Builder ran away

[shares]

Hello everyone,

 

I am signing with a different name to avoid any potential issues.

 

We live in the south east, south west of London. Last July we employeed a builder to build us a significant house extension. The builder has taken our money and has disappeared. We have gone to our legal advice team for help and we are building a case of letters, emails, invoices etc to send to the lawyers so they can tell us if they want to pursue the case.

 

In the mean time I am now taking control of the site and today I had the portaloo replaced. The driver who delivered said only last week he collected from a young couple in a nearby area who had also been stung by the same builders and lot a lot of money. The driver also mentioned another handful of similar cases with the same builders in the past few months. I asked the driver to pass on my details to them. The portaloo company, who are also owed money, refused to pass me those client details or to pass my details onto them.

 

This is where we are now, hoping I will somehow find who those other clients who have also been defrauded are, so we can move together.

 

Any advice will be most welcome!

 

Many thanks

shares

[Declan52]

Put a post up on Facebook and tell all in your friends list to share it and hopefully somebody knows someone who will see it who was also stung and they can get in contact with you. 

[recoveringbuilder]

Is there not a Facebook page for your area? I know here there’s a local Facebook page which proves very useful, I even tracked down a missing parcel on it, the other thing is a self build Facebook page for your area?

[newhome]

Yes definitely try the local Facebook site or sites of nearby towns and villages that the builder may have customers in. The page admins might delete your post but hopefully some people will see it. Put the post on your own page and set it to public so that people can share the post. 
 

Also Google the name of the builder and / or the company to see if you can find anyone posting about them. Use double quotes round the names to search for an exact match. 
 

 

[Adam2]

Sorry to hear this. The company building my ICF Home (in Dorset) ended up being totally unreliable, not paying their staff & suppliers and then disappeared - trouble with small Ltd companies (well also large ones I guess) is they can just close down screwing their customers and suppliers and restart with a new name. The chance of getting cash back out of them I think is quite low and potentially time consuming - if you have legal cover from insurance then that's great as will no doubt help provide good guidance on what is possible. 

Best of luck

[Mr Punter]

If you have paid them and they have done a runner I think you will have almost no chance of getting your money back.  There will be a long list of creditors who have preference, like HMRC and employees.

 

The likelihood of it being treated as fraud is also very remote as they can easily claim they were just running a business and ran out of cash.

 

I know it is beyond annoying.  Concentrate your efforts on getting the project finished.

[SteamyTea]

Mention to your legal people that you know the portaloo company is owed money, and that they told you others were owed to.  They may be about to get a list of names with a carefully worded letter to the portaloo people.

[shares]

I did ask very, very politely, but the portaloo company refused, after, "I need to ask my manager". I suppose they want to avoid any remotely possible trouble and there is nothing in it for them.

 

Maybe ask their bank to freeze their account?

[Bozza]

Did you get references beforehand ?