I am posting this because the emotional outcome of this situation was absolutely liberating and I am not posting it just to show where I had the upper hand on somebody.
We have had a customer with psychological trauma and a devoted husband that we have tried for a year and a half to complete a bathroom.
I can’t even begin to describe to you the situation- Things like breaking down in tears because a drawer box had to be a quarter inch shorter. Mam you really can’t put anything in the drawer bigger than the opening it slides into.
There were so many changes made during the beginning of the job that the building inspectors even said do not change anything else. I have never heard of that happening.
The odd thing about this customer is they would make changes that would have a very bad impact later but they wouldn’t understand the impact of those changes and they wouldn’t listen when we tried to tell them. If you raise your vanity you’re going to get into the outlets and you’re gonna have to pay the electrician to move them up, The plumbing may have to be relocated, etc. If the shower is not designed to be doorless and you decide not to do a door, you may have a water problem,etc.
Now to be fair statistically projects that end up in litigation always start with excessive change orders which is an indication of indecision by the client in most cases. Also projects that tend to end up in litigation normally have excessive time frames for the aforementioned reason.
For the sake of my reputation I will go far beyond the extra mile and the ordinary for any customer who is struggling but nice, communicative and understanding of the impact they are having to our workflow.
We worked through punch list after punch list after punchlist and got down to just a few things and with no forewarning the customer would not allow us to finish and abruptly went out of town- To avoid allowing us to finish and settle the balance of the contract.
That was the last straw.
I simply tallied up the final charges and told them that I was filing a lien unless they paid 95% of that before they left and we will collect the rest when they got back and we took care of the remaining details.
They went on the trip without checking their email and then reached out to me with a counter offer that was about 60% less.
I politely declined.
I also mentioned if they had a security clearance they needed to pay attention to what I was about to do.
The money was wired to us today.
Will we go back and do the remaining punchlist work? Absolutely, within reason we will.
But now that I have removed the leverage the client has less power and we have less to lose.
Keep in mind this is a very extreme situation and there is no reason for anything like this to ever happen...But it does.
Unfortunately contractors in most states only have a mechanics lien as a weapon and there is no way to escalate up to that with something lesser such as a freeze of the permit that would not allow them to get another permit on the property until they paid. (You can do that after the job but you can’t really do that during the job).
So a mechanics lien is essentially a nuclear bomb- It works but it destroys everything.
I guess the “big takeaway” to me was the feeling of elation once I broke free of the negative energy of the situation. Situations like this don’t really happen all at once they develop overtime and you don’t realize the drain they’re having on you until you get free.
Thanks for reading and if you are a contractor have solid contracts and all your credentials in place and if you are a homeowner make sure your contractor has a solid contract and all his credentials in place and that you both have a clear understanding of what is expected and that you both understand the impact of making changes on the fly.
It also really needs to be considered if a family member has any kind of psychological issue that would prevent them from making the decisions or enduring the stress of a remodel. I say that very carefully because it’s not funny to see people hurt and at the same time there’s no point in getting into something that would make it even worse. Remodeling is as high on the list of things that stress a marriage as a new child, a job change and a death.
We have had a customer with psychological trauma and a devoted husband that we have tried for a year and a half to complete a bathroom.
I can’t even begin to describe to you the situation- Things like breaking down in tears because a drawer box had to be a quarter inch shorter. Mam you really can’t put anything in the drawer bigger than the opening it slides into.
There were so many changes made during the beginning of the job that the building inspectors even said do not change anything else. I have never heard of that happening.
The odd thing about this customer is they would make changes that would have a very bad impact later but they wouldn’t understand the impact of those changes and they wouldn’t listen when we tried to tell them. If you raise your vanity you’re going to get into the outlets and you’re gonna have to pay the electrician to move them up, The plumbing may have to be relocated, etc. If the shower is not designed to be doorless and you decide not to do a door, you may have a water problem,etc.
Now to be fair statistically projects that end up in litigation always start with excessive change orders which is an indication of indecision by the client in most cases. Also projects that tend to end up in litigation normally have excessive time frames for the aforementioned reason.
For the sake of my reputation I will go far beyond the extra mile and the ordinary for any customer who is struggling but nice, communicative and understanding of the impact they are having to our workflow.
We worked through punch list after punch list after punchlist and got down to just a few things and with no forewarning the customer would not allow us to finish and abruptly went out of town- To avoid allowing us to finish and settle the balance of the contract.
That was the last straw.
I simply tallied up the final charges and told them that I was filing a lien unless they paid 95% of that before they left and we will collect the rest when they got back and we took care of the remaining details.
They went on the trip without checking their email and then reached out to me with a counter offer that was about 60% less.
I politely declined.
I also mentioned if they had a security clearance they needed to pay attention to what I was about to do.
The money was wired to us today.
Will we go back and do the remaining punchlist work? Absolutely, within reason we will.
But now that I have removed the leverage the client has less power and we have less to lose.
Keep in mind this is a very extreme situation and there is no reason for anything like this to ever happen...But it does.
Unfortunately contractors in most states only have a mechanics lien as a weapon and there is no way to escalate up to that with something lesser such as a freeze of the permit that would not allow them to get another permit on the property until they paid. (You can do that after the job but you can’t really do that during the job).
So a mechanics lien is essentially a nuclear bomb- It works but it destroys everything.
I guess the “big takeaway” to me was the feeling of elation once I broke free of the negative energy of the situation. Situations like this don’t really happen all at once they develop overtime and you don’t realize the drain they’re having on you until you get free.
Thanks for reading and if you are a contractor have solid contracts and all your credentials in place and if you are a homeowner make sure your contractor has a solid contract and all his credentials in place and that you both have a clear understanding of what is expected and that you both understand the impact of making changes on the fly.
It also really needs to be considered if a family member has any kind of psychological issue that would prevent them from making the decisions or enduring the stress of a remodel. I say that very carefully because it’s not funny to see people hurt and at the same time there’s no point in getting into something that would make it even worse. Remodeling is as high on the list of things that stress a marriage as a new child, a job change and a death.
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