I took him to court for monies owed. He had a lawyer, spent a lot of extra money, and tried to back charge me for the whole job.

Here’s another entry in our Customers From Hell sweepstakes. Thanks for sending it in, Nigel S, a mechanicals contractor somewhere in Canada.

“Here’s a good one. I met a contractor client through a contractor in another city. I told the contractor to give me a call when he’s ready, I’ll help him out. I was going to do the complete mechanical. Plumbing was completely roughed-in and passed by one of the tougher inspectors in the area: it was a NAFTA house gas boiler (in floor heating) with an HRV system in an ICF home.

I brought in my sheet metal contractor, who has 20 years experience (forced air systems). I am also a TECA member, a Red Seal plumber with a B-gas ticket – and associated with other groups.

I repeatedly requested a schedule to be able to organize this job as well several other projects I had on the go. I had over $2,000 dollars’ worth of material on site waiting for him to clean up so I could proceed with the rough in. He tried to bully me into coming on site to do the install, but when I went to the job site nothing was ready for me to go forward. This happened a few times.

He called another contractor (with no tickets). That contractor said everything was done wrong. So while the contractor was freaking out, I suggested we bring in an engineer. The engineer found there was nothing wrong with the HRV system – so the customer dismantled the whole HRV system! In the meantime he went into my suppliers and bad-mouthed my name in front of other contractors. They removed him from the store!

I took him to court for monies owed. He had a lawyer, spent a lot of extra money, and tried to back charge me for the whole job. He committed perjury in court on every count – made up so much BS I felt sick .The judge threw it out of court. Oh, the contractor sold him on a heat pump, air to water, with electric back-up on ocean front. I heard from the carpenter that his bills were $300 to 400 in the winter. They should be around $100 max. All the extra money he spent, what a shame.

Almost all the other contractors had had the same run ins with this wanna-be contractor.”