Aotearoa / New Zealand

Recently I talked to three people who were ripped off by builders and tradies. One of them was out by more than a hundred thousand dollars, the others were in the tens of thousands of dollars.

People signed contracts and then didn't finish the job. In one case when confronted the builders said "you can't move in until I am done and if you don't accept this I won't be done for at least a year".

In the other case the contractor demanded double the money halfway into the build and contacted all other builders in the area and smeared the friend so that they didn't pick up the job.

In the third case the contractor took half the money up front, didn't show up for weeks, finally showed up for a few days and did a few things and the fucked right off. This was for about a 30K job.

Court costs are ten thousand dollars per day of trial (including prep work by the attorneys) so all of them had no choice but to take being ripped off. The tradie community seems pretty tight too so once you are ripped off you are known as a mark because all of them had issued with other tradies they hired afterwards.

Needless to say cops and the courts are useless.

Learn to do things on your own I guess. You can't trust any builder or tradie in NZ.