Knightmare
New Member
Hello to all. Just found this (what looks to be) wonderful forums and this is my first time posting. I have a problem with which I am hoping someone could give me a bit of guidance on (as I realize this is not true legal "advice").
I am a remodelling contractor in the central Florida area. We recently had a bad experience with a customer where we were "fired" from the contract because we were not able to meet their deadline (which they arbitrarily made, the written contract stated no specific finish date). The customer brought in a different contractor to finish the work we did not and to supposedly fix work we did not up to their personal standards. That part I was fine with as, hey, sometimes that happens. However, we still had an invoice payable for work done prior to us being dismissed in excess of $4000.00.
The home-owner stated that they would wait for the invoices from these other contrators to see what, if any, monies were then owed back to us (we were being "back-charged"). Again, that was ok by me since that is the way this business goes.
I recieved an email from the homeowner (who lives in Ohio but the work is being done locally here in Florida) with the invoices of these other contractors as attachments. Reading through these invoices, I have noticed some rather strange inconsistancies. First off, the invoices were obviously scans of a fax. The fax number these were sent from (as printed at the top of the pages) is the number of the homeowner, not a contractor. Additionally, some of the stuff listed as having been done by these other contractors was stuff that I had already taken care of personally so I know with 100% certainty that those aspects were not worked on by these other contractors. There were other things too, like where paint just needed a small touchup here and there, but instead the entire wall or room was repainted. There were also other things listed on there that were supposedly "fixed" with which we had absolutely nothing to do with as we did not work on those things at all, or a different decision was made on an aspect after we were told to do it a certain way by the homeowner thereby forcing the new contractors to "redo" stuff that was finished and fine when we left it. Besides all this, there were two different contractors, but the language used in the invoices is a near match (as if it had been cut/pasted between the two documents). Lastly, these two other contractors were of Latino decent who do not speak English very well, but whoever actually wrote these invoices obviously had a good command of the English language (and I mention here that the homeowner is a US doctor of white decent).
Knowing that there was these inconsistancies, I called the contractors who did the work after us. First off, they said they did not ever actually submit an invoice to the homeowner. And one even admitted that when he went to the homeowner to collect his own payment, he was handed a piece of paper (upon which was a bunch of stuff written in English, which he couldn't read since he doesn't speak the language very well), which he was told to sign or else the homeowner would not pay him for his work. He of course signed it and received his pay. As is probablly obvious, these papers they were handed and pretty much forced to sign (or they would not get paid) were the invoices that were forwarded to me via the email from the homeowner. This contractor also stated that he could very well have simply touched up the paint mentioned above in my post here, but the homeowner provided him with paint that did not match what was already on the walls, so he had to paint entire sections.
While I freely admit there are some things on the contractors' invoices that did indeed need to befinished, touched up or redone (as we were not given the time or option of doing this ourselves), it is a very small percentage of the work claimed on the invoices - and therefor a small percentage of the money were are being back-charged. Some things written there are outright lies, on which I am 100% sure of.
Does any of this constitute fraud, or even a breach of contract? What legal rights might I have in this situation?
I appreciate the time anyone spends replying to all this.
- Chris
I am a remodelling contractor in the central Florida area. We recently had a bad experience with a customer where we were "fired" from the contract because we were not able to meet their deadline (which they arbitrarily made, the written contract stated no specific finish date). The customer brought in a different contractor to finish the work we did not and to supposedly fix work we did not up to their personal standards. That part I was fine with as, hey, sometimes that happens. However, we still had an invoice payable for work done prior to us being dismissed in excess of $4000.00.
The home-owner stated that they would wait for the invoices from these other contrators to see what, if any, monies were then owed back to us (we were being "back-charged"). Again, that was ok by me since that is the way this business goes.
I recieved an email from the homeowner (who lives in Ohio but the work is being done locally here in Florida) with the invoices of these other contractors as attachments. Reading through these invoices, I have noticed some rather strange inconsistancies. First off, the invoices were obviously scans of a fax. The fax number these were sent from (as printed at the top of the pages) is the number of the homeowner, not a contractor. Additionally, some of the stuff listed as having been done by these other contractors was stuff that I had already taken care of personally so I know with 100% certainty that those aspects were not worked on by these other contractors. There were other things too, like where paint just needed a small touchup here and there, but instead the entire wall or room was repainted. There were also other things listed on there that were supposedly "fixed" with which we had absolutely nothing to do with as we did not work on those things at all, or a different decision was made on an aspect after we were told to do it a certain way by the homeowner thereby forcing the new contractors to "redo" stuff that was finished and fine when we left it. Besides all this, there were two different contractors, but the language used in the invoices is a near match (as if it had been cut/pasted between the two documents). Lastly, these two other contractors were of Latino decent who do not speak English very well, but whoever actually wrote these invoices obviously had a good command of the English language (and I mention here that the homeowner is a US doctor of white decent).
Knowing that there was these inconsistancies, I called the contractors who did the work after us. First off, they said they did not ever actually submit an invoice to the homeowner. And one even admitted that when he went to the homeowner to collect his own payment, he was handed a piece of paper (upon which was a bunch of stuff written in English, which he couldn't read since he doesn't speak the language very well), which he was told to sign or else the homeowner would not pay him for his work. He of course signed it and received his pay. As is probablly obvious, these papers they were handed and pretty much forced to sign (or they would not get paid) were the invoices that were forwarded to me via the email from the homeowner. This contractor also stated that he could very well have simply touched up the paint mentioned above in my post here, but the homeowner provided him with paint that did not match what was already on the walls, so he had to paint entire sections.
While I freely admit there are some things on the contractors' invoices that did indeed need to befinished, touched up or redone (as we were not given the time or option of doing this ourselves), it is a very small percentage of the work claimed on the invoices - and therefor a small percentage of the money were are being back-charged. Some things written there are outright lies, on which I am 100% sure of.
Does any of this constitute fraud, or even a breach of contract? What legal rights might I have in this situation?
I appreciate the time anyone spends replying to all this.
- Chris
