Karma? He'd have rather gotten paid...

[bloo]

The 'I'll sue!' thread reminded me of my father-in-law (FIL) when he went after a customer. So a bit of a reverse.

He ran his roofing company for over 25 years and still keeps the license current in his state even though he no longer has a business (he runs bars now - much less stressful I'm sure ).

Anyhoo, one of his jobs went through like a typical job: estimate, agreement, deposit, start work, finish work, clean-up.

Except after the clean-up, the Old Man refused to pay him. FIL took small deposits (whereas my DH took 50% deposits - because of people like Old Man). So FIL was out quite a bit of money just in hard costs.

FIL asked, "Are you not happy with the job? What's the problem?"
Old Man: "I just have no intention of paying you."
FIL (not quite understanding yet he's dealing with a sociopath): "You realize I'll put a lien on the home, right?"
Old Man: "Go ahead! This house is covered with liens. I'm never gonna sell it. You'll never get your money!" (You'll have to imagine the absolute glee Old Man expressed himself with.)

FIL ended the conversation, went back to the office and let his Office Manager know that they'd have to start a lien process at the 30 day mark for Old Man and got busy with other things.

But when he paid his guys that week, he did mention that Old Man scammed him and wasn't planning on paying him. His guys were more than a little ticked at Old Man. FIL could be a hard@ss, but he *never* skimped on paying his guys and he always paid promptly.

Imagine FIL's surprise to get a furious phone call from Old Man the following week, where Old Man shared, between expletives, that his guys came and ripped his roof off!

FIL: "Ripped your roof off? It's gone?"
Old Man: "It's a mess! A ton of shingles are gone and a bunch of the paper is ripped, exposing the wood!"
FIL: "And you 'saw' my guys doing this?"
Old Man: (silence, then) "I *know* it was them!"
FIL (trying to keep the laughter out his voice) "No one in my company would ever do anything like that. No matter how bad the customer is. Good day!" (hanging up the phone).

FIL told his guys about the phone call but didn't ask them about it.

He just didn't want to know. And he'd have rather had his dam money!

[sirwired]

Wow... that's some pretty hard-core evil right there. That'd be like a minor using a fake ID to buy a car, and then go all "neener-neener!" when it comes time to pay because he can't legally enter into a contract in that state.

Although I expect all this geezer did was call up another roofer with some cock-and-bull story about how "The last roofer abandoned the job after tear-off, absconding with my deposit! Woe Is Me!" and simply pulled the same trick again. It sounds like he was pretty well-practiced at it if his home was "covered" in liens.

If it wasn't too far out of the way, I'd personally drive by every day, figuring the guy is going to hire a new roofer quickly, and give a head's up to the next victim.

I wonder if this tactic would be considered criminal theft? Civil remedies might be limited, but that doesn't prevent criminal ones.

[eltf177]

I have to agree, if he's pulling this stunt a lot (and his statement that there are already many liens on his home) then this should be well known and _nobody_ should be doing anything for this cretin without 100% cash paid up front.

I would think it would be worthwhile to do a quick lien check before taking on a new client, might save a lot of headaches...

[Argabarga]

There's a special place in hell for people who's solution to paying bills is to go in 100% deep with EVERYONE and just live like nothing's wrong while your debtors fight each other to get to the head of the line...

I'm amazed more people haven't just cut out the middle man and collected on him personally like that.

[notalwaysright]

That's awesome. I know it's mean spirited, but I would have called the other small roofing companies and warned them. Let him try to scam a large company. They will take him to court.

The guys learn really fast not to trust sob stories. One of the newer ones went out to do a repair on the roof of an elderly lady, and she was so nice and sad because it was expensive. (It was cheap, but you know SCs.) So since the guy was so new and gullible he said that he would repair the roof and call her in a week. If it hadn't leaked, he would come pick up the money. He calls after a week of rain and asks if the leak had stopped. She says yes. He asks when he can pick up the money. She says, "You think I'm going to pay?" And she hangs up laughing.

Learned a lesson there.

[csquared]

I wonder if this tactic would be considered criminal theft?

You would have to prove criminal intent. His pattern and leans might show it.

If he was taken to court and lost, then the plaintiff could have the sheriff seize his property for payment.

[raudf]

That's awesome. I know it's mean spirited, but I would have called the other small roofing companies and warned them.

That's not mean spirited! That's called professional courtesy! "I had Z problem with X custy at Y address and he'll probably be calling around to you shortly. Figured you deserved a heads up on him!"

You know a customer is bad when your direct competitor calls you to warn you! And yes, at MW Repair, we had Sears call us and warn us about a custy. That's how bad he was.

[emax4]

You know a customer is bad when your direct competitor calls you to warn you! And yes, at MW Repair, we had Sears call us and warn us about a custy. That's how bad he was.

We did that all the time at Le Centre of Guitars, usually when it was a person trying to pass off stolen music gear to us and we'd call the competitors to warn them about the scammer.

[Marmalady]

Not so easy to do with work carried out inside a house, but I've posted on here before about a landscape gardener with a customer that made all kinds of excuses not to pay him for work that had been carried out.

After giving them repeated chances to pay, and realising they'd no intention of doing so, he took his team back to their house while they were away and removed every single thing he'd put in - plants, turf, hard landscaping, whatever (though not touching anything that was already there). When they rang up foaming at the mouth, he pointed out that as it hadn't been paid for, it still belonged to him.

[DGoddessChardonnay]

We did that all the time at Le Centre of Guitars, usually when it was a person trying to pass off stolen music gear to us and we'd call the competitors to warn them about the scammer.

Grocery stores will sometimes call nearby competing stores to give heads-up on scammers/bad check writers/armed robbers/shoplifters.

Our area was hit by a shoplifting ring a couple of years back - a group of then were targeting Peeter stores in the next county West of us but then struck a couple of stores in our county as well before finally getting caught. IIRC they also hit a couple of Litter Box stores as well.

Those are the ones who make the 5 o'clock evening news BTW.

[ImmBarb]

I worked for a small company where the owner would *never* pay a bill on time or in full. 6 months would go by and he'd tell the payee - I owe you $30,000? here's 20,000, shut up and go away. But he would be furious when other people did the same to him.

[NecessaryCatharsis]

Not so easy to do with work carried out inside a house,.....he pointed out that as it hadn't been paid for, it still belonged to him.

We offered to do that once at small claims court. The bill had gone due past the time we could put a lien on, the customer still wouldn`t pay, the bill was only for $4000 or something so we took them to court. The customer complained to the judge that we were being unreasonable, he`d offered us less money because he wasn`t happy with the work and we wouldn`t take it, it was really bad work, it was going to cost more money to fix, by a different company.

We told the judge we stood by our work, that we had offered to go back and fix any `deficiencies' if he could just point them out, the customer wouldn`t let us. Now what we would accept is payment in full, or the opportunity to return to the job and remove all of our material. The judge picked a day and said the homeowner would have the house unlocked, be there or have someone there to let us in on that day to remove our work.

Watch someone backpedal! The homeowner ended up writing us a check for the full amount before we left the courtroom.

[XCashier]

FIL asked, "Are you not happy with the job? What's the problem?"
Old Man: "I just have no intention of paying you."
FIL (not quite understanding yet he's dealing with a sociopath): "You realize I'll put a lien on the home, right?"
Old Man: "Go ahead! This house is covered with liens. I'm never gonna sell it. You'll never get your money!" (You'll have to imagine the absolute glee Old Man expressed himself with.)

That is just plain evil. And the bastard was absolutely gleeful over it! Yeah, the tearing apart of his roof was sweet, but he should've been taken to court. One look at the liens and the judge would've thrown the whole library at him.

I do hope your FIL called every handyman and contractor in the area and warned them about him. That cheap scumbag deserves to have his house rot and fall apart around him because he won't pay workers their well-earned money.

[bloo]

That is just plain evil. And the bastard was absolutely gleeful over it! Yeah, the tearing apart of his roof was sweet, but he should've been taken to court. One look at the liens and the judge would've thrown the whole library at him.

I do hope your FIL called every handyman and contractor in the area and warned them about him. That cheap scumbag deserves to have his house rot and fall apart around him because he won't pay workers their well-earned money.

I'll have to actually ask my FIL about it sometime as I heard the story through my DH. I know there is some artistic license in the re-telling because, knowing my FIL -whose rage can border on the spectacular - I'd stake my life on him giving the Old Man an expletive-filled earful before walking away.

I do know my FIL has taken other people (very small compared to the number of customers over the years) to court so I can only conclude through DH's retelling that FIL didn't want the hassle because 1) he strongly suspected his guys *did* rip his roof off and he didn't want to address that in *any* kind of courtroom and 2) he might have figured it an exercise in fiscal futility as it didn't look like Old Man had a lot of money. Not poverty but probably lower-middle income.

Not so easy to do with work carried out inside a house, but I've posted on here before about a landscape gardener with a customer that made all kinds of excuses not to pay him for work that had been carried out.

After giving them repeated chances to pay, and realising they'd no intention of doing so, he took his team back to their house while they were away and removed every single thing he'd put in - plants, turf, hard landscaping, whatever (though not touching anything that was already there). When they rang up foaming at the mouth, he pointed out that as it hadn't been paid for, it still belonged to him.

We heard of a sad story back in NC. DH went to give an estimate to a very wealthy man. Let's call him Jose`. He had a million+ dollar home on multimillion dollar property. DH estimated some roofing work, Jose` referred to him as a 'shyster', DH left and was unsurprisingly *not* called to do the job.

Anyhoo, our friend Pete, a painting contractor, told us he was glad that we didn't get hired by Jose` as one poor landscape contractor really got taken advantage of. Jose made a contract with her to do some landscaping and kept doing add-ons that he'd verbally agreed to for X amount of dollars but the landscaper didn't get any of the add-ons in writing (her bad, I guess). Long story short, Jose` paid the original contract price but refused to pay for any of the add-ons.

In an unfortunate fit of rage, the landscaper decided to cut down a lot of the things she planted including weed-eating a bunch of flowers she'd planted right in front of Jose`.

To make a long, unfortunate story even shorter, he sued, he won and she had to replant everything a second time and still not get paid. He had a pretty good lawyer I guess.

When Jose`died in an unfortunate ATV accident, no one in the contracting community shed a tear.

Quote:
Quoth notalwaysright View Post
That's awesome. I know it's mean spirited, but I would have called the other small roofing companies and warned them.

That's not mean spirited! That's called professional courtesy! "I had Z problem with X custy at Y address and he'll probably be calling around to you shortly. Figured you deserved a heads up on him!"

You know a customer is bad when your direct competitor calls you to warn you! And yes, at MW Repair, we had Sears call us and warn us about a custy. That's how bad he was.

Although my original story was based in Florida, the contracting community in Western North Carolina was pretty tight. Word of bad customers would filter through the community and we'd claim we were too busy or jack up our prices so they wouldn't hire us.

DH's cousin, Alan, had his own Drywall contracting company and agreed to do some drywall work for a local *lawyer*. Alan made up a contract, the lawyer signed it and Alan did the job. Alan was an excellent finisher and his work was like glass. The lawyer informed him that he was only going to pay him half of the contract price.

Alan: "Why? Is there something wrong with the job?"
Lawyer: "No...but you finished too quickly. You're earning more than me!"
Alan: "But...we have a contract."
Lawyer: "This is all I'm paying you."

Alan was pretty steamed and decided to simply share the story along with the name of the lawyer with the entire contracting community and then forget about it.

Pete, our mutual friend, was so incensed that he went and talked to the lawyer and explained to him the ramifications of his decision. He told him it's not going to be easy to find contractors to do work for him because 'we talk amongst ourselves' and since he's a *lawyer* he should understand how a contract works.

This stupid lawyer could not wrap his head around the idea of an uneducated drywaller making this much money for a day's work. But he finally cut a check for about 25% of the job making the final pay that Alan got to be about 75% of what was originally in the contract. Alan cashed the check and never responded to him.

Although he enjoyed telling the story of the lawyer calling him 6 months later to do some more work and Alan simply burst out laughing and hung up on him. This lawyer had also called us and we were 'too busy' to do work for them.

[Jay 2K Winger]

Obviously, I cannot officially approve of the dose of karma that Old Man got in the OP.

Unofficially, however, I can sit and bask in the schadenfreude.