DEAR Editor;
I read with interest the column by Vijay Naidoo titled (S)Lower South Coast motto seems to be taken to heart by too many local businesses.
I agree 100% with everything he said in his column.
We have lived in Umtentweni for a little more than two years now and we really wanted to use local businesses for work we needed done at our house, what a huge mistake that was.
From pool repair to pest removal to roofing to electrical to plumbing to driveway repair to a Jojo tank installation. The only ones we have not had any real issues with are the electrician and the plumber.
Contractors down here are always crying that they don’t have enough work, well let’s see why.
The first roadblock to someone like me is getting someone to call you back, the second is after you have made the appointment for the quotation you are lucky if they show up, third is getting the actual work done and done in a satisfactory manner; then when there are issues, getting them to come back is a nightmare, this is when you get ghosted.
We had our driveway redone by a person that is all over social media and he was referred, he also was not the cheapest quote, the job was really bad and the driveway started crumbling and holes started appearing in less than three months.
More than a year later he has refused to fix it even though he has a one year warranty, and has ghosted us since then.
Our water tank installation was a disaster and we had to have our plumber redo the entire job after we were ghosted by the original installer. So we paid twice for this job.
Our new gate motor installation was just as bad and after a few months we had to have the entire instillation redone by someone else, including another new gate motor. Again we paid twice for this job.
We had an exterminator come over for an ant problem, after they did the work the ants never went away, we called them after a few weeks and the technician said they could not fix it then because of the rain we were having but would come over when it dried up.
It has now been about three months and we are being ghosted, no response to WhatsApp messages or emails.
I could go on and on but I won’t.
Finally, what is with the call out fee? If they want the work why not just come out and do the quotation. In my business quotations are free.
That is why we, along with others, are going to have to resort to using contractors from Durban.
RICK CROUCH
Umtentweni
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