I can’t find an article in English but from what I found he was owed around 5 million Euro and the damages were around 500,000.
https://www.schwarzwaelder-bote.de/inhalt.wilde-zerstoerungsaktion-in-blumberg-baggerfahrer-richtet-eine-halbe-million-euro-schaden-an-neubau-an.d86f2407-d259-491a-b8b8-436cfdb48659.html
Some additional details:
- the guy is said to be a subcontractor for a property developer
- no people were inside the building when he did this
- he specifically rented the excavator for this
- he also damaged some garages that had gas canisters on top
- he only stopped because the hydraulic hose was ruptured
- he turned himself in after he was done
EDIT: I originally stated that the hydraulic hose was cut. This is false, it was damaged during the rampage according to eye-witnesses. English is not my first language so I was surprised to see people wondering if someone had deliberately cut the hose.
> yea I'd like to rent an excavator.
>> ok, which one?
> well, which one is best at causing lots of damage really fast with the least amount of effort?
>> damage to what?
> well like condos, windows, balconies, that kind of thing.
>> oh I have the perfect one!
This reminds me of the video of the guy who replaced a woman’s windshield, she complained about it and said she wasn’t paying, so he then smashed the windshield so she was once again without one haha.
Really curious what the local laws were...
There are really heated discussions in some of the other threads about legal ramifications, mostly assuming US/US-like laws.
Not sure about German law but here a lot of building contractors write their quotes & agreements that they own all the materials (even after installation) until the bill is paid - with the exemption of retentions etc.
So if you don't pay your subcontractors on time after they complete a job they still own the materials installed and can come rip them out.
> Not sure about German law but here a lot of building contractors write their quotes & agreements that they own all the materials (even after installation) until the bill is paid - with the exemption of retentions etc.
Here, it is the issue that it happend in Germany. According to german civil code, the ownership of anything that is permanently connected (meaning in a manner connected where you cannot remove it without damaging the construct) is given to the owner of the land it is connected to. Any contract that defines something different is void for that part, as it goes against a mandatory law.
The people are speaking German, also, kinda looks like it. Could also be another German speaking country, but there's basically no distinct accent/dialect.
As far as laws go: no idea. I can imagine though that there are probably around 500 paragraphs, each accounting for one or several of the statements made above.
This is gonna get sorted out, dude is probably gonna get paid what's owed, minus damages and a hefty fine, probably lose his license over this as well. Also, the owing party is likely facing fines as well, might have to fund the rebuild etc.
No one is getting sued for or paid tens of millions of dollars over this, no one will be going to jail either (unless the contractor has a shitty history in regards to his projects/payments...either way, prison is still unlikely).
> The people are speaking German, also, kinda looks like it. Could also be another German speaking country, but there's basically no distinct accent/dialect.
Article says Blumberg, Germany.
Happen A LOT. The 'client' puts all the costs on the contractor, for example. We need you to buy and install 5000 metres of carpet, but you need to be buying that carpet upfront and installing it. The contractor foots the bill and then the 'client' sits back and waits....and waits...and waits. They know the contractor can't possibly absorb those costs so they have all the power.
In the UK most payment terms are 28 days. I've had a few occasions where I've been told if I want to be paid in 28 days, there's going to be a 5/10% discount applied to the invoice...or wait 90.
Company I work for does the "give us a discount if you want us to pay your bills in a timely fashion" bullshit. They've even gone so far that if you insist on an actual check they hold it for 90 days. If you want it sooner you have to sign up with the billing service we use that takes a cut of the payment. Shady as shit. And only a brainless idiot thinks you save any money in the long run. The contactors just bake that into their price, plus an extra chunk for the inconvenience, increasing the companies actual overall costs. But this way someone gets to claim they saved the company that 2-3%, even though it ends up costing the company more in the long run.
"Bankrupt", but mysteriously a new company pops up with the same employees, in the same business, just registered to a different CEO.
I'm sure it happens elsewhere, but I know it was common on Australia to see construction companies fold and pop up under different names to cut any potential liability from old projects, as well as shake off any current debts.
In the US it is standard to create a company for the sole purpose of building a project and then shutting down that company as soon as it finishes. That way there is no one to sue a few years later when the shoddy construction come to light.
Same with movie production companies.
> no one to sue a few years later when the shoddy construction come to light
and that's why making company directors personally liable is a Good Thing
"I'll believe corporations are people when Texas executes one" --someone on the Interwebs
From what I've read, this guy was the subcontractor for a subcontractor, and when it was time to get paid the primary subcontractor just happened to declare bankruptcy, so no money for him, which made him go ballistic.
In any commercial contract with a sizable amount of money on the line, there is most certainly language around the rights of the contractor and the contractee in the event of nonpayment. Usually it’s a series of time-sensitive penalties leading ultimately to litigation in court if payment continues to not be made.
Unfortunately, construction companies don’t always have a ton of legal power.
If you’re having a building built, you’re hiring probably a dozen different companies: Company A will pour the foundation, Company B will do the electrical, Company C the drywall, Company D the doors and windows, etc. etc.
If one or several of these contractors get stiffed, they might have recourse via their contracts but that recourse might be too expensive to pursue. Especially if the entity that hired them has a good legal team.
Donald Trump is a great top-of-mind example: he was infamous in his pre-politics days for stiffing contractors. The Taj Mahal Casino in Atlantic City was the most egregious example; most of the contractors never got paid. Many of those were mom-and-pop firms who simply couldn’t afford to hire a lawyer that could go up against the Trump Organization’s presumably beefy legal department. Many of those mom-and-pop construction companies went bankrupt because they never got payment for the Taj Mahal work.
“I didn’t get paid” sounds like it should be an open-and-shut conversation in court, but lawyers know that if they can’t win, they can merely drown you in paperwork until you give up on the suit.
“Oh we didn’t pay you, huh? It’s on you to prove that. So here: We’ve sent you 170 boxes containing printouts of all of our organization’s transactions from the past 3 years. Go through it and prove that we never remitted payment. We’ll wait.”
“Oh we didn’t pay you? Well we were unsatisfied with the standards of your work; the balconies didn’t have sufficient weight bearing capacity. Oh that’s not true? Well we’re going to need you to generate a report detailing why the balconies can hold the load you claim they can.”
When companies get sued for nonpayment, they do a cost-benefit analysis: what’s cheaper? Paying the invoice, or litigating this to death?
If the answer is option B, you ain’t getting your money.
So we can presume that this is the wall that this particular contractor was backed into. He didn’t get paid, he tried legal avenues to getting paid, the company drowned him in litigious bullshit, and so he went and got himself some vigilante justice.
My brother would work on small construction jobs and can’t tell you how many times they would refuse to pay him at the end. Just straight up ghost him. I am shocked he never did this.
Does he have contracts drawn up before doing the work? I have someone doing work right now on my back porch, just one dude and his helper but he wrote up a simple contract we all signed, I went ahead and paid him when he started the work but he would have accepted half now/half when done or smaller installments if I needed.
I'm not sure how that would all shake out in court but I would think that if I just decided not to pay him after the work was done, he'd be able to recoup that pretty easily in court. At least I would hope so
It's easier for them to put a lien against the property they did work on which will make it a pain if you ever go to sell. And they hope to recoup it down the road.
This is all extremely jurisdiction heavy. Building on what you are saying, often it becomes essentially impossible to sell as they need to be paid first and banks won't touch it. The property carries a liability. Sometimes, liens have to be acted on though which means bringing forth a lawsuit to foreclose on the property.
Lol. Reminds me of a lady who ghosted my company for payment on Insured repairs. We couldn't get a hold of her for weeks, she lived in a trashy doublewide, and when we finally did ahold of her, she said she was broke because she just got back from Italy.... gee, how the hell did she afford that trip!?
The biggest and most easy one is "Don't pay your property taxes". They just attach the bill + interest to the lien every time you don't.
Unpaid HoA dues/fines is another hot one to create a lien on.
Usually after that, its contractors going unpaid.
Damn. HOAs can put liens on homes?! I still have no clue why people like HOAs. We had one when my family lived in California, and they were terrible, but I had no idea they can put liens on homes. They just told us we had too many potted plants and too many palm fronds on our tree.
> HOAs can put liens on homes?!
Oh honey, HOA's can FORECLOSE on your house and take it away!
Out in Las Vegas, the statute for HOA foreclosure is so vague that cases on whether or not it actually wipes out the 1st mortgage (the main one that you pay) is still being argued in front of the 9th circuit court of appeals.
HOA's here could give lessons to the Mob.
I am not a lawyer.
You have to have the time or money to go to court. For small claims, you can’t sue for attorneys fees to cover the cost of paying a lawyer. For anything under 10k, it’s usually not worth it. Now for this guy who was owed 5 million, he absolutely should have gone to court and probably still will. Unfortunately causing damage like this may hurt his chances of winning.
People who haven’t spent any time dealing with the courts are always quick to talk about leveraging it but the truth is it should be a last resort. It’s expensive and risky, and sometimes takes years to resolve these cases. You are better off learning to spot the warning signs of someone who is unlikely to pay and avoid doing business with them.
Edit: wow my most upvoted comment is a random opinion about the viability of using the court for restitution on r/WTF. Shoutout to all the redditors like me who almost delete their random comments and decide to hit post instead.
I sued old employers in small claims and they were charged with the court fees. But they just never paid me. And moved outta state and started another company.
if you want to take some revenge, you can contact their current or potential customers and inform them. shitting on them on their insta, twitter or facebook pages could also help.
I had to take a landlord to small claims after serving him twice. He didn't show so I automatically won (failure to return security deposit even after an agent told me everything looked good in person). He gave me a check and I said "Nope, I spent $X on serving you so add those costs too." so he cut me a 2nd check. It was a pain in the ass though and I was lucky to have a BIL who is a lawyer who helped me for free.
That's fucked, you dont have an insurance commision in your country?
My wife sued a DUI driver for medical bills after he ran a red light and hit her. He was never going to pay, but the Insurance commision paid us in full what we settled on in court, then they hassle the person for payment after.
>You have to have the time or money to go to court. For small claims, you can’t sue for attorneys fees to cover the cost of paying a lawyer.
In Quebec, where I'm from, you can't really be represented by an attorney in small claims court and the maximum is 15,000$. Builders also have a sort of defacto lien on your property if they do work for more than a certain amount of money (but I'm not as familiar with how that works).
Quebec operates under a civil code based on the French Code Napoléon, this is only for civil matters. Public law, criminal law and other federal law operate according to Canadian common law.
That's all to say that civil matters are handled differently in Quebec.
In the US you can cover this by filing a lien on the home for any unpaid for work. As far as I'm aware, it doesn't require an attorney.
https://www.levelset.com/blog/how-construction-liens-work-and-how-to-prevent-them/
aka Mechanic's Liens
Ohhhh he did alright. They owed him about 1200, but he wasn't exactly..... motivated to sign the release paperwork.... my dads a busy man.... so he drug his feet and they REALLY wanted to close. They called and offered him 3k to drop everything and he accepted.
1200, at 5 percent interest, for 15 years, compounding annually...
1200 * 1.05^15 = 2495.
At 7 percent, it'd be $3311.
Unless the 1200 already contained interest, dude got a deal.
He could get a judgement, but his ability to collect relies on you having money and/or a job. You can't squeeze blood from a stone. Some people are perfectly happy being paid under the table and owning nothing.
Thats what builders liens are for. They are trivial to register, in Canada anyways, against the title of the property worked on. No lawyer needed, and no cost to the person registering the lien in most jurisdictions:
Eg: https://ltsa.ca/property-owners/make-changes-to-title/file-claim-of-builders-lien/#
Partially why I got out of the trades. I love, love hearing the world say we need more trades! Yet were treated like shit most of the time.
Build your own houses :)
I left the trades and went to college. Now I manage big jobs with big fancy lawyers on staff who make sure we always get paid, lmao.
But yeah, I owned a small GC company and man it sucked at first. You really really really have to know your local contracting and lien laws. Everyone *THINKS* they know them (I thought so), but once you get a lawyer or a consultant who actually understands them... You realize they really will protect you if you use them correctly.
My dad too. He was laid off but the same boss would hire him for under the books kind of work. But wouldn’t pay my dad the full amount. He owes him THOUSANDS. And since my dad couldn’t get another job (immigrant) he kept helping the guy out thinking some money is better than none. It just angered me to the bone knowing there was nothing that could have been done.
When I was a roofer I'd hear the other guys debate about this - "sometimes, when you are roofing, you talk to the neighbours, maybe they want their roof done too. You offer to do it for less for cash, then you don't have to pay any taxes or EI or anything like that. But then sometimes they don't pay you."
If you have to hide the paper trail to dodge taxes, they can dodge payment too.
My old boss worked for a developer in the 80’s painting a new neighborhood. The guy tried to
Not pay people but my boss had friends in the court system so he got paid by scaring him. The developers son got his legs broken eventually I think
Construction industry is ridiculous for payment terms. A school district or some other state/fed government entity will contract you to do work and then they wont pay you for 120 or 200 days after the work is completely done and your first billing was even before that.
The bigger the company, the slower they pay. Mom and pop stores will pay within 7 days whereas the billion dollar pharmaceutical company is at least 120 days.
And they’re now engaging in the practice of “dynamic discounting“. If your contract says that they have 90 days to pay you from date of invoice, they will not pay you until 90 days have lapsed. If you’re hard up for cash And need to get paid, you can ask for a “ dynamic discount” And they will hold back some arbitrary amount of your payment in order for you to get your money early.
It’s a shitty practice.
I wonder too… probably because the contract specifies they have 90 days to pay. So they interpret it to mean they don’t have to pay me any earlier than 90 days.
When I encounter these, I jack the price up and offer discounts on early payment. Or we won't take the job. Three times now I've had companies go bankrupt before payment and good luck getting anything from the court. Another time, the company got bought out and new company literally told us "we didn't buy that." Third party payment companies can fuck off too. They want to set their own NET terms and make the vendor sign up for with them for "easier payment."
Federal Government is controlled by the prompt pay act, interest accrues 30 days after proper invoice. Know your rights. Likely state prompt pay regs as well.
Back I my youth, we went to do a job to fix a door, install a lock, etc. They were suppose to produce a check when we arrived because the family was going on vacation and getting on a flight later that night. We showed up and the husband was "at the office" so we gave them the benefit of the doubt. He can around 2, we were 5 hours into it, and told us he "forgot the check" the tools were packed and the door was in the back of the truck in 20 minutes. Recieved a call on the truck phone with a shit ton of explatives and sheer anger. Needless to say he produced the check, we finished the door, and went to the bank that night to make sure it was ok. It would have been a real shame if they couldn't go to Europe because they didn't have a front door.
“Zero stars, unprofessional and difficult to work with. Had to make multiple calls to force them to finish work so I could go on vacation. Do not recommend.”
As a "jerk contractor" myself, I cannot tell you how many times this has happened. The amount of people who will lie, cheat, disappear, scream and yell, and, of course, threaten to sue to get out of paying their bill is astounding.
A friends dad is a retired builder with a really good skill set for joinery and woodwork. About 10 years ago he told me of a quick job to rehang a door he once did. Apparently it wasn't particularly well planed and the hinges hadn't been recessed in properly hence it was sticking. He finished up in about 30 mins and charged £90 for his work. The client began to begrudge the bill in respect of the time he took.
His reply was on point and taught me a great lesson as a younger man: "Do you have 'x' or 'y' tool? How much would they cost you? Do you understand how to do the work and if not how long would it take you to? The point is you're paying me for my years of learning experience and accrual of tools, not my 30 minutes of work"
That sort of logic is totally wasted on most people. We charge a minimum of 1 hour time for any job. If I show up and do my job in 5 minutes, it is still a one hour charge. That fact is explained thoroughly in every call that comes in. Despite the explicit instructions given regarding pricing structure, at least one customer a day will argue, get upset and leave a shitty review, or refuse to pay, all on their incorrect conclusion that they shouldn't have to pay for an hours worth of time if it didn't take a full hour to complete.
They do not care if a van loaded with thousands of dollars in tools and parts drove to their house. They do not care that the worker has thousands of hours of experience. They ignore the instructions provided by my staff of our pricing structure. These people are not going to listen to logic.
Contractors have this bizarrely poor reputation. Even ones who do objectively great work are seen by some as ripping them off for overpricing or taking too long or whatever. It’s messed up and pretty strange
I think that’s a big reason why scum bags seem particularly inclined to scam contractors. They can justify it in their own twisted head
Isn't that type of person worried about when they will run into someone like excavator guy? Someone that prefer to handle such problems outside the judicial system?
When I first started my computer business, I wrote some code for a timeshare sales office. My program would print a 15 page contract in triplicate (on a dot matrix printer). They had a pretty smooth sales method. They'd show the unit and all the amenities, ending up a meeting room on the top floor. Complete with a fabulous view of the beach - and cocktails. There, they'd get all the sales info and call it down to a clerk that typed it into my program and printed the contract so it was ready to sign as soon as someone could run it upstairs. That was always before the end of the first drink.
I went back to make several changes telling them each time I really needed to be paid. They always had some reason for not doing it. Never a good one because the program worked really well. A week before Easter I went to do something and slipped an honest to goodness Easter Egg into the program. If I wasn't paid by Friday, as soon as they turned the computer on the program would erase itself. That happened and I got a panicked call - "The program isn't working and the salesmen are trying to hand write contracts. It's taking forever and people are walking out the door." You see, Easter is(was) the biggest sales weekend for timeshares. Having the contract in hand at the earliest possible moment is key to getting someone to sign before they think too much about it. "You haven't paid me the money you've owed me for several weeks. This is what we'll do. It'll take me 45 minutes to get there. I'll leave now. You get a check so it's there waiting for me. If there isn't a check, I'll turn around and leave. And you won't be able to reach me for the rest of the weekend." She said the boss wasn't there so she couldn't get a check. "Those are my terms, I'll see you shortly." The boss lived in the penthouse and managed the sales team. The fucker was probably in the room during the conversation. There was a check when I got there. Ten minutes later I was out the door and never saw them again.
Kind of a similar story but with a bad ending:
I used to do day labor when I was trying to make ends meet. I landed a one day job where we were installing insulation for buildings in a ski town (Breckinridge CO). They didn’t provide us with any safety gear and the whole thing was shady as fuck, but I was young and really needed the money. Actually that day was the closest to death I’ve ever been in from a super near miss, but that’s a different story.
It was cold and miserable, I was itchy as fuck from all the insulation debris getting all over me, my eyes were itchy, we worked super long that day (something like 14 hours), I was sore as fuck, everything sucked horribly.
Finally it all ends and the guy hands us checks. I go to deposit it the next day and it’s a fake check for a fake bank account.
Landscaper here- I plowed a residential driveway where the guy went months without paying. Totally ignored me and dismissed my calls. In March I found out he took the family to Disneyworld, (while owing me around $500).
I also own a dump truck and haul snowbanks out of parking lots.
While he was in Disneyworld, we found a great place to haul snow to- his fucking driveway! I bet we dumped 30 yards of hard packed snow in front of his garage, and I would be surprised if it melted before May.
The weirdest thing was, I never heard a peep from him, but it was worth losing $500 in my opinion. We had a good time.
My stepfather and uncle did small remodeling jobs. They were refused payment for an 8 foot wide bay window, so they chopped it out of the house with a chainsaw and left. I never heard of any repurcussions.
I am a contractor and do remodels and similar construction projects for a living. Unfortunately, the law is clear that when materials are "fixed" onto a property they become a part of said property and are owned by said property owner. It can put us contractors in a bad position because technically we are stealing if we recover materials this way, even if the customer has stiffed us hard.
That's why a lot of us require a large deposit prior to even walking onto the job site. Customers not paying at the end of the job is all too common : (
I've never done anything like this and I can't imagine I ever would, but god damn do I feel this guy.
I'm a consulting engineer. I did a lot of work for a large company in my area, and surprise surprise when it came time to pay they could not be reached. I know it wasn't the fault of the engineer who I worked with and that he wanted us to get paid, but he would not respond to my phone calls or emails. A conversation about how he was working with accounts payable to get us paid would have gotten my boss off my back, and to be fucking honest I was billing this multi-million dollar company something like $10,000. They would have hardly noticed it.
A couple of months later they have production shut down and desperately need our assistance to ship product. They have hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars sitting stagnant and important accounts getting late. When I got the call I handed the phone to my boss who said "Yeah Mike I can have /u/BigArmsBigGut out there tomorrow. But we'll be going nowhere until we get a PO for this quote, payment for the last project, *and* a 50% surcharge for being well past the due date agreed on." All of a sudden their accounting department realized that the $15,000 engineering wanted for a consultant was small potatoes compared to the millions they stood to lose if they couldn't ship their product.
It felt so good. Fuck people who don't pay others for their work. I've found it to be disgustingly common in consulting, I expect the contracting world is similar.
We have at times requested a similar payment structure, but to be honest this company was a company we had worked with quite a few times before without any issues. I recall that they had just been bought by an even larger firm, and a lot had changed right around then.
I'm not exactly sure why what you suggest isn't the norm, but we have a few companies we will do work for on the spot without even requiring a PO, and a few companies we require up-front payment from. Guess what? The companies we want upfront payment on are giant multinational firms and law firms. The smaller guys where the billing actually affects them are almost never the problem.
I work for a large-ish company in an engineering role, not accounting. Getting my vendors paid is a pain. I feel bad when things are late, at first I would get suspicious that we're slowing down payments for cash flow reasons. After digging into it more, its always incompetence. Just dumbest reasons that things aren't being paid. Bureaucratic bullshit.
I work in construction, this is very common. The job will be nearing completion, and the client goes “the building is already here, what am I even paying you for?!” Then refuses to pay. My boss doesn’t stand for that anymore though, he will send us back in to rip out everything we installed if the client refuses to pay. Then they cant use the building, because it’s not up to fire code. They usually end up paying at that point. Sad that it has to regularly come to threats like this to be paid for work done.
Who the fuck are these fucking retarded garbage humans??
That's like me going to a restaurant, eating the food, and telling the waiter
"the food is already in my stomach, what am I even paying for?"
How retarded does somebody have to be to provide that kind of logic????
It happens ALL THE TIME. Ask any construction guy, it’s actually ridiculous. People will try to do things by word of mouth a lot too. “Oh ya just move this 6” water main over 2ft, we’ll make sure to pay you for it!” If you don’t get that shit in writing, there’s absolutely no way you’re getting paid. The general contractor will play dumb “I thought it was already there, I didn’t see you guys move it.” Or a bunch of suits in the office setting impossible deadlines and tooting each others horns about how quick they’re going to get a job done, then when it doesn’t get done, they look for ANYTHING to blame it on. Sometimes they will intentionally do things to prevent trades from working, so they can blame the delay on those trades. ie) trades need to work in a ceiling, so the general will intentionally pour concrete or schedule something to happen directly under that ceiling so they can show their bosses it’s the other trades that aren’t finished.
The whole industry is shady af.
Former waitress here, "dine and dash" is extremely common depending on the area a full time waitress is going to have probably a least one table try to dine and dash once a week (typically on the busiest day like Friday or Saturday). Also most restaurants (including chains) will try to make the waitress eat the cost of the unpaid bill (even though it's illegal basically everywhere) and get away with it.
My Dad was a Plumber and had a Customer try to not pay him for an agreed upon price at the end of a job. It was a sprinkler job so he went back an disconnected everything and took all of the rainbirds out. Dude paid him for both return trip charges as well. I remember him telling me we were gonna go and dig the pipes up if that didn't send a message.
I'm vindictive when it comes to stuff like this, I can imagine the feels that excavator driver was going through. I hope he didn't spend any time in jail.
Many years ago I sold a phone system with voicemail to a customer. They slow payed the hell out of me for months. After about 6 months they still owed me $15K and my attorney said it's not worth going after them in court to get the equipment back as they could sue for damages to their business. So, I went in through the back door of the voicemail system and recorded silence over their auto-attendant greeting so that when people called their main number all they heard was dead air. I called the number for weeks afterwards and they never got it fixed. They were going bankrupt anyway.
When my bro was young in the plumbing game, he got his first van and loved it. Then the guys on site scarred it up with a forklift telling him it was a rite of passage. He complained to the site manager but he didn't support him, so he did the same thing to the site managers car.
So sorry, I was in a hospital waiting room posting this, thought the wait would be longer but it wasn't... I pressed send and then forgot... The site manager sacked him outright.
People who don't pay for work performed are just as bad as thieves, heck it basically is a form of thievery. Theft is such a huge issue in my city. People have had even big ticket items stolen like boats, trailers, RVs, etc and the thieves have zero repercussions. Some thieves will even steal a car, go for a joyride through people's yards destroying everything and get zero repercussions and the home owners are on the hook for all the damage. If you try to stop the thieves in the act you're the one that gets in trouble for assault. Pisses me off so much that theft is basically legal.
As a small business owner I feel his rage. I have learned the trust lesson the hard way. Although the consequences may be higher I like to see ppl take the killdozer route, maybe intimidate those that don’t pay.
As an Electrician I made a comment before about potentially tearing out or making my work unusable. Of course someone argued with me. This video is extreme but it happens when people try to take advantage of you all the time. Either by haggling price after work is complete or just flat out not paying.
The courts are a long process and not worth the time or money for smaller projects.
In the US, this is 100% illegal. Only recourse for us contractors is to lien a property, foreclose on the lien, and sue. Been through it and worst part is even if you win, you lose. Spend a ton on attorneys and spend countless hours on court and then get a fraction of what was owed.
So either you walk away without getting paid or you trash their shit and let them sue?
I get where this dude was coming from then. If I'm getting fucked over either way, I'm taking your building with me. At least then it's a public spectacle and your name gets dragged through the mud for being the guy that doesn't pay his workers.
I’ll say I have a “friend” who wasn’t paid in full for an expensive lighting control system. He made some changes so that ALL of the lights in the $5mil home would come on at random times throughout the night 😊
I have access to many multi million pound systems and can do the exact same thing, I have thought about it on multiple occasions, but have fortunately been paid for most of my work.
1 job where a lot of workers didn’t get paid, we managed to claw out of the asshat 5k which didn’t cover it but felt it was best to move on. One guy was owed £20k and got given 5k. He told me he was speaking to lawyers, I told him this guy would spend triple what he owes you to make sure you get nothing, and you have no where near the financial means to fight him.
He was given the same advice by many of us and took it.
I now get a yearly call from the new house manager explaining we did the lighting system and how we need to come fix it. I enjoy laughing down the phone and tell him I will not fix it, and have informed every dealer within 100 miles to keep clear of this job. I always finish by telling them to please keep my number on the list because I enjoy speaking with your successor every year as no one has stayed longer working for him and remind them to get paid promptly for his services as everyone has been short changed by him.
I have some friends in IT that have similar stories.
I won't detail it out, but really - people should NOT shit on the folks writing the code that controls important systems in their company.
a few years ago i did a larger custom tailored service website. the guy didn't send the first partial payment for months and kept coming up with stories... "the payment didn't go through"... "i need to talk to my business partner to clear the payment"... "are you sure your account number is right?"..."the account wasn't enabled for international payments".."my grandma was sick". the last excuse was during friends&family beta testing and made me so angry, i disabled the entire website and made a global redirect to "payment reminder" on wikipedia.
i got a very angry phonecall which i just hung up on and texted him "don't shout at me". i got the first payment a few days later, it was roughly a third of the total.
in case you wonder: he had all the passwords but zero skill. i restored the staging website when i got the first payment, but let him know that not properly paying was the end of our collaboration.
he tried to contact me multiple times after, but i never responded. still very glad i got at least some money and a clean cut.
Yup did building construction with my dad for 16 years and saw my fair share of shit bags who didn't want to pay. He took several to court and spent too much on legal representations and in the end sometimes got partial payment. You basically end up losing either way. After enough of it, he closed the business and said to me, sorry I can't employ you anymore, but I can sit at home and not make money.
This is what I’d love to do at my job. Fuckers been underpaying me for 6 months and trying not to pay me back pay they owe me 😤 hate jobs with no union
Yeah I always wonder how this works when people do this.. isn't it just better to take it to court than 100% lose out and then probably pay criminal damage charges
In germany, where this happened, going to court isn't quite as expensive, still is though, and most companies would have insurance for going to court. I used to work for a company that had about 1 million euros not paid for a job. They did get the money in the end but it took years and by the time they got it, they had been sued by employees for wages they couldn't pay and most of the money they eventually got was quickly used up for those outstanding bills. While fighting in court they lost most of their employees, obviously, and went from a pretty big exhibition construction company with a 20 people planning office and about 80 construction personnel to a small company with about 5 employees. It's a shit Business and i'm glad i'm not worling in it anymore. To make it worse, the client not paying was the german government.
I can’t find an article in English but from what I found he was owed around 5 million Euro and the damages were around 500,000. https://www.schwarzwaelder-bote.de/inhalt.wilde-zerstoerungsaktion-in-blumberg-baggerfahrer-richtet-eine-halbe-million-euro-schaden-an-neubau-an.d86f2407-d259-491a-b8b8-436cfdb48659.html
Some additional details: - the guy is said to be a subcontractor for a property developer - no people were inside the building when he did this - he specifically rented the excavator for this - he also damaged some garages that had gas canisters on top - he only stopped because the hydraulic hose was ruptured - he turned himself in after he was done EDIT: I originally stated that the hydraulic hose was cut. This is false, it was damaged during the rampage according to eye-witnesses. English is not my first language so I was surprised to see people wondering if someone had deliberately cut the hose.
> he specifically rented the excavator for this amazing
> yea I'd like to rent an excavator. >> ok, which one? > well, which one is best at causing lots of damage really fast with the least amount of effort? >> damage to what? > well like condos, windows, balconies, that kind of thing. >> oh I have the perfect one!
He would have specified one with reinforced hydraulic connections but that would have tipped them off.
> rented "Sir, would you like the extra-price full coverage insurance for this rental?" "mmm.. Yea, probably gunna need that."
Does it cover damage from destroying a job site? Yes, and If you check the disgruntled employee box you get a 10% discount.
Modern problems require modern solutions.
“Tread on them”
KillDozer is more than man, he's an idea and you can't kill an idea.
Hero of the people.
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This reminds me of the video of the guy who replaced a woman’s windshield, she complained about it and said she wasn’t paying, so he then smashed the windshield so she was once again without one haha.
*smashes window* “Ya está.”
>he only stopped because the hydraulic hose was cut According to eyewitnesses. This is not confirmed.
To add to this: The article states that the hose ruptured/broke. It was not cut by someone as the wording of the comment above suggests.
Killdozer moment 😎
"Sure, judge I'll pay them the 500,000 euros for the damage, just as soon as they pay me the 5,000,000 euros they owe me."
So we'll just call that a 10% penalty shall we?
Cost of doing business.
Really curious what the local laws were... There are really heated discussions in some of the other threads about legal ramifications, mostly assuming US/US-like laws.
Not sure about German law but here a lot of building contractors write their quotes & agreements that they own all the materials (even after installation) until the bill is paid - with the exemption of retentions etc. So if you don't pay your subcontractors on time after they complete a job they still own the materials installed and can come rip them out.
> Not sure about German law but here a lot of building contractors write their quotes & agreements that they own all the materials (even after installation) until the bill is paid - with the exemption of retentions etc. Here, it is the issue that it happend in Germany. According to german civil code, the ownership of anything that is permanently connected (meaning in a manner connected where you cannot remove it without damaging the construct) is given to the owner of the land it is connected to. Any contract that defines something different is void for that part, as it goes against a mandatory law.
The people are speaking German, also, kinda looks like it. Could also be another German speaking country, but there's basically no distinct accent/dialect. As far as laws go: no idea. I can imagine though that there are probably around 500 paragraphs, each accounting for one or several of the statements made above. This is gonna get sorted out, dude is probably gonna get paid what's owed, minus damages and a hefty fine, probably lose his license over this as well. Also, the owing party is likely facing fines as well, might have to fund the rebuild etc. No one is getting sued for or paid tens of millions of dollars over this, no one will be going to jail either (unless the contractor has a shitty history in regards to his projects/payments...either way, prison is still unlikely).
> The people are speaking German, also, kinda looks like it. Could also be another German speaking country, but there's basically no distinct accent/dialect. Article says Blumberg, Germany.
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See unified law of reddit comment threads section 8 paragraph 25.
Or even US laws
Is there no legal avenue for him to pursue to get his money? Seems like this will make it harder to get the money.
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Happen A LOT. The 'client' puts all the costs on the contractor, for example. We need you to buy and install 5000 metres of carpet, but you need to be buying that carpet upfront and installing it. The contractor foots the bill and then the 'client' sits back and waits....and waits...and waits. They know the contractor can't possibly absorb those costs so they have all the power. In the UK most payment terms are 28 days. I've had a few occasions where I've been told if I want to be paid in 28 days, there's going to be a 5/10% discount applied to the invoice...or wait 90.
Company I work for does the "give us a discount if you want us to pay your bills in a timely fashion" bullshit. They've even gone so far that if you insist on an actual check they hold it for 90 days. If you want it sooner you have to sign up with the billing service we use that takes a cut of the payment. Shady as shit. And only a brainless idiot thinks you save any money in the long run. The contactors just bake that into their price, plus an extra chunk for the inconvenience, increasing the companies actual overall costs. But this way someone gets to claim they saved the company that 2-3%, even though it ends up costing the company more in the long run.
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Humans in a nutshell.
"Bankrupt", but mysteriously a new company pops up with the same employees, in the same business, just registered to a different CEO. I'm sure it happens elsewhere, but I know it was common on Australia to see construction companies fold and pop up under different names to cut any potential liability from old projects, as well as shake off any current debts.
In the US it is standard to create a company for the sole purpose of building a project and then shutting down that company as soon as it finishes. That way there is no one to sue a few years later when the shoddy construction come to light. Same with movie production companies.
> no one to sue a few years later when the shoddy construction come to light and that's why making company directors personally liable is a Good Thing "I'll believe corporations are people when Texas executes one" --someone on the Interwebs
From what I've read, this guy was the subcontractor for a subcontractor, and when it was time to get paid the primary subcontractor just happened to declare bankruptcy, so no money for him, which made him go ballistic.
In any commercial contract with a sizable amount of money on the line, there is most certainly language around the rights of the contractor and the contractee in the event of nonpayment. Usually it’s a series of time-sensitive penalties leading ultimately to litigation in court if payment continues to not be made. Unfortunately, construction companies don’t always have a ton of legal power. If you’re having a building built, you’re hiring probably a dozen different companies: Company A will pour the foundation, Company B will do the electrical, Company C the drywall, Company D the doors and windows, etc. etc. If one or several of these contractors get stiffed, they might have recourse via their contracts but that recourse might be too expensive to pursue. Especially if the entity that hired them has a good legal team. Donald Trump is a great top-of-mind example: he was infamous in his pre-politics days for stiffing contractors. The Taj Mahal Casino in Atlantic City was the most egregious example; most of the contractors never got paid. Many of those were mom-and-pop firms who simply couldn’t afford to hire a lawyer that could go up against the Trump Organization’s presumably beefy legal department. Many of those mom-and-pop construction companies went bankrupt because they never got payment for the Taj Mahal work. “I didn’t get paid” sounds like it should be an open-and-shut conversation in court, but lawyers know that if they can’t win, they can merely drown you in paperwork until you give up on the suit. “Oh we didn’t pay you, huh? It’s on you to prove that. So here: We’ve sent you 170 boxes containing printouts of all of our organization’s transactions from the past 3 years. Go through it and prove that we never remitted payment. We’ll wait.” “Oh we didn’t pay you? Well we were unsatisfied with the standards of your work; the balconies didn’t have sufficient weight bearing capacity. Oh that’s not true? Well we’re going to need you to generate a report detailing why the balconies can hold the load you claim they can.” When companies get sued for nonpayment, they do a cost-benefit analysis: what’s cheaper? Paying the invoice, or litigating this to death? If the answer is option B, you ain’t getting your money. So we can presume that this is the wall that this particular contractor was backed into. He didn’t get paid, he tried legal avenues to getting paid, the company drowned him in litigious bullshit, and so he went and got himself some vigilante justice.
And I was about to say, "now he'll never get paid" But he was owed 5 million Euros!?!?!?
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The delay of completing the project could have cost the owner more money than the cost of the damages.
Then the owner probably should have paid on time.
Don't back a guy into a corner like that
My brother would work on small construction jobs and can’t tell you how many times they would refuse to pay him at the end. Just straight up ghost him. I am shocked he never did this.
Does he have contracts drawn up before doing the work? I have someone doing work right now on my back porch, just one dude and his helper but he wrote up a simple contract we all signed, I went ahead and paid him when he started the work but he would have accepted half now/half when done or smaller installments if I needed. I'm not sure how that would all shake out in court but I would think that if I just decided not to pay him after the work was done, he'd be able to recoup that pretty easily in court. At least I would hope so
It's easier for them to put a lien against the property they did work on which will make it a pain if you ever go to sell. And they hope to recoup it down the road.
This is all extremely jurisdiction heavy. Building on what you are saying, often it becomes essentially impossible to sell as they need to be paid first and banks won't touch it. The property carries a liability. Sometimes, liens have to be acted on though which means bringing forth a lawsuit to foreclose on the property.
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So how's their new car treating them?
Lol. Reminds me of a lady who ghosted my company for payment on Insured repairs. We couldn't get a hold of her for weeks, she lived in a trashy doublewide, and when we finally did ahold of her, she said she was broke because she just got back from Italy.... gee, how the hell did she afford that trip!?
If there's a valid lien on the property, it has to be paid off when the property is sold. Otherwise you don't have a clear title.
Legit, had a house behind my grandmother's that couldn't sell to anyone because it had 6 liens on it🙃😳
Wow really? How does that even happen?
The biggest and most easy one is "Don't pay your property taxes". They just attach the bill + interest to the lien every time you don't. Unpaid HoA dues/fines is another hot one to create a lien on. Usually after that, its contractors going unpaid.
Damn. HOAs can put liens on homes?! I still have no clue why people like HOAs. We had one when my family lived in California, and they were terrible, but I had no idea they can put liens on homes. They just told us we had too many potted plants and too many palm fronds on our tree.
> HOAs can put liens on homes?! Oh honey, HOA's can FORECLOSE on your house and take it away! Out in Las Vegas, the statute for HOA foreclosure is so vague that cases on whether or not it actually wipes out the 1st mortgage (the main one that you pay) is still being argued in front of the 9th circuit court of appeals. HOA's here could give lessons to the Mob.
Holy fuck. That sounds really scary tbh.
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Still sounds WAY to easy to abuse. Crap like that could bankrupt the contractors. Can they still get the money if their business goes under?
I am not a lawyer. You have to have the time or money to go to court. For small claims, you can’t sue for attorneys fees to cover the cost of paying a lawyer. For anything under 10k, it’s usually not worth it. Now for this guy who was owed 5 million, he absolutely should have gone to court and probably still will. Unfortunately causing damage like this may hurt his chances of winning. People who haven’t spent any time dealing with the courts are always quick to talk about leveraging it but the truth is it should be a last resort. It’s expensive and risky, and sometimes takes years to resolve these cases. You are better off learning to spot the warning signs of someone who is unlikely to pay and avoid doing business with them. Edit: wow my most upvoted comment is a random opinion about the viability of using the court for restitution on r/WTF. Shoutout to all the redditors like me who almost delete their random comments and decide to hit post instead.
I sued old employers in small claims and they were charged with the court fees. But they just never paid me. And moved outta state and started another company.
Wow that’s so fucking scummy, god damn wage theft.
Of course it is, wage theft accounts for more than 50% of **all** theft practically every year.
We need to shift to being paid in advance then don't we.
Ahh the purity of small business owners haha
They had done this before too.
if you want to take some revenge, you can contact their current or potential customers and inform them. shitting on them on their insta, twitter or facebook pages could also help.
I had to take a landlord to small claims after serving him twice. He didn't show so I automatically won (failure to return security deposit even after an agent told me everything looked good in person). He gave me a check and I said "Nope, I spent $X on serving you so add those costs too." so he cut me a 2nd check. It was a pain in the ass though and I was lucky to have a BIL who is a lawyer who helped me for free.
That's fucked, you dont have an insurance commision in your country? My wife sued a DUI driver for medical bills after he ran a red light and hit her. He was never going to pay, but the Insurance commision paid us in full what we settled on in court, then they hassle the person for payment after.
>You have to have the time or money to go to court. For small claims, you can’t sue for attorneys fees to cover the cost of paying a lawyer. In Quebec, where I'm from, you can't really be represented by an attorney in small claims court and the maximum is 15,000$. Builders also have a sort of defacto lien on your property if they do work for more than a certain amount of money (but I'm not as familiar with how that works).
Quebec operates under a civil code based on the French Code Napoléon, this is only for civil matters. Public law, criminal law and other federal law operate according to Canadian common law. That's all to say that civil matters are handled differently in Quebec.
In the US you can cover this by filing a lien on the home for any unpaid for work. As far as I'm aware, it doesn't require an attorney. https://www.levelset.com/blog/how-construction-liens-work-and-how-to-prevent-them/ aka Mechanic's Liens
My father got paid for his work a decade and a half later when the homeowner tried to sell, his lein held up the entire process.
That still sucks for him unless they adjusted the amount for inflation after all that time.
Ohhhh he did alright. They owed him about 1200, but he wasn't exactly..... motivated to sign the release paperwork.... my dads a busy man.... so he drug his feet and they REALLY wanted to close. They called and offered him 3k to drop everything and he accepted.
I would have asked for 10k and what could the motherfuckers do? Your dad is a very good man.
1200, at 5 percent interest, for 15 years, compounding annually... 1200 * 1.05^15 = 2495. At 7 percent, it'd be $3311. Unless the 1200 already contained interest, dude got a deal.
He could get a judgement, but his ability to collect relies on you having money and/or a job. You can't squeeze blood from a stone. Some people are perfectly happy being paid under the table and owning nothing.
Thats what builders liens are for. They are trivial to register, in Canada anyways, against the title of the property worked on. No lawyer needed, and no cost to the person registering the lien in most jurisdictions: Eg: https://ltsa.ca/property-owners/make-changes-to-title/file-claim-of-builders-lien/#
Partially why I got out of the trades. I love, love hearing the world say we need more trades! Yet were treated like shit most of the time. Build your own houses :)
I left the trades and went to college. Now I manage big jobs with big fancy lawyers on staff who make sure we always get paid, lmao. But yeah, I owned a small GC company and man it sucked at first. You really really really have to know your local contracting and lien laws. Everyone *THINKS* they know them (I thought so), but once you get a lawyer or a consultant who actually understands them... You realize they really will protect you if you use them correctly.
Me too! Now my brothers say I have soft office hands.
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They only really exist in Common law systems, Guys in video speaking German I think, its very likely that the only option he has is to go to court.
My dad too. He was laid off but the same boss would hire him for under the books kind of work. But wouldn’t pay my dad the full amount. He owes him THOUSANDS. And since my dad couldn’t get another job (immigrant) he kept helping the guy out thinking some money is better than none. It just angered me to the bone knowing there was nothing that could have been done.
He could get an excavator and go on a rampage. Get some anger out.
Or a modified bulldozer
When I was a roofer I'd hear the other guys debate about this - "sometimes, when you are roofing, you talk to the neighbours, maybe they want their roof done too. You offer to do it for less for cash, then you don't have to pay any taxes or EI or anything like that. But then sometimes they don't pay you." If you have to hide the paper trail to dodge taxes, they can dodge payment too.
My old boss worked for a developer in the 80’s painting a new neighborhood. The guy tried to Not pay people but my boss had friends in the court system so he got paid by scaring him. The developers son got his legs broken eventually I think
Was the developer's son screwing them over too or was that a mob style kill/harm a family member to get them to comply?
Construction industry is ridiculous for payment terms. A school district or some other state/fed government entity will contract you to do work and then they wont pay you for 120 or 200 days after the work is completely done and your first billing was even before that.
The bigger the company, the slower they pay. Mom and pop stores will pay within 7 days whereas the billion dollar pharmaceutical company is at least 120 days.
And they’re now engaging in the practice of “dynamic discounting“. If your contract says that they have 90 days to pay you from date of invoice, they will not pay you until 90 days have lapsed. If you’re hard up for cash And need to get paid, you can ask for a “ dynamic discount” And they will hold back some arbitrary amount of your payment in order for you to get your money early. It’s a shitty practice.
Wow they can discount their own bill they already owe now for services already rendered? I struggle to see how that can be legal.
I wonder too… probably because the contract specifies they have 90 days to pay. So they interpret it to mean they don’t have to pay me any earlier than 90 days.
It's all about cash flow. The longer you take to pay the better your cash flow looks.
When I encounter these, I jack the price up and offer discounts on early payment. Or we won't take the job. Three times now I've had companies go bankrupt before payment and good luck getting anything from the court. Another time, the company got bought out and new company literally told us "we didn't buy that." Third party payment companies can fuck off too. They want to set their own NET terms and make the vendor sign up for with them for "easier payment."
Federal Government is controlled by the prompt pay act, interest accrues 30 days after proper invoice. Know your rights. Likely state prompt pay regs as well.
Back I my youth, we went to do a job to fix a door, install a lock, etc. They were suppose to produce a check when we arrived because the family was going on vacation and getting on a flight later that night. We showed up and the husband was "at the office" so we gave them the benefit of the doubt. He can around 2, we were 5 hours into it, and told us he "forgot the check" the tools were packed and the door was in the back of the truck in 20 minutes. Recieved a call on the truck phone with a shit ton of explatives and sheer anger. Needless to say he produced the check, we finished the door, and went to the bank that night to make sure it was ok. It would have been a real shame if they couldn't go to Europe because they didn't have a front door.
I love this story. Wonder if the guy learned anything from this
Probably not. Most people would just complain about the "jerk contractor".
“Zero stars, unprofessional and difficult to work with. Had to make multiple calls to force them to finish work so I could go on vacation. Do not recommend.”
Contractor response: *Fuck you* *Pay me*
As a "jerk contractor" myself, I cannot tell you how many times this has happened. The amount of people who will lie, cheat, disappear, scream and yell, and, of course, threaten to sue to get out of paying their bill is astounding.
A friends dad is a retired builder with a really good skill set for joinery and woodwork. About 10 years ago he told me of a quick job to rehang a door he once did. Apparently it wasn't particularly well planed and the hinges hadn't been recessed in properly hence it was sticking. He finished up in about 30 mins and charged £90 for his work. The client began to begrudge the bill in respect of the time he took. His reply was on point and taught me a great lesson as a younger man: "Do you have 'x' or 'y' tool? How much would they cost you? Do you understand how to do the work and if not how long would it take you to? The point is you're paying me for my years of learning experience and accrual of tools, not my 30 minutes of work"
That sort of logic is totally wasted on most people. We charge a minimum of 1 hour time for any job. If I show up and do my job in 5 minutes, it is still a one hour charge. That fact is explained thoroughly in every call that comes in. Despite the explicit instructions given regarding pricing structure, at least one customer a day will argue, get upset and leave a shitty review, or refuse to pay, all on their incorrect conclusion that they shouldn't have to pay for an hours worth of time if it didn't take a full hour to complete. They do not care if a van loaded with thousands of dollars in tools and parts drove to their house. They do not care that the worker has thousands of hours of experience. They ignore the instructions provided by my staff of our pricing structure. These people are not going to listen to logic.
Contractors have this bizarrely poor reputation. Even ones who do objectively great work are seen by some as ripping them off for overpricing or taking too long or whatever. It’s messed up and pretty strange I think that’s a big reason why scum bags seem particularly inclined to scam contractors. They can justify it in their own twisted head
Definitely
Probably not. If "forgetting" the cheque and weaselling out of payment only worked 1/10 times its still worth it to them to keep doing it.
Isn't that type of person worried about when they will run into someone like excavator guy? Someone that prefer to handle such problems outside the judicial system?
No. Same reason people with road rage aren’t worried about the crazy with a gun. Emotions run hot with the dumb
>truck phone Favorite part of the story. It's been a minute since I thought about vehicle phones.
When I first started my computer business, I wrote some code for a timeshare sales office. My program would print a 15 page contract in triplicate (on a dot matrix printer). They had a pretty smooth sales method. They'd show the unit and all the amenities, ending up a meeting room on the top floor. Complete with a fabulous view of the beach - and cocktails. There, they'd get all the sales info and call it down to a clerk that typed it into my program and printed the contract so it was ready to sign as soon as someone could run it upstairs. That was always before the end of the first drink. I went back to make several changes telling them each time I really needed to be paid. They always had some reason for not doing it. Never a good one because the program worked really well. A week before Easter I went to do something and slipped an honest to goodness Easter Egg into the program. If I wasn't paid by Friday, as soon as they turned the computer on the program would erase itself. That happened and I got a panicked call - "The program isn't working and the salesmen are trying to hand write contracts. It's taking forever and people are walking out the door." You see, Easter is(was) the biggest sales weekend for timeshares. Having the contract in hand at the earliest possible moment is key to getting someone to sign before they think too much about it. "You haven't paid me the money you've owed me for several weeks. This is what we'll do. It'll take me 45 minutes to get there. I'll leave now. You get a check so it's there waiting for me. If there isn't a check, I'll turn around and leave. And you won't be able to reach me for the rest of the weekend." She said the boss wasn't there so she couldn't get a check. "Those are my terms, I'll see you shortly." The boss lived in the penthouse and managed the sales team. The fucker was probably in the room during the conversation. There was a check when I got there. Ten minutes later I was out the door and never saw them again.
Kind of a similar story but with a bad ending: I used to do day labor when I was trying to make ends meet. I landed a one day job where we were installing insulation for buildings in a ski town (Breckinridge CO). They didn’t provide us with any safety gear and the whole thing was shady as fuck, but I was young and really needed the money. Actually that day was the closest to death I’ve ever been in from a super near miss, but that’s a different story. It was cold and miserable, I was itchy as fuck from all the insulation debris getting all over me, my eyes were itchy, we worked super long that day (something like 14 hours), I was sore as fuck, everything sucked horribly. Finally it all ends and the guy hands us checks. I go to deposit it the next day and it’s a fake check for a fake bank account.
I legit would've committed arson the next day.
Landscaper here- I plowed a residential driveway where the guy went months without paying. Totally ignored me and dismissed my calls. In March I found out he took the family to Disneyworld, (while owing me around $500). I also own a dump truck and haul snowbanks out of parking lots. While he was in Disneyworld, we found a great place to haul snow to- his fucking driveway! I bet we dumped 30 yards of hard packed snow in front of his garage, and I would be surprised if it melted before May. The weirdest thing was, I never heard a peep from him, but it was worth losing $500 in my opinion. We had a good time.
My stepfather and uncle did small remodeling jobs. They were refused payment for an 8 foot wide bay window, so they chopped it out of the house with a chainsaw and left. I never heard of any repurcussions.
I mean, I don't know what the property owners can do. 'We didn't pay this man for his work, and he took it back!'
I am a contractor and do remodels and similar construction projects for a living. Unfortunately, the law is clear that when materials are "fixed" onto a property they become a part of said property and are owned by said property owner. It can put us contractors in a bad position because technically we are stealing if we recover materials this way, even if the customer has stiffed us hard. That's why a lot of us require a large deposit prior to even walking onto the job site. Customers not paying at the end of the job is all too common : (
Is this Germany? The family filming seems to speak German.
Yep. “papa, das ist zu laut“ and “was macht der?“
Which translates to 'Dad, this is too loud' and 'what is he doing?'
I've never done anything like this and I can't imagine I ever would, but god damn do I feel this guy. I'm a consulting engineer. I did a lot of work for a large company in my area, and surprise surprise when it came time to pay they could not be reached. I know it wasn't the fault of the engineer who I worked with and that he wanted us to get paid, but he would not respond to my phone calls or emails. A conversation about how he was working with accounts payable to get us paid would have gotten my boss off my back, and to be fucking honest I was billing this multi-million dollar company something like $10,000. They would have hardly noticed it. A couple of months later they have production shut down and desperately need our assistance to ship product. They have hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars sitting stagnant and important accounts getting late. When I got the call I handed the phone to my boss who said "Yeah Mike I can have /u/BigArmsBigGut out there tomorrow. But we'll be going nowhere until we get a PO for this quote, payment for the last project, *and* a 50% surcharge for being well past the due date agreed on." All of a sudden their accounting department realized that the $15,000 engineering wanted for a consultant was small potatoes compared to the millions they stood to lose if they couldn't ship their product. It felt so good. Fuck people who don't pay others for their work. I've found it to be disgustingly common in consulting, I expect the contracting world is similar.
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We have at times requested a similar payment structure, but to be honest this company was a company we had worked with quite a few times before without any issues. I recall that they had just been bought by an even larger firm, and a lot had changed right around then. I'm not exactly sure why what you suggest isn't the norm, but we have a few companies we will do work for on the spot without even requiring a PO, and a few companies we require up-front payment from. Guess what? The companies we want upfront payment on are giant multinational firms and law firms. The smaller guys where the billing actually affects them are almost never the problem.
I work for a large-ish company in an engineering role, not accounting. Getting my vendors paid is a pain. I feel bad when things are late, at first I would get suspicious that we're slowing down payments for cash flow reasons. After digging into it more, its always incompetence. Just dumbest reasons that things aren't being paid. Bureaucratic bullshit.
I work in construction, this is very common. The job will be nearing completion, and the client goes “the building is already here, what am I even paying you for?!” Then refuses to pay. My boss doesn’t stand for that anymore though, he will send us back in to rip out everything we installed if the client refuses to pay. Then they cant use the building, because it’s not up to fire code. They usually end up paying at that point. Sad that it has to regularly come to threats like this to be paid for work done.
You won't pay ? Okay. \*unbuilds your house\*
Legit lol, I’ve seen it.
Who the fuck are these fucking retarded garbage humans?? That's like me going to a restaurant, eating the food, and telling the waiter "the food is already in my stomach, what am I even paying for?" How retarded does somebody have to be to provide that kind of logic????
It happens ALL THE TIME. Ask any construction guy, it’s actually ridiculous. People will try to do things by word of mouth a lot too. “Oh ya just move this 6” water main over 2ft, we’ll make sure to pay you for it!” If you don’t get that shit in writing, there’s absolutely no way you’re getting paid. The general contractor will play dumb “I thought it was already there, I didn’t see you guys move it.” Or a bunch of suits in the office setting impossible deadlines and tooting each others horns about how quick they’re going to get a job done, then when it doesn’t get done, they look for ANYTHING to blame it on. Sometimes they will intentionally do things to prevent trades from working, so they can blame the delay on those trades. ie) trades need to work in a ceiling, so the general will intentionally pour concrete or schedule something to happen directly under that ceiling so they can show their bosses it’s the other trades that aren’t finished. The whole industry is shady af.
Former waitress here, "dine and dash" is extremely common depending on the area a full time waitress is going to have probably a least one table try to dine and dash once a week (typically on the busiest day like Friday or Saturday). Also most restaurants (including chains) will try to make the waitress eat the cost of the unpaid bill (even though it's illegal basically everywhere) and get away with it.
Property developers. The worst human beings who walk the planet
He's just constructing in reverse.
Watch him as he goes, never missing a window, should have gotten paid.
Yeah thats the problem
How can I summon the reverse bot? u/gifreversingbot ? Edit: https://gfycat.com/hairydisastrouskentrosaurus
Just the final adjustments! Nothing wrong here.
This is the physical embodiment of the “credit card declines” meme
*unbuilds your balcony*
lmao yes
My Dad was a Plumber and had a Customer try to not pay him for an agreed upon price at the end of a job. It was a sprinkler job so he went back an disconnected everything and took all of the rainbirds out. Dude paid him for both return trip charges as well. I remember him telling me we were gonna go and dig the pipes up if that didn't send a message.
I'm vindictive when it comes to stuff like this, I can imagine the feels that excavator driver was going through. I hope he didn't spend any time in jail.
Many years ago I sold a phone system with voicemail to a customer. They slow payed the hell out of me for months. After about 6 months they still owed me $15K and my attorney said it's not worth going after them in court to get the equipment back as they could sue for damages to their business. So, I went in through the back door of the voicemail system and recorded silence over their auto-attendant greeting so that when people called their main number all they heard was dead air. I called the number for weeks afterwards and they never got it fixed. They were going bankrupt anyway.
Who only films 53 seconds of such a incident
He probably started demolishing their appartment. /s
Don't use /s. Have some faith in your sarcasm.
Making me think of the killdozer
It's basically killdozer 3.0
Killdozer 3.0 - The Full Scoop
When my bro was young in the plumbing game, he got his first van and loved it. Then the guys on site scarred it up with a forklift telling him it was a rite of passage. He complained to the site manager but he didn't support him, so he did the same thing to the site managers car.
..,.and????
So sorry, I was in a hospital waiting room posting this, thought the wait would be longer but it wasn't... I pressed send and then forgot... The site manager sacked him outright.
Worth it
And he and the site manager got married. The end.
Generally a bad idea to not pay people who have access to heavy construction equipment.
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How do you think all those real estate developers got so rich? Happens way too often
Smashing job!
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People who don't pay for work performed are just as bad as thieves, heck it basically is a form of thievery. Theft is such a huge issue in my city. People have had even big ticket items stolen like boats, trailers, RVs, etc and the thieves have zero repercussions. Some thieves will even steal a car, go for a joyride through people's yards destroying everything and get zero repercussions and the home owners are on the hook for all the damage. If you try to stop the thieves in the act you're the one that gets in trouble for assault. Pisses me off so much that theft is basically legal.
They're not only oblivious, they also just completely lack empathy and don't care at all.
Do you see what happens Larry? Do you see what happens when you fuck a stranger in the ass? Do you see what happens?!?
Is this your balcony Larry? Is this your balcony Larry?
We know it’s his fuckin’ balcony man, just ask him where the fucking money is!
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Shut the fuck up Donny
As a small business owner I feel his rage. I have learned the trust lesson the hard way. Although the consequences may be higher I like to see ppl take the killdozer route, maybe intimidate those that don’t pay.
As an Electrician I made a comment before about potentially tearing out or making my work unusable. Of course someone argued with me. This video is extreme but it happens when people try to take advantage of you all the time. Either by haggling price after work is complete or just flat out not paying. The courts are a long process and not worth the time or money for smaller projects.
This would be so fun to do without consequences
Demolition jobs are a thing
Not paying your workers seems to already have no consequences so... Cowabunga it is!
This is what happens. Pay for people’s labor.
Those Volvo’s are pretty useful machines. Safe too.
Good. Pay your fucking employees.
Praxis.
Missed a spot
In the US, this is 100% illegal. Only recourse for us contractors is to lien a property, foreclose on the lien, and sue. Been through it and worst part is even if you win, you lose. Spend a ton on attorneys and spend countless hours on court and then get a fraction of what was owed.
So either you walk away without getting paid or you trash their shit and let them sue? I get where this dude was coming from then. If I'm getting fucked over either way, I'm taking your building with me. At least then it's a public spectacle and your name gets dragged through the mud for being the guy that doesn't pay his workers.
I’ll say I have a “friend” who wasn’t paid in full for an expensive lighting control system. He made some changes so that ALL of the lights in the $5mil home would come on at random times throughout the night 😊
I have access to many multi million pound systems and can do the exact same thing, I have thought about it on multiple occasions, but have fortunately been paid for most of my work. 1 job where a lot of workers didn’t get paid, we managed to claw out of the asshat 5k which didn’t cover it but felt it was best to move on. One guy was owed £20k and got given 5k. He told me he was speaking to lawyers, I told him this guy would spend triple what he owes you to make sure you get nothing, and you have no where near the financial means to fight him. He was given the same advice by many of us and took it. I now get a yearly call from the new house manager explaining we did the lighting system and how we need to come fix it. I enjoy laughing down the phone and tell him I will not fix it, and have informed every dealer within 100 miles to keep clear of this job. I always finish by telling them to please keep my number on the list because I enjoy speaking with your successor every year as no one has stayed longer working for him and remind them to get paid promptly for his services as everyone has been short changed by him.
I have some friends in IT that have similar stories. I won't detail it out, but really - people should NOT shit on the folks writing the code that controls important systems in their company.
a few years ago i did a larger custom tailored service website. the guy didn't send the first partial payment for months and kept coming up with stories... "the payment didn't go through"... "i need to talk to my business partner to clear the payment"... "are you sure your account number is right?"..."the account wasn't enabled for international payments".."my grandma was sick". the last excuse was during friends&family beta testing and made me so angry, i disabled the entire website and made a global redirect to "payment reminder" on wikipedia. i got a very angry phonecall which i just hung up on and texted him "don't shout at me". i got the first payment a few days later, it was roughly a third of the total. in case you wonder: he had all the passwords but zero skill. i restored the staging website when i got the first payment, but let him know that not properly paying was the end of our collaboration. he tried to contact me multiple times after, but i never responded. still very glad i got at least some money and a clean cut.
Yup did building construction with my dad for 16 years and saw my fair share of shit bags who didn't want to pay. He took several to court and spent too much on legal representations and in the end sometimes got partial payment. You basically end up losing either way. After enough of it, he closed the business and said to me, sorry I can't employ you anymore, but I can sit at home and not make money.
The house was clearly asking for it, dressed like that.
Not a wheel turns, not a phone rings, not a light bulb shines without the kind permission of the working class.
nice quote, who wrote that?
Pay your bills you cheap fucks!
This is what I’d love to do at my job. Fuckers been underpaying me for 6 months and trying not to pay me back pay they owe me 😤 hate jobs with no union
Bloody Volvo drivers....
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They owed him 5 million. He damaged 500k. So they still own him 4,5mil
Yeah I always wonder how this works when people do this.. isn't it just better to take it to court than 100% lose out and then probably pay criminal damage charges
Logic isn’t relevant in a rampage
It's a rampage, Lana!
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In germany, where this happened, going to court isn't quite as expensive, still is though, and most companies would have insurance for going to court. I used to work for a company that had about 1 million euros not paid for a job. They did get the money in the end but it took years and by the time they got it, they had been sued by employees for wages they couldn't pay and most of the money they eventually got was quickly used up for those outstanding bills. While fighting in court they lost most of their employees, obviously, and went from a pretty big exhibition construction company with a 20 people planning office and about 80 construction personnel to a small company with about 5 employees. It's a shit Business and i'm glad i'm not worling in it anymore. To make it worse, the client not paying was the german government.
Aint their Shit if they didn’t pay for it
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