What's with people starting fights they won't finish???
A funny thing happened to us back in September. This company, who I’m not allowed to name, because, lawsuit, came onto our property in April 2016 to simply pump our septic tanks for $480. Easy peasy, half hour job. What we ended up with instead was $2500 worth of damage by the company, and they then sued US.
That’s right friends, a company who came to our house to do one simple job, that escalated into what he said would be a $18,000 job, was fired after we figured out that he was: a) full of shit and b) created the damage himself in order to pad the job.
As you can see $480-$18,000 is a whole lot of padding.
Anyway, without getting into too many details as to what he did to cause the $2500 worth of damage, let’s just say it wasn’t legit, nor were all the other repairs he said needed to happen on our property. Ones he said were essential, or our cars would be swallowed up by our driveway. In case you’re wondering, our cars, all four of them, when we’re also here with our two daughters, have yet to be swallowed by the impending collapse of the driveway. The guy was a shyster, rather than deal with him anymore we simply hired a different plumbing company, recommended by our neighbor, to come and repair the torn open driveway, and do what the other guy was supposed to do in the first place, which was just empty the God damn septic tanks!!
Now, Yannick and I aren’t fighters, we prefer to believe that everybody gets their karma. It’s not for us to inflict punishment, or lawsuits, or what have you. So we just “walked away” with a lesson learned, to never hire that company again, and to do more thorough research when hiring companies to work on our property going forward. Then September came, and with it, a letter in the mail saying that the dude who damaged our property was suing us for the remainder of the contract that we signed, and therefore owed him.
Hmmm, hmmm, hmmm. So you want money from us for work that you never did even though we had to pay another company to come and repair the damage you did to our home.
Nah. That doesn’t work for me.
So in October, we took ourselves down to the LA courts and counter-sued. Sadly, because the shady son of a bitch knew that we don’t live here full time, which is why he filed in September, and not you know January, when we’re ALWAYS HERE, the ruling went in his favor, because we didn’t get our defense in 10 days prior to the court date. Then we had to refile, another court date was given, even though we marked off preferred dates to appear, they gave us one that didn’t line up with our calendar. This went on a number of times, until finally we hired a lawyer to handle it for us. The lawyer takes over, and guess what happened within days of him filing on our behalf.
The lawyer gets a phone call from the company who started this fight in the first place. The guy wants our lawyer to ask us if we’re willing to “just walk away??”
Ahhhh, that’s going to be a no from us. You see we did already walk away, when we didn’t sue you for causing the damage to our property in the first place. We did walk away when we paid the other company $2500 for a job that should have only had us out of pocket $500. We didn’t hold you accountable. We let you go. We wanted it to be a lesson learned for ourselves, and to just go in peace. You, on the other hand wanted to start a fight, and so you did. And I’m here to tell you if it’s a fight you want, it’s a fight you’re going to get. Not only do I want my money back that I paid you, but I also want the money to come out of your pocket that I paid the other company to make the repairs that you intentionally made, plus I think I’ll throw in some inconvenience, stress, and legal fees for good measure.
You see friend, I’m not a fighter, but if you force me to fight, then I’ll put up the best damn fight you’ve ever had. In the famous words of Shonda Rhimes, she uses this line in every single episode of Grey’s Anatomy, “You don’t get to start a fight with me, upset me and then walk away now that you know you’re going to lose.”
Sorry, not sorry.