Recently, several people have been posting how WONDERFUL a particular kablan (general handyman contractor) is. What most don't realize is that this kablan encourages (pushes) people to give him glowing testimonies. And if that were all of it, that would not be so bad. But the fact is, these testimonies are misleading (not intentionally by them), and that needs to be addressed.
In early March, we had a heavy period of rains. During that time, the roof of our house had a couple of small leaks. It was coming from the roof, into the attic, and dripping through the sheet rock ceiling of one of our bedrooms. I called the kablan (hereafter known as "K."), to fix those two small leaks.
Without going into the attic, he looked at the roof, and said that the problem was that the water was going down the sides of the walls and instead of going down a gutter area, it was going under the clay tiles of the roof, and the wood under there was not in good shape. So, for 5500 shekels, he would build a couple of concrete troughs for the water to fall into and redirect it, and would apply a waterproofing to them.
K.: "You gave me my first job in Efrat, so I do for you a special price. Anyone else, I charge 12,000 shekels. But you are my special customer. For you I only charge 5,500 shekels."
Warning signals should have gone off in my head. And yes, I had used him before. My step-son asked, why I used him again, since his backyard work was so shoddy. I suppose it was selective memory. I had hired K. to oversee the fixing of a disaster that another group had done in the back yard. It certainly looked better, even though it wasn't great. And I had hired him then because he needed the work.
And so his scheme to put in some sort of stronger gutter system sounded plausible. Yes, I should have been concerned how he came up with this "5,500 shekel" amount from nowhere. I should have also have question his avoidance to even peek into my attic and look at the two small holes. Maybe a small patch job there would have been useful. But he was the expert in these matters.
Or so I thought.
I discussed this with my neighbor, since we share the same roof, and we agreed that he would pay 1/2 of the cost (2,750 shekels) since a wall in his security room was getting wet. K. was emphatic that the neighbor was to pay half, and his special price was only because he was doing this for me.
After he began work, K. felt that the front of the roof needed the same work. I questioned that because we had no leaks coming from that slope, but only from the back slope. He convinced me that it would be the best thing to do, and I agreed. Since this would not be affecting the neighbor, I did not include him for this extra 5500 shekels. The bill was now 11,000 shekels.
K. then decided, on his own to do some things that we did not agree on. He added that cement to the peak of the roof, leaving a grey line across the top, and then he started painting the bricks of our house and the houses on either side, with this gooey white water resistant sealer. The picture below shows the mess that he was only beginning to make. That bright white section is not paint, but a sealer, sort of like what you might use around your bathtub or sink. And if you look to the peak, as a long line, the light grey that we never agreed to, standing out.
You can see the bright white area on the top of the lower roof. This is the trough that he made from concrete and decided to pain this goo from roof-to-roof.
And it gets better!
The house to the left is a different neighbor, who was not involved in this. (She came out of her house this morning and confronted K., who gave her some halfhearted excuse. I was in the house looking outside during this and will need to apologize to her for him ruining her house as well.) That stone edging on their roof, on the right side of it, is also covered in this goo. This goo can also be seen from the back. Buckets of it were brought in, and had I not intervened, our house, and those of the neighbors, would have looked like the "marshmallow man" lived there.
I had a "conversation" with K. outside, in public, where I shouted, using my training as an ex-sailor, in ways that he would understand that I was not happy. He tried to explain that water goes into stone and so the stones need to be covered. Of course, he didn't mention that hundreds of thousands of homes in Israel are made of the same stone. Dolomite (the form of "Jerusalem Stone" that is used for ornamental work, such as the outside of buildings, while having some degree of porousness, does not leak. If it did, then why are not all of the home in Israel covered in white goo?!
After half an hour of shouting at him, he agreed to remove the excess goo from my house and that of the neighbors.
In the meantime, he told the neighbor to our left, the one who also had a small leak, that he has a few tiles that were token, and asked if he wanted to replace them. The neighbor agreed, and was told that 19 tiles were cemented down and it would cost 2000 shekels. Later, when confronted, he admitted it was just a couple of used tiles, and still wanted 2000 shekels. After one more shouting match (not with the neighbor, since he is far more softer spoken than I am), K. relented. Please note that there was no real cost of labor or materials for him (the Arabs he brought in were for the entire day and it was leftover material), and that I had not yet paid him.
I was waiting for this saga to end.
On the last day, my neighbor brought an expert to look at the roof, and the two of them went up. When they came down, K. had just arrived and was livid, since he realized what was going on - he had been caught in a lie and acted like the victim in this drama. He furiously told them to go, and that he was not going to work on my neighbor's house...ever! Not only had he been caught in lying, telling them that 19 tiles had been replaced, but what little was done was certainly not worth 2,000 shekels. Yes, he had been caught - charging three times or more as his "special price as a favor to my friend Eliyahu".
Now, what about the goo?
Well, he tried electric sanders. I could have told him that it was folly to try that on that stuff. Then he asked for some matches and went outside. I looked up and they were trying a blow torch! While it did melt the goo, it also blackened the rock, and K. realized that wouldn't work either. I was waiting for him to recommend acid (dolomite would bubble and turn into CO2, but it might have been fun to watch him try!)
At least it doesn't look like this:
I told him to paint the peak of the roof the same color, clean off the windows of my solar panels that had concrete residue on them, as well as any other mess, and to just get out. I would pay him all that I agreed to, but I wanted him out.
In the meantime, his workers, (unguarded Arabs) were going to other houses on our streets, offering to do work that may or may not be necessary for prices that, apparently, were far above the norm. A local fellow who does this for a living was approached, and after being told why he needs it and being given the price, refused.
So here I am, in my gooey house, wondering if, when the rains come in another 9 months or so, if those same two spots will go "drip...drip...drip...". I might as well buy a 15-shekel tube of white goo, a small tube, and seal the inside by myself, now that the rains are done.
I had hoped that he would have said, "I messed up. Sorry. Just pay me (some lesser amount)". But there was no apology, and no reduction in what he accepted. And so, he greedily counted the fifty-five 200-shekel bills twice to make sure that they were all there.
Even though I had hoped for something ethical, I was not surprised that nothing of the sort was forthcoming.
He did send me an e-mail several days later and offered to paint the goo a better color. Obviously, it would require that most of the house would be repainted. I didn't even ask how much, but simply told him that I will have someone else correct his work. I have added his email address to my spam filter.
[Update: K. did forward a message to me that said he could get a 95% match on the color and gave me a price. However, each individual stone that he ruined was cut more than 25 years ago and was textured. This means no stone is a single flat color. And so his claim of "95%" is just a number he made up (like so many things he does), and it would look only worse. Obviously, his offer to charge me to make his bad work look even worse did nothing to change my opinion of him.]
It should be noted that I spoke to the mother of my neighbor, and told her to tell her son that he need not pay me until he was 100% confident that this mess fixed his problem, and then, only the 2,750 that we initially agreed. If he sees that the problem still exists, then he need not pay me at all. (And if he has a problem with the mess, I will take less out of my embarrassment for the entire episode.)
My recommendation is this: if you see a recommendation for someone on the Efrat list, don't accept that as "gospel". Find out if it is the same work, find out what the price was, and then ask others. Because if someone can easily afford 11,000 shekels, he or won't think that 11,000 is too much, and might give a raving review. And maybe someone likes white goo splashed all over the outside walls because it gives a nice snowy feeling. Be careful. Be very, very, careful. And for your own sanity, PLEASE, make a contract listing exactly what the person is to do, and that they are forbidden to deviate from that. At all. EVER!
b'hatzlacha!
