Ashalt Paving Con Job

[Rossluck]

I'm afraid that my neighbour may just have been conned by one of those cheap asphalt scams. We were talking over the fence, and as he told me about it, his words reminded me of the scams that I'd heard about:

"They were doing a job round the corner and said that they had some left over materials and his men were standing around doing nothing, so he said 'if you want we can do yours for a good price...'". So my neighbour accepted the quoted price of $4000 to do his driveway (~50 metres and about 4 metres wide).

The bottom line is that they came around and spend one and a half hours doing his driveway, then hit him for another $400 for GST. I haven't been down to have a look at it yet, but I'm assuming it's a quick shallow job. It annoys me, because he and his wife are wonderful people, who are retired but still work part time jobs to supplement their pensions.

http://landscaping.about.com/od/drivewaysandwalkways1/f/cheap_asphalt.htm

[Jim Carroll]

Must have been a lot of left over to cover that amount of driveway.

Sure sounds like a scam.

Your neighbour should have said because you did it so quickly I will take of the 10% and leave it at that, not likely they are going to rip it up.

[Ed Reiss]

Sounds like a bunch of Irish Rovers pullin' a scam!!:~

[joe greiner]

Alas, "should have" doesn't work anywhere. The WayBack Machine is yet to be invented.

Without proper sub-base preparation for drainage, even the best paving materials will fail very soon.

At best, they may be able to notify the authorities and local news hounds, for possible prosecution/restitution and warnings to others. In Florida, "Elder Abuse" is a compounding felony, with a minimum fine of US$5000 upon conviction, in addition to penalties imposed by the abuse itself, which may involve incarceration. If Australia doesn't have such statutes yet, speak to your legislators.

Joe - Civil Engineer

[Rossluck]

I felt when I was talking to my neighbour that he was beginning to see that he'd been conned. He had that slightly "sick" look to his face. I didn't say anything; too late and it'd only make him feel worse. But when I talked to him today he sounded a little deflated by the experience. He told me that he asked them for a receipt, and they said: "we haven't got our receipt book with us, but we'll get the office to send one". mmmmmmmm :( My neighbour then told me that the machinery and the vehicles all had N.S.W plates ....

I had a look at the job they did, and it's pretty bad; they just rolled it over his driveway, bumps and all. Carefactor 0%, as the bumper stickers say. Anyway, it's done. I'm getting to the stage of refusing to have anyone do any work for me if they produce those famous words "cash in hand only". Not only do these people cheat taxpayers, but somehow the whole job tends to turn messy and antagonistic. I could tell you some stories .... :((

[Rossluck]

I just thought I'd drag out this thread as a further warning to people to be aware of this asphalt scam. My neighbour's $4,500 bitumen driveway now has grass growing up through the middle. You can dig through it with your foot and reach the dirt underneath. :(

[Pheonix]

Bejesus and begorrah!
The boys are hard at work:rolleyes:

[nine fingers]

This scam has been well reported in the Melbourne and Geelong papers.

[Chesand]

Nine Fingers beat me to it - there was a piece in the paper a week or so ago