Is this going to help him get future business?
Posted on 09/13/2020 3:31:34 AM PDT by nickcarraway
A DISGRUNTLED painter and decorator who claims he is owed £500 for his work has taken revenge — by daubing a message on the side of the old pub he had worked on.
Dean Reeves, 50, wrote in large black letters ‘Want your house painting? Don’t be like Terry, pay the bill! Now you will!’ over the cream exterior he had painted.
Dean claims builder Terry Turner paid him just £650 of the £1,150 agreed price for the job and refused to pay the rest until he had done additional work at the site.
He claims he worked through his lunch for a week to get the job done on time on the former North Star Club in Bolsover, Derbyshire, which is being converted into flats.
However, he says Mr Turner told him he wouldn’t get paid the remainder of the cash until he ‘gave the back of the house another coat’.
Name and shame: Painter and decorator Dean Reeves accuses the property owner in Bolsover of not paying him PICTURES: SWNS But the father-of-two says when he did what was asked, Mr Turner told him ‘you’re not getting paid a penny until you’ve done the fascias’ — which he says was not part of the original quote.
Disgruntled decorator Dean lavished the cream-coloured rendered building with huge black lettering encouraging other people not to be ‘like Terry’, and pay the bill.
Dean said: ‘I gave him a quote for the job and he said he would “ping me the money straightaway”.
‘But he tried to change the job halfway through. The job was supposed to be done on scaffolding, he was supposed to have taken all the signs and guttering off.
‘But I did the job off ladders, saving him £900 on scaffolding, and I took all the signs off myself.
‘He changed the job, kept asking me to do extra work. He said there was a number of jobs I needed to do before I would get paid.
‘I did seven days’ hard work on it. I didn’t have lunch breaks, I worked hard all week to get it done.
‘He kept saying, “I’ll pay you tomorrow”, but tomorrow never came.
‘I did the work and he said if I go back to give the back of the building another coat, he would pay me.
‘I went back on Tuesday and did that, but when I sent him a picture, he just said “that looks better” with a smiling face.
‘I asked him where my money was and he said I wasn’t going to get a penny until I did the fascias, which we’d never agreed on.’
Dean says he took the drastic action two days after being told he was not going to get the £500 he was owed.
He added: ‘I went back at teatime on Thursday and did it off ladders.
‘It was my first job back since Christmas, I have bills to pay and need to make money.
‘It just got too much and I wanted to prove the point. I don’t regret it and I’d do it again if I had to.
‘I was never going to get paid, but I wanted to make sure he had to pay something to get it cleared off.’
When contacted for comment, Mr Turner denied ripping Dean off and said he was going to pay in full once the work had been completed.
Mr Turner said: ‘He should have just done the work and he would have been paid in full. It’s standard.
‘None of what he says is true. He wasn’t asked to do additional work, it was offset work by other jobs he was meant to do but didn’t.
‘It was his idea, he said he would do some other jobs to offset what he wasn’t doing. He was getting paid the same to do less work.
‘I wasn’t going to pay him for the whole job until he finished it, no one would.
‘At the beginning he even said he’d do the work before getting paid at all, but I said no.
‘Then, halfway through the job he… asked for all the money up front.
‘I’ve spoken to police now.’
He added: ‘I’m the boss, so I’m just going to go round and paint over it. Do his job for him. It’ll be done by the end of the day.
‘I don’t understand why you would waste your time painting that nonsense instead of doing your job, when in that time you could have finished it.
‘This is the first and last time I’m working with this man.’
A Derbyshire police spokesman said: ‘We received a call this morning reporting that a property in Welbeck Road, Bolsover, had had graffiti painted on to it.
‘It appears to be a dispute between two parties and we will be getting in touch with those involved in due course.’
Is this going to help him get future business?
I tend to side with the painter having worked for a few cheapskates myself.
I’m to lazy to look but it sounds like no written contract on a cash deal. Seems like both guys were trying to get over. Written contract and cash are still good. No contract no mechanics lien - at least one that will hold up in court.
doesnt matter... Being self employed you run into these assholes all the time. and “adding work” before your balance check is more popular with the shysters than you would believe. I’m in Tile and Marble and I’ve gone back and took a sledge hammer to my own work that equates to what I got hustled out of several times.
Doing things like this guy did is not getting your money, its justice paid to the shysters... just a bit of personal satisfaction...
Hmm. Did it in black, too. That’s gonna be tough to remove or cover over without it showing underneath. He may have to redo the whole wall.
It’s why I don’t freelance. “Simple” jobs just turn into complex ones you do cheap.
...Or so you do a favor for a “friend.” They never want to return it.
Eff that.
lol... ya I learned that in the school of hard knocks years ago. I have a list of customers that we have grown to understand each other over the years. I give a price, (plus 20%), let them beat me up 10% and then I have enough left on the table for any shenanigans they wanna play throughout the job.
I’m still about 50/50 in freelance to employed income. I ‘ve grown to like being able to go back and forth. just when you get tired of the grind from one, the other just calls out of the blue and makes you an offer ya cant refuse!! js...
...Of course, the thing to do is get it all in writing up front.
“I’d just hire someone then!”
Yes! Exactly! That’s what you’re doing!
That’s a good place to be. Congratulations!
As a contractor, bidding work and getting paid has taught me more about human behavior than anything else. I bought my first cell phone in the mid 1990’s just so I could call the commercial customer and tell him I was at his site with tools ripping out his (lift station) fence that very second. I was in my late 30’s...homicidal PMS...no impulse control...
There’s a classic story of a brick mason finishing a chimney for a guy, but the guy says he doesn’t have the money to pay the mason.
Mason says, “No problem, I’ll wait if you don’t you use the chimney until you pay me.”
Guy agrees.
Mason gets a call that the chimney doesn’t work. Mason says the chimney won’t work until he gets paid.
Guy grudgingly pays, and the mason, cash and brick in hand, goes to the top of the chimney, dropping the brick through the pane of glass he mortared across the flue halfway down.
I finally figured that out.
Cheaper and better off over the long haul to be left alone.
People always want me to help or do stuff for them. Rarely does anyone lift a finger for me.
lol... man the elders are a bottomless well of education!! Good one!
I remember a plumber dropping hands full of
wire nails down the vent pipe when he was
not paid.
Back in the day...Stew Leonard [Norwalk, CT] used to display bad/bounced checks from customers at the checkout stands. It was an effort to embarrass people who intentionally did this.
For those of you who don’t know, Norwalk is a very she-she town in Fairfield County CT.
Apparently, this is all legal to do.
We owned a small business in CT, and the first time a check was NSF, we posted it on the register/check-out; following Stew’s lead]. In a very small town, word got around, and it never happened again.
So, I can understand how this businessman felt. I feel his pain.
It’s a more *in-your-face* way, than writing a comment on FB or YELP.
An amazing price ($1,500)?
We paid $8,000+ for our house and garage to be painted. Multiple bids from contractors all simular. Two painters 15 days working...Not sprayed.
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