The Handy Boys

<div>We wanted the house painted inside and out, new paving and astro laid. A 3 week job took 3 months. Chris does not communicate if he is not sending the team. You must just wait and accept the team arriving when he decides to send them. He has non-existent project management skills. I had to keep telling him what work stil needed to be done. He even told me he forgot about the last item of work and had the nerve to ask me why I didn't chase him. I didn't chase him because in the previous 2 months it never got me anywhere. He cannot schedule. When I pushed for a daily work plan, he never delivered. The job started 30 Nov and was supposed to last 3 weeks. It ended 11 Feb. He overcommits and has too many jobs going on at the same time and can't cope. He pays his labourers R50 per day, far below minimum wage. He demands a 70% deposit, which is much higher than other company's normal 50% deposit. He has terrible estimating skills. He grossly underestimated the number of bricks and sand needed for my job and the foreman kept needing to buy extra. He is dishonest ( 1- he told me he needed an additional payment to order bricks. 3 weeks later he told me he couldnt work on my paving because he needs to order the bricks and the company was still closed for festive so he obviously didn't order them when he said he did. 2 - He told me he injured his foot and couldn't drive to bring the guys to my house for 2 days. I later discovered he used them on another job instead of mine. 3 - he told me early on that his previous foreman cheated him but he took the guys car and sold it for 15k more than the guy owed him. Later he tried to sell me a sob story that he had a tough year and his foreman stole from him, forgetting that he told me the real story previously. 4- he pretended he had had such a tough few months when he was working on my job, a friend's job, my neighbour's job AND 2 other jobs AT THE SAME TIME. I referred him to those people because the job he did for me last year was onviously the only one he had at the time because his team was at my house every day then and his workers do a great job. 5 - He told the sub-contractor my lawn job was 20 square meters. When the guy tried to get payment from him, he ignored the guy for a week. The guy eventually came back to my house to try to get me to contact Chris. Chris first said he paid the guy already. When I asked for proof he said his "office" (he is a one-man show!) emailed the guy and told him he needs to re-invoice for a smaller amount because the job wasn't 20 squares. There was no evidence of the email or communication from him. 6- His quote states that he is registered with the CIDB. When you do a search on the CIDB database for his business does not exist so he is **********ly misrepresenting himself and his registration as well. The day after he finished my job he phoned me 3 TIMES BEFORE NOON to follow up on payment of the final 10%. He made me wait an extra 8 weeks for my job to be done but didn't even give me a morning to facilitate the final payment. Now a week after that he stil hasn't paid the guy who did the lawn work for him. I am happy to share photographic proof of all these interactions.&nbsp;&nbsp;</div>