We had some landscaping work done (in Maryland) last summer (June 07) which contained mostly of a stone retaining wall and a large paver patio.
The original contract with the landscaper stated that all work was covered for a warranty period of 5 years. Shortly after the project was completed the contractor did in fact come out to perform some cleanup due to the retaining wall not actually retaining the fill dirt/etc behind it once we had our first large rain storm after project completion.
Over the fall and winter the wall has slowly started to lean towards our pool and has obviously and visibly started to fail. This is an issue that needs to be repaired and that will probably result in the wall falling over if it is never fixed.
My wife and I have tried to get the contractor to come out to deal with the issues. Out of the 4 or 5 calls we have only actually spoken to him twice and the last one was him saying that he was "not sure when he'd be up and running again because he had hurt his back."
Here's how the calls/messages/contacts have gone:
1st call - Left message asking for call back. He never called back. Few weeks pass.
2nd call - Got him on phone, I say we have a small project* that we want a quote on and need our wall looked at. As soon as I say something about the wall he quickly says he's in a meeting and needs to give me a call back. He never called back. A week or so passes.
3rd call - Got him on the phone again. I say the same about wanting a quote but go more into detail about the wall and the problems with it leaning, etc. Mention how it seems like it definitely needs some repair. He THEN tells me about him not knowing what he's going to do this year (as mentioned above). Says he'll give me a call once he knows what's going on. No calls after 2-3 weeks or so.
4th call - Wife calls and leaves a message. He never called back. That's been a week.
* We lead off our initial contacts with the fact that we wanted to get quotes for more work because we figured that he may be more likely to come. We really are mainly just concerned with the problems but figured this may motivate him.
This guy was fairly flaky when were having the project done. He always had an excuse for why something was changing, or why he couldn't show up for a day, etc. We had a bad feeling that once we called him that something like this was going to happen. He wasn't entirely above board with some of the payments as we wrote some of the checks out to just him (vs. the company). These were for some additional add-ons that happened during the project. Luckily the main problem area isn't one of these and it's one of the core projects that was covered in the initial contract/scope.
Mainly we want to know what our legal rights may be. I have a sneaking suspicion that he's either A) doing work and lying to me or B) doing work under some other business name. I know (from extensive Googling) that he's invovled in some other business doing mortgage loans or something. Is there a way to actually tell if he's doing work other than me sitting and following him or hiring a private investigator? Can he sit on his ass for 5 years until the warranty is up if his business isn't officially closed?
In my mind, if his business is open, he should have to do the repairs himself or pay somebody else to. Just because HE hurt HIS back, why should I have my wall fail? It's not like he was the one doing the work.
What can I do here? We paid over 20k for all of this work and this long section of wall was one of the big parts of that. I will make his life a living hell before I pay somebody else to do it.
The original contract with the landscaper stated that all work was covered for a warranty period of 5 years. Shortly after the project was completed the contractor did in fact come out to perform some cleanup due to the retaining wall not actually retaining the fill dirt/etc behind it once we had our first large rain storm after project completion.
Over the fall and winter the wall has slowly started to lean towards our pool and has obviously and visibly started to fail. This is an issue that needs to be repaired and that will probably result in the wall falling over if it is never fixed.
My wife and I have tried to get the contractor to come out to deal with the issues. Out of the 4 or 5 calls we have only actually spoken to him twice and the last one was him saying that he was "not sure when he'd be up and running again because he had hurt his back."
Here's how the calls/messages/contacts have gone:
1st call - Left message asking for call back. He never called back. Few weeks pass.
2nd call - Got him on phone, I say we have a small project* that we want a quote on and need our wall looked at. As soon as I say something about the wall he quickly says he's in a meeting and needs to give me a call back. He never called back. A week or so passes.
3rd call - Got him on the phone again. I say the same about wanting a quote but go more into detail about the wall and the problems with it leaning, etc. Mention how it seems like it definitely needs some repair. He THEN tells me about him not knowing what he's going to do this year (as mentioned above). Says he'll give me a call once he knows what's going on. No calls after 2-3 weeks or so.
4th call - Wife calls and leaves a message. He never called back. That's been a week.
* We lead off our initial contacts with the fact that we wanted to get quotes for more work because we figured that he may be more likely to come. We really are mainly just concerned with the problems but figured this may motivate him.
This guy was fairly flaky when were having the project done. He always had an excuse for why something was changing, or why he couldn't show up for a day, etc. We had a bad feeling that once we called him that something like this was going to happen. He wasn't entirely above board with some of the payments as we wrote some of the checks out to just him (vs. the company). These were for some additional add-ons that happened during the project. Luckily the main problem area isn't one of these and it's one of the core projects that was covered in the initial contract/scope.
Mainly we want to know what our legal rights may be. I have a sneaking suspicion that he's either A) doing work and lying to me or B) doing work under some other business name. I know (from extensive Googling) that he's invovled in some other business doing mortgage loans or something. Is there a way to actually tell if he's doing work other than me sitting and following him or hiring a private investigator? Can he sit on his ass for 5 years until the warranty is up if his business isn't officially closed?
In my mind, if his business is open, he should have to do the repairs himself or pay somebody else to. Just because HE hurt HIS back, why should I have my wall fail? It's not like he was the one doing the work.
What can I do here? We paid over 20k for all of this work and this long section of wall was one of the big parts of that. I will make his life a living hell before I pay somebody else to do it.
