Audit of shoddy sheds - consumers beware!
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The Building Commission and the Plumbing Industry Commission have launched an audit of recently built domestic sheds and garages in South East Victoria.
Here are the highlights from the full media release.
- Most garages and sheds need a building permit.
- If the value of the shed is more than $5000, a registered builder has to carry out the work and also needs to have a building contract to protect the consumer
- If the value of the shed or garage exceeds $12 000, domestic building insurance is also needed
- Some shed supply and installation companies tell their customers to become owner-builders (avoiding the requirement for them to be built by registered building practitioners).
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Who can I report to on a person who is currently portraying himself as being a registered plumber who infact is not - and is carrying arount someone else's registration number etc...??
over a year ago by Ron -
Hi Ron,
over a year ago by Danial
The plumbing commission is the most likely organisation to speak to.
Which state are you in? We will get the details for you. -
Please help me. A man called Carlos in Thornlie WA, a sole trader gardener whose business name is Steel Blades (0403655770, 08 9459 4485), also calls himself a reticulation repairman. He came to my house to quote and then fix my reticulation because one and half stations didn't work.
over a year ago by Kate
He also quoted on my next door neighbour's reticulation (as one of her stations didn't work either) and forgot to turn her system off after the quote. She went to work, locked the garage where the control panel was, with the result that her sprinklers were on for 9 hours until she arrived home from work, which in WA is so illegal.
At my house, he couldn't be bothered finding the solenoids (even though he could have just rung up the installer whose sticker was on the control panel) so he attempted to fix my completely non-working station by joining it to another station, thus getting half the water pressure all round. The result was that the sprinklers didn't spray far enough anymore so huge portions of my garden no longer received water. He couldn't fix the other half station that didn't work so he told me that the two drops per minute I was getting out of the heads was "the way it was supposed to work" even though they were obviously spray heads and "I didn't know what I was talking about" even though the plants had died in half of the area due to lack of water.. He dug holes in the ground all over my property and didn't fill them back up when he left. After 4 hours he told me the job was finished and that he was in a big hurry to leave so can I please pay him ASAP. He gave me a receipt with no business info on it, apart from his scrawled phone number, and demanded $350 in cash. On questioning, he revealed that he does not put in tax returns. I went to test the system before paying him because I didn't trust him. I turned on one of the stations and a mass of water like a geyser started churning out of the soil - he had whacked a hole with his shovel in one of the underground PVC pipes. Water was spewing out with the result that the rest of the heads had no water pressure and didn't work. He did not reprogram the system so I had to do it all myself from scratch as he had wiped everything from the microcprocessor memory. Everything he touched turned to s$*t. He told me he would be back tomorrow to fix it and could I pay him in full now. I said that I would pay him in full when the job was done. He then got angry and begged me for cash, first $300, then $250 then $200. His desperation kept elevating as he haggled like a Balinese sunglass salesman. I felt sorry for him so I gave him $200 on the proviso that he come back the next day or the following day to finish the job. Of course, he hasn't been back since. I realise now that he must have been a methamphetamine addict. He kept on forgetting everything and his behaviour was bizarre, erratic and careless. His pupils were very dilated and he was very sweaty when he arrived first thing in the morning at 8:30am even though he had not had a prior job and was straight out of the shower and it was not yet hot outside. He was inappropriately aggressive, extremely quick to anger and noticeably subintellectual. Now I am left with a reticulation system with 3 stations that don't work, holes everywhere in my garden, an underground pipe with a hole and water streaming out, and two stations joined together. Furthermore, the MANUAL START button on the control panel doesn't work anymore, ever since he played with the system. I was much better before he even touched the system. I rang him up and politely asked him to either finish the job or refund me the $200 plus another $100 to pay a plumber to fix the hole in the PVC pipe. He hung up on me after telling me that I must have put the hole in the pipe because he certainly did not. This is absurd as he was digging in that exact area all morning and he knows I was inside the house all day and like a lot of women over 40, I NEVER DIG!!
Surely it must be illegal to go around whacking holes in peoples' underground pipes and performing retic repairs, which is essential plumbing, with no training at all. Not to mention the fact that he is obviously a drug addict and made me feel afraid and threatened. What do I do? Where do I go to complain and initiate due process? He needs to be fined in a court of law, otherwise he will keep on doing it. He is a gardener on $25 an hour and he sees retic maintenance as a way to make $70 an hour instead of $25 but he is wreaking havoc and is in way over his head. Please help me.
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