Driveway cowboys hit Gordonton
A Gordonton resident has been affected by the driveway ‘cowboys’ operating around the Waikato.
Last Saturday the Waikato Times ran the story identifying what it called the door-to-door scammers on its front page. The Gordonton resident says a couple of weeks ago they turned up at his property, saying they were working up Woodlands Rd and would have some spare bitumen at the end of the day. Would he like his driveway sealed.
“As it turned out, we had never got around to sealing a section at the back of the house which needed doing. That led to the whole drive being done.”
The men, with UK accents, spent about two days working on the driveway. The job wasn’t the smoothest, he said, with uneven patches at one end.
Two weeks later, and after paying a considerable amount of money, weeds are appearing through the drive. By that time he had seen the article in the Times.
“I wasn’t too happy. I rang the guy up and he says he’s up north of Auckland. He said he’d come back next week to fix it up but I’m not holding my breath.
The problem is, he says, the operation is not technically illegal. “It’s a rough, cheap job, and once you’ve paid your money over, there’s no redress. We will probably report what happened to the Commerce Commission so there is some sort of record. Otherwise we’ll call in some professionals to see what we can do to finish the work off properly, but in retrospect, if it seems too good to be true, it probably is.”
The Times said the ‘bitumen bandits’ are believed to be in the country on work visas and that “toothless” legislation was letting them and others get away with dozens of scams.
For full story, click here.
