!

Yup, this guy is trouble.

He is clearly inexperienced.

This might explain it.

It makes no sense.

This contractor is a special kind of silly.

And you know what happens when you play stupid games!

If you liked that post, check out this post about a woman who tracked down a contractor who tried to vanish without a trace.