My mother and I retained Mr. Van Stone back in March to build a garage/guest house. Mr. Van Stone was given $20,000.00 to start the job. At the time, Mr. Van Stone gave us a quote sheet for $54,000.00 and the job was to be finished in August. The project has yet to be finished and Mr. Van Stone has been paid over $50,000.00.
In March, Mr. Van Stone requested a payment of $10,000.00 to do the plumbing/heating/air conditioning and he received payment within a week of his request.in April, my mother visited me and we sat down with Mr. Van Stone to finalize what we wanted in the guest house. Mr. Van Stone had previously complained that he couldn't finish the project because we still needed to make decisions, but that is hard to believe since we didn't get the final outside inspection until March or April. The delay to getting the final inspection was due to his not working on the project and because the stairs he built would not pass inspection. He said he would have that by last December, but since deadlines appear to mean nothing to Mr. Van Stone I have long since quit believing him.
At that meeting with my mother in April, Mr. Van Stone began to jot down what he said we would still own him, despite the fact that he told me the last $10,000.00 paid in March was about it, and he came to the conclusion that we would need to pay him another $23,000.00 to finish the job! That was over and above the $54,000.00 already paid to him. He claims that the additional money accounts for a sunroom and "dormer", which isn't a true dormer. At the time that we decided on the sunroom, Mr. Van Stone informed us that it would only be a little bit more than the quoted deck. When Mr. Van Stone began the job he poured the slab for the sunroom and he knew that we were doing the sunroom and the dormer. Why did he wait until a year and a half later to demand or mention the $23,000.00?
At this point, Mr. Van Stone has been totally disinterested in finishing the project and has quit working on it.instead, he is quite content to blame me for him not having a signed contract or change orders. Unless I'm missing some industry practice that I'm unaware of, it is Mr. Van Stone's responsibility to manage his business, recordkeeping and money. He instead wishes to placate his conscience by blaming his customers. A few weeks ago, he actually broke into my property and stole building materials from the job site and I had to call the police on him!
I believe Mr. Van Stone's business practices to be shoddy, crooked, underhanded and skirting the boundaries of blackmail. It is very unrealistic to expect that you can never mention that you will need an additional $23000.00 for a project after working on it for over a year and a half. I doubt many people would respond favorably to his tactics. At this time, we are out $54000.00 and only have a shell of a building to show for it. We have no inside plumbing, no heating or cooling unit, no
finished walls, floors etc.
My new contractor says at best I have $35,000 worth of really bad work and he has offered to testify against Mr. Van Stone in court.
0 comments