My father in law, 93 years old, almost got caught by some travelling paving scammers this morning.
Frank lives by himself in his house. He's about ten doors down on the same street as us, so we support him basically round the clock, and this allows him to remain where he loves to be.
Yesterday evening, a very friendly European accented guy came to his door "We are doing paving on your street, and can do your drive as well for a good deal". Well, Frank told him, "my daughter takes care of the money", no problem, the price dropped until Frank could not say no. He's a old school guy who trusts everyone...and can't say no easily, easier to agree. The guy said 3500 bucks. Yeah, great deal...not. But Frank went for it.
So frank calls us after the guy leaves. We go down and he's embarrassed. Says he doesn't want to do it. The same thing happened to him last year, but we were able to find the truck and ward the guys off early. This time, we went out and no truck to be seen anywhere local. No card, no number to reach them.
8am frank calls us, the guys are there (one boss, 6 Mexicans) and they are ripping up the drive by hand...with his car still in it! He says stop a few times to them, they ignore him. We both race down, momma bear gets there first and tells them to stop, they kind of ignore her, I come next and they are walking back to the unmarked pickup trucks. My wife is taking pictures of the license plates, at the same time saying "he told you to stop, he has no money". Two people in the truck are covering their faces. I tell the guy, "this is a 93 year old man, you're preying on him. They leave and we go calm Frank (and ourselves) down. The biggest piss off is they would not stop when asked to by Frank.
I don't know if you guys are familiar with these travelers, but the scam is rip it all up, leave it all piled up on the boulevard until they get more before they finish. Basically no driveway, just a hole until you pay...more. No new compacted base, 1" of pavement hand tamped. No warrantee. Yeah, it'' look like a driveway, will actually work, but for how long? Go online, it's rampant across the GTA and Canada.
So we called a reputable local company, they are coming tomorrow. The girl laughs, we're the 3rd caller with the same story. And to top it off, she say's they asphalt companies don't start producing driveway grade until April anyway.
__________________
67 Grande Parisienne 4 door HT. 69 Parisienne Convertible.
Had them try to scam me about 3 weeks ago. Company was from the GTA (about 3.5 hours away) I said no, but surprisingly he persisted. Price started at $6500 and went down to $3500 (if I paid cash) I asked him if he had done any driveways in this area and was surprised that he gave me an address about 20 minutes east of me. I said I will go look at it and told them to come back in a little over an hour. Drove out to have a look, driveway looked terrible and as luck would have it the homeowner came home as I was sitting on the road out front. I introduced myself and told him what was going on, well........ Lets just say not a happy camper! So as always if the deal is too good to be true. RUN the other way!
That sounds a lot like the gypsies that live about 1.5 hours from me. There is an area in South Carolina near North Augusta that every one calls Gypsy Village. There are a few thousand gypsies that live there but they travel around the country ripping people off like that. They prey on the older people.
I have "interlok" pavers from front to back and even in the house garage floor!! So don't think I'll get "SCAMMED"!! But they maybe crazy enough to try?? Maybe they'll try for "paving shop floor" in big shop??
__________________
Some times I wake up GRUMPY, but today I let her sleep in !!!!!!!!BLACKSTOCK Ont.
