hi good evening. I hired someone to do the decking for me which cost me $5k. He "finished" the job and asked me to pay $4500 and leave $500 to pay after I review the deck. So I paid his $4500 cash already. I had a receipt written by me and signed by him. I invited two professionals from the industry to have a look at the deck. Both felt quite shocked by the bad work. The drainage was not done; the timber cracked within two days of completion; wrong type of frame timber H3 was used underground; poor craftsman etc etc. The main thing is that there's no where for the water to go which will cause serious consequence when rains. No gap under the deck for air flow either, the deck is attached to the soil. Basically this guys didn't do the deck according to the regulation/standard. The way of doing that was completely illegal, said both reviewers of the job. The reviewers also told me the only way to fix the problem was to redo the job. I passed the information back to the decking guy. Now it has been two weeks, he even wouldn't show up.
I searched on the consumer affairs website which says he needed to be registered with VBA if he's doing s job more that $5k. He didn't have that permit which I didn't know before! I never asked becoz he was recommended by a friend thus I thought he was pretty good.
I'm wondering what I can do to protect myself to resolve the issue? What's the legal process to get the problem solved?
Thank you very much
Looking forward to hearing from you.
Sabrina