Recently I talked to three people who were ripped off by builders and tradies. One of them was out by more than a hundred thousand dollars, the others were in the tens of thousands of dollars.

People signed contracts and then didn’t finish the job. In one case when confronted the builders said “you can’t move in until I am done and if you don’t accept this I won’t be done for at least a year”.

In the other case the contractor demanded double the money halfway into the build and contacted all other builders in the area and smeared the friend so that they didn’t pick up the job.

In the third case the contractor took half the money up front, didn’t show up for weeks, finally showed up for a few days and did a few things and the fucked right off. This was for about a 30K job.

Court costs are ten thousand dollars per day of trial (including prep work by the attorneys) so all of them had no choice but to take being ripped off. The tradie community seems pretty tight too so once you are ripped off you are known as a mark because all of them had issued with other tradies they hired afterwards.

Needless to say cops and the courts are useless.

Learn to do things on your own I guess. You can’t trust any builder or tradie in NZ.

  • Call me Lenny/Leni@lemm.eeEnglish
    1·
    17 hours ago

    You don’t think the EU or its member states have any corruption? The streets of cities like Rome and Paris are filled with scammers whom they just let roam around to do their thing. Spain in particular has a massive burglary problem. UK police don’t even necessarily trust themselves during public events. I know that in the very least, Auckland isn’t lazy.

    • BalpeenHammer@lemmy.nzOP
      2·
      15 hours ago

      You don’t think the EU or its member states have any corruption?

      Why the straw man? Did I say they had zero corruption?

      I said they have less corruption.

      The streets of cities like Rome and Paris are filled with scammers whom they just let roam around to do their thing.

      That’s not the same thing but hey if that’s what you are going to hang your high horse on OK I guess.

      Spain in particular has a massive burglary problem.

      We are not talking about burglaries though.

      UK police don’t even necessarily trust themselves during public events.

      This sounds like something a right wing zealot would say. You aren’t one of those wingnuts are you? One of those white supremacist trump loving idiots who hates everybody who isn’t a white straight christian male.

      • Call me Lenny/Leni@lemm.eeEnglish
        1·
        14 hours ago

        They don’t have less corruption though. They’re literally dismantling their own democratic processes. New Zealand at least has its declared values in mind. And perhaps this is all not helped by their desire for American defense or by talks that Canada might join the EU. The rest of what I said were just pointers.

        I am a transracially mixed race asexual woman from Vermont; you are shooting the messenger with overvigilance if you think I’m saying anything inspired by a random menagerie of bigotry.