Trouble on the farm with contractor

[rox]

Congratulatins, I am glad you worked it out. At least you got the job done and you worked it out face to face, live and learn, live and learn. We all have learned similar lessons I can promise you that.

 

[nobull1]

Eric,

It's easy to offer ideas on how "you" should handle your problem, but very few people will ever be in a situation like yours. Looking back, you could have done things differently, but you also got it done. That speaks volumes about the type of person you are.

Dealing with the little things that come up in the process is juat part of getting it done. When you have more ambition than most and tackle bigger jobs than most, you get to deal with bigger issues.

I admire that you worked it out in such a quick manner and have put it behind you. Accomplishing the task is all that matters.

Good luck with your future success!!!

Eddie

Well said Eddie

 

[gemini5362]

I’m sorry that I have not updated this thread for such a long time. We had some delays in closing on our farm loan and I didn’t want to do anything until that was all handled.

Basically what happened was the electrician called after the first of the year needing the remaining balance that was due. I informed him that we were not able to pay him the balance and that we felt that we had been mislead by them and that we wanted to get together and see if we could work things out. Otherwise I would be making a claim with the contractor’s board to see if they could mediate a solution. In the mean time I sent him another 18K payment which brought us up to a total payment of 68K out of 138K owed. So the next week they called me and said they had revised the bill and wanted to get together to see what money we could send them and possibly set up a payment plan. So last Wednesday we met. They were very nice and agreed to take 9K off the bill by lowering the profit margin put on materials from 20% to 15% and lowered the journeyman rate from $65 per hour to $60. This would have brought the bill down to about 129K. The wife and I agreed this was still too much. We were prepared and offered to pay them another 32K. This would bring our total to 100K. At this point things got serious and we started really looking at the profit margin they had to work with and what we could handle. In the end we all agreed that they would accept the immediate payment of 32K and we would make flexible payments on another 17K for a total bill of 117K. They are also not charging us to fix the mistake that were made by their crew.

I realize that this is still a lot of money to pay but they are not totally at fault here. I should have kept better track of time and materials instead of taking their assurances. This agreement also preserves a good relationship between me and my closet electrician. You never know when that relationship might become really important in an emergency.

Financially this has been a dark cloud over us. It will take time to get back in the black but we will and an important life lesson has been learned. Legally I may or may not have saved some money but I know the outcome would have been much more negative for both of us so I’m glad that we were able to come to agreement.
Eric

I am glad that you got it resolved. The difference between what you paid and what he charged seems to be about 20,000 dollars you could have ate up a lot of that amount in lawyers fees and if you lost would have been a bad situation. I do however notice that you made the comment it preserved a relationship with your electrician. From what I have read you paid the electrician almost double of what his original estimate was. When you talked to him during the job he told you an amount that was over 30,000.00 less than what you paid. This is not an honest person. If all the bills are totally legitimate he is still dishonest. I am seeing that he underbid the job a lot to get it. Then he refused to give you firm price on the job. Then when you made the statement that you could not afford to pay more than the original estimate he deliberately gave you an amount higher that was no where near the original final bill. That far into the job he knew pretty close to the penny what it was going to cost. He lied to you from the beginning. The only relationship you should be having with him is one of telling everyone you know how dishonest he is. If it were me he would not step foot on my property and if he was in a store and he said hello I would tell him what I thought of him so that everyone in hearing distance would know what he was. Why would you want to have kind of buisness relationship with him?