I read the story yesterday. Sounds like the contractor is bending over backwards to fix the mistake, but to me, the thing that made it criminal (or at least unforgiveably stupid) was the owner telling them to break down the door. What if I called a contractor and gave him a random address and told him to break down the door… as a prank? That seems unnecessary to me, and very risky. But then I read @zobroward 's story about the roof… no key or entry involved there… yikes!
oh no! And @thumper1 reminded me of an old story of a homeowner who converted from an oil furnace to a gas furnace, had the oil tank removed, but left the oil fill spigot by their basement. Years later an oil truck came to their home by mistake and filled their basement with oil.
I’m selling a house and a contractor came and gave me a quote, but he’s not doing the work, his team is - I better go check that they’re painting my house and not the neighbor down the street!
Just last week the guys that do our yard work installed new mulch around all our trees and the front flower bed. This something we do in April and was shocked to find it done without my consent. I was really ticked about the flower bed because I was going to weed and replant before getting the mulch done.
Turns outs there was a miscommunication between the boss and his workers and they were supposed to mulch another house on a different street two blocks away. I agreed to pay because I would have done it in a few months anyway and these guys have been doing our yard for over 10 years, and they agreed to weed and replant and re-mulch the flower bed.
I’ve done my house from top to bottom and the project manager who overseas everything comes to discuss the job and always comes the first day of the job (and several times during the job, too.)
I’m getting my bathrooms gutted and remodeled next month and the guy who will be doing most of the work has already been to my house to see what the job entails.
They also plop their sign down in my yard before the works begins.
It was a mistake that I am not surprised happened. I don’t think it is criminal and it sounds to me like the contractor is being responsible, unlike some of the other stories people have posted (if a contractor ripped off my roof by mistake and told me I had to pay for the materials,I would tell him to call my lawyer. If the roof was really old and scheduled to be replaced in the near future I might negotiate with him to pay for the materials and him the labor, since he didn’t give me the chance to bid the job out).
With a demolition job I am not surprised they didn’t have any supervision out there, these days contractors with something like this will hire a bunch of day laborers to do the job and they would send them out and tell them to gut the place, with no supervision (not saying it is good practice, saying that contractors do this). I had that problem with an expansion on my home, my wife and I often ended up as supervision, and paid a price for it, the workers were often day laborers and for example, were using the wrong paint, they did things like install the vent pipe for the range hood outside blower wrong on the kitchen end, and a number of other things, because contractors operate that way and have for a while. On the other hand, when I had my basement waterproofed with a french drain, they had their own crews, they had a supervisor there, and a manager of the company inspected the work after they were done.
When we did our remodel we were assigned a lead carpenter to whom we were introduced in a meeting prior to the job commencing. He was present at the house all day every day and directly supervised every worker including during demo. He was at the house every day 8-4 for the entire 6 week job.