He Hired A Contractor To Build A Fence, So It Was Shocking When The Contractor Reported It For Being Too Tall
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I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. It’s really hard to find a contractor you can trust. I have yet to hire a contractor who does what he says. The best situation I had was the job running a month behind schedule. The worst situation I had was the contractor doing demo, taking our money, and never showing up again.
Yeah, I have bad luck with contractors, and it sounds like the guy who wrote this story does too. He hired a guy he had worked with before for the simple job of building a fence.
Only, there ended up being quite a bit of drama.
Let’s read all about it.
“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.
I had asked some friends for recommendations on a reputable contractor and this is where we enter in Tom (name changed).
He trusted Tom.
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.
He made sure everything was legal.
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.
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 underestimated how long it would take.
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).
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 contractor got really upset.
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.
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.
Here’s the revenge…
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.
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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.
I’m confused about why the contractor got upset. OP paid him extra to make up for what the contractor paid on tools out of pocket. Why would he be mad about that? Am I missing something?
Let’s see how Reddit responded.
I’m not the only one who is confused.
This person can relate.
Another person is confused.
But this person thinks the contractor was paid well.
I really don’t understand why the contractor got upset. Something is clearly missing from this story. Regardless, it’s great that the homeowner was able to avoid having to tear down the fence he had just paid to have built. Reporting the contractor definitely seems like the right thing to do.
It’s really hard to find a contractor you can trust.
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