[raerae180]

Here it is in a nut shell...

Re: Putnam County, NY

Project: Contract states, "enclosure of interior porch walls and ceiling"

Contract is open ended (no end date) because of the severity of repair needed to finish the job.

Billing is on time and material basis.

Job started in Feb. at whicc time homeowner was told verbally that we DO NOT provide receipts for our materials if we pay for them as we will need them to reconcile our bills. They were also told that we have a large stock of materials that we charge for that we use so therefore all materials will be detailed on the bills. We did say that if they wanted to have the receipts for all their materials we would buy them all new but they would have to give us a check or chase to pay for them or go to the store with us to pay for them. They chose to have us pay for them.

Feb. - May had no problems... detailed materials on bill - they paid bills.

All of the sudden in June they want to see receipts (even though at that point material cost had dropped considerabbly because we were working with what we already had.) We stopped using consumables and told them we would compromise and give them copies of receipts going forward and that we still would not be able to give them originals if we are paying on our corporate account and again gave them the option to pay for their own materials directly and keep the receipts which they denied.

June and July go by and they take the copies and pay the bills with no problem.

August rolls around, project is complete! Final bill is submitted with copies of all receipts - same as June and July... now they refuse to pay the bill until we give them ALL the ORIGINAL RECEIPTS FROM DAY 1!!

After going back and forth in email (in which they were extremely nasty and now talking down about the work we performed and just being nastly overall while we have remained neutral and consistent in our arguments) they have agree to send a check for the labor portion of the bill but still refuse to pay the remaining materials until they receive all the original receipts.

They said they sent a check 2 weeks ago - still have not received it however we told them once we received the check we would close out the account (which would be ablt $450 loss; just to not have to deal with them anymore; they are really nasty!) Now they say they don't want the account closed they still want all the receipts and they are going to say we stole from them if we do not give them the original receipts... the ones with our credit card and account info on them!

We called the dept. of consumer protection in that county and we know we are in the right but it is to the point now where if they don't want us to close the account we are almost gitty about the idea of taking them to court to shove our correctness in their face and collect all the monies in the process...

Any advice from anyone??

[hkstroud]

Well you are never going to see that check and you are never going to see court unless you can find your way to the court house. If you do end up takeing the home owner to court be prepared with an itemised list of material and the retail cost. Not necessarily your recepts but the retail cost of material, whether they came form stock or were purchased at the time needed. Since you are billing retail and not marking up material you are certainly entitled to charge for time purchasing and transporting material to job site.

No legal advise intended here. Good luck.

[froggy7]

Wild question: Why can't you make a copy of the originals for your records, and give them the originals with any identifying financial information (credit card number, etc.) blacked out? Then the customer has no grounds for not paying what's owed.

[rockinmommy]

Wild question: Why can't you make a copy of the originals for your records, and give them the originals with any identifying financial information (credit card number, etc.) blacked out? Then the customer has no grounds for not paying what's owed.

This is EXACLY what I was going to suggest!

I understand that this is not what you told them you'd do, and not what you HAVE to do. But do you want to be "right", or do you want to get paid?

OR, don't mess with court. File a mechanics lien on the house. (How much money are we talking about here?) Are you a licensed contractor?

[raerae180]

I am a licenced contractor. I am happy to report I just received the check for $1,800! Now the difference is about $450 and I am willing to write that off because I think it would take so much time for me to go through 4 months of receipts and itemize that... even though I did not mark anything up or anything I just don't want to do all that work and at this point I don't want to do it for these people specifically out of spite... I am going to loose contact and if I hear from them again I will simply tell them to go through my lawyer... I think they would be real stupid to bring me to court to argue about materials they have not paid for - I am sof ed up I just want to cut my losses and run!