********** company

I would like to share my bad and painful experience by Ability Builders at no 38 road 4, Tarlton in Krugersdorp. In 2017 my home loan insurance paid money to have my house repaired after it was damaged by a storm and I appointed Nicky Brits from Ability Builders who was nice to us from the start and promised to give us good service. He demanded 70% as his deposit and money to buy the material before he could begin with the work and we gave him a R150 000.00. He came and removed ceiling boards, part of the roof and scrubbed off the paint of our house wall inside and out. He did this the first week and the second week he came to put white paint on the house wall to prepare for it to be painted and the third week things started to get slow and his workers started complaining about not having enough material to start with the work. They told us that Nicky bought a pick up truck with the deposit money and didn't have money to buy material anymore. This was actually true as he didn't have any vehicle before we gave him the deposit money. The matter was investigated by his bank and indeed we did find out he bought a bakkie with the deposit we deposited into his account. We decided to approach Nicky to ask him for all the receipts for the material he had bought and told him about the dissatisfaction of the work he had already done and that's when he decided to hire a lawyer from *** whom we received a letter stating we needed to pay Nicky the remaining money before he can come complete the job. We responded to them asking how are we expected to give him the remaining money when he hasn't even begun to do what he was supposed to do after receiving his deposit and how do we know if he will complete the work as he has run off with the R150 000.00 and is refusing to do the work. We haven't received a y reply from his lawyers after several attempts and we even spoke to the principal of the attorney firm and they also made false promises to get back to us which makes us question his relationship with these attorneys. We are left with a house without a roof, ceiling the entire house, no gutters, our security has been compromised and have had to spend for further damages as the rain has come through our house and we also had to get someone to fix our electricity. Our house is worse than it was before however his company has grown because of all the money he took from us. The National Consumer Services also tried to mediate and sent him and his lawyer several emails of which they never rep**** to. Ability Builders is not even his company, we found out when we were doing the investigation and it is also not registered with the NHBRC. I urge for people to be aware of this company and not to find themselves in the situation that we are in currently. I would also like to request for assistance from anyone who might help us get our money back from this company, the insurance company is still investigating the matter and will open the case against this company in due course as well as the NHBRC but the conditions Nicky has made us live under are very unbearable and we have kids who are forced to live under these conditions.