"chuckster" wrote in message
ups.com...
Your job is done, it works, and you paid a fair price, You are a lucky
man! Just check out www.MySturdyBuiltGarage.com if you want to see
"jobs gone bad".

I just checked out your website. Now I understand why you think I should
feel so lucky about how my job turned out!

You have a lot of good evidence shown in the pictures. Any chance you
considered filing a small claims lawsuit to recover some or all of your
money? Small Claims doesn't cost much to file, you have good evidence that
you could show the judge, and probably the worst that could happen is that
you lose the case and lose the small filing fee. I don't know the maximum
covered by Small Claims in Pennsylvania (or wherever you are), but even if
it's more than what you paid for the garage you can usually sue there anyway
and just accept the maximum as full settlement.

I especially like Number 5 of your list of tips. I learned a long time ago
to NEVER give an up front deposit (unless it's something like $100 good
faith deposit with the contract signing). If it's a short job, I pay in
full in person on the day it is done. If it's a bigger job, I pay progress
payments if necessary, but always significantly less than what the worth
would be for what was done so far. I don't pay for their materials up front
but have been willing to order the materials in my name, delivered to me,
and paid by me, so I have and own the materials from the get-go. On a
larger job (2 houses, $65,000 worth of work) I downloaded/bought a standard
AIA (American Institute of Architects) contract form which we prepared and
signed before doing any work. That worked like a charm during the project
when the contract tried a bunch of tricks.

One thing I learned is that once someone gives a contractor a 50% deposit,
the contractor already has his total profit in his hand before doing any
work. So he/she has no incentive to come out and do the job since all of
the rest of the money is going to go to materials and workers. Instead, the
contractor focuses his time either going out and getting more deposits, or
on doing jobs that won't pay him until he's done.

P.S. The garage you had built looks a lot like the "forts" and "clubhouses"
we used to build out of scrap wood when we were 10-12 year-old kids.