Monday, October 17, 2005

Home Improvement and a Lesson in Contract Reading

Oh brother, no matter how good a home improvement company is make sure they read the contract they give to you. My God, I have no room for incompetence. I am getting some customized, overdone landscaping project installed at my house. It's like Over-Haulin but for the yard and that hot chick who talks too much on that show isn't here. (She isn't on the show anymore because she got kicked off, some new hot chick is in her place for season 3) I literally had a company completely excavate my entire yard, soil, cement and miscellaneous junk I had piled up here and completely start over, irrigation, new cement, brick walls and lighting, all of it. 140 some odd plants, shrubs and trees..

My question though, why can't contractors read what they put in contracts? I swear to God, I had them widen my drive way and for days my contractor made me look like a fool because I was requesting that since he widened the drive way, he could at least fill it in with some freaking cement or else the widening he did defeated the purpose since the BMW isn't 4 wheel drive. I am paying top dollar here, why wouldn't expect it, since it was in the contract? He had referred to the contract as "legal jargon". No shit Sherlock!!! We went back and forth for a few minutes. And I got off the phone in a huff. He flat out did not want to lay the cement down in my drive way with out charging me for it. With out concrete my front drive way would be a cess pool by January with all the rain we get. My in-laws came over yesterday and I had quickly cleaned the house and thrown the contracts on the floor in the other room, next to the litter box. A cat peed on the contract. So I had to read this contract carefully through the pee and called the contractor back. I said, hey, look at page 2 of the front yard contract. He's reading along and I say, yeah where is that 32 sq ft pad of concrete on the map y' all drew? He's like I don't know let me look here. After a few patient seconds he says, "Gee I don't know". I said great, since ya charged me for it, and don't know where it goes, why don't ya put it in that 32 square foot strip in my drive way ya dug out?!? Oh he says, we can do that... Freaking savages...

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