Imagine deciding that you want to have a fireplace installed in your home. Would you listen to the advice of the person who was installing it, or would you assume you know better?

In this story, one man was in this situation, and he thought he knew better. He also thought he tricked the installer into giving him something for free.

He was wrong.

Let’s read all about it from the perspective of a friend of the person who installed the fireplace.

Didn’t pay for fireplace. Ended up with a house full of smoke.

A friend of mine use to install wood stoves and sell firewood. He still sells firewood but stopped bothering with fireplaces.

This 1 guy bought a fireplace and wanted it installed.

My friend did this but told him he would need a higher chimney for better air drawing.

The guy refused it (I’m assuming maybe he didn’t want a higher chimney for the look) and my friend kept insisting.

The customer was really trying to take advantage of the situation.

The owner said no and when the fireplace was done, he complained it was hard to get a fire going (due to the chimney being too short, leading to poor drawing of air).

My friend came with a chimney extension and it worked fine, but he decided he didn’t want to pay still, even though the job was done, and done well.

So a few weeks later my friend was passing through the area and saw no body was home, but there was a fire going to keep the house warm (owner must have been at work).

So my friend climbed up onto the roof and got his chimney extension back.

OP finds the consequences for the customer pretty funny.

It was a plus, but not enough to cover everything that was installed and the time put in.

Where things get funny is that once he took the extension off the chimney, due to poor drawing of air, the house started to fill up with smoke as the fire burned.

The owner must have come home to a thick smoke filled home.

Try getting that smell out of stuff. Lol. Probably a layer of soot on everything.

But nobody got hurt.

To my recollection the owner did not have any pets, so no lives were harmed, but when everything you own is black and reeks like smoke and your home is freezing in the middle of winter, I bet you would have rather have paid someone for their products and services.

I hate people like that.

When they know from the point they hire you, no matter how good of a job you do, they will try to find some reason not to pay you.

It was really messed up for the customer to hire someone to do a job but then refuse to pay for the entire job.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

One person shares the lesson we can learn from this story.

This person thinks the friend’s action were potentially really dangerous.

Another person doesn’t think this was a good revenge story at all.

The friend committed multiple crimes!

Everyone else thinks the friend is wrong. This person might as well too.

A contract would’ve prevented this entire problem.

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