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Gil Bang

Certifiably Surly
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Posts posted by Gil Bang

  1. We (the GF and myself) bought some carpet in December of 2015 for the guest house.

    We went to a local carpet store that's been in business over 50 years.  Family-owned place.  Good folks with a good reputation locally.

    Carpet was  $1700.  We paid half when we ordered, and agreed to pay the balance to the installer upon completion of the job.

    Crew comes out, installs the carpet, does a great job, and I give them a check for $850 made payable to ABC Carpet (alias).  I tip the crew in cash and cold Bud Light.

    Fast-forward a couple of weeks.  Carpet store owner calls.  "Mr. Bang, I'm embarrassed and very sorry, but the installer has lost your check.  Can you kindly come by and pay us for the carpet"

    Very apologetic...says installer is a really dependable guy (my impression of him was that he seemed pretty solid).  Anyway, I say sure, I'll come by and write a new check, but you're eating the stop payment fees from my bank.  He agrees.  I go over the next day, and write a new check for $815 and we all live happily ever after, until...
     

    New Year's day, the GF asks "how much did we spend on dinner and drinks last night?"  Fuck if I know, I'm pretty hammered last night, but around $250 is my recollection...check the bank account and see how much I put on the card.   She looks at her phone for a minute and gasps.  The account is a LOT lighter than she expected.  After a quick investigation, we figure it out.  The missing check from 2015 just got posted to the account. 

    I finally pull up the image of the check.  The date was changed from 2015 to 2018.  The payee line reads payable to ABC Carpet+P.Cote.  Of course, the carpet store is closed on 1/1.  I call them first thing Wednesday.   Patricia Cote is the estranged wife of the installer that came to my house.  They are going through a nasty divorce, and the store owner tells me "that bitch is crazy". 

    Fucking Patricia Cote, who lives somewhere here in San Diego County,  found the missing check somewhere, and Patricia Cote got the bright idea to forge the check with her own name, and Patricia Cote then deposited the check into Patricia  Cote's account.  

    Chase fraud department is no help.  The manager of my branch is working on reversing the charges.  The sheriff's office is looking for Patricia Cote, and intend to take her to jail when they find the cunt. 

     

    EDIT:  I'm sure somebody will ask "what about the stop payment?".  Those stops expire after 6 months.  Renewing it never occurred to me.  I figured the check got tossed with the dude's drive-thru wrappers.

    tl/dr Patricia Cote of the North San Diego area is a forger, thief, cunt. 

     

     

     

  2. I recently found myself in Ft. Worth of all places, in what could be classified as a "high end" restaurant.  

    2 men  wearing cowboy hats at their tables.  

    Is taking your hat off indoors not a thing anymore?  

    Further, what ever happened to the straw hat in the summer, felt hat in the winter thing?  Has the bro-country crowd stomped that tradition into the ground? 

     

    • Like 6
  3. 39 minutes ago, woohorn said:

    Just ignore it. There is some period of time that the contractor has to get a judgment and that would show up on title after the lien. If a lien shows up without a subsequent judgment (again, after some period like a year), banks and title cos won't even mention it.

     

    Contractor has an obligation to remove it once it is settled (and to remove it if it was never valid in the first place of course) and there are statutory fines if not done, so you could actually recover your atty fees if you fought it instead of just ignoring it.

     

    Homeowners freak out about avoiding these liens, but they really are difficult and costly to properly utilize and most aren't ever filed correctly/valid.

     

    EDIT- IN TEXAS

    Agree 100% (not a lawyer, but I did construction loans for many many years)

    • Like 1
  4. that's wrong.  Cement and water alone won't do shit.  It will dry to a sandstone like material.  

    The ready mix trucks you see driving around are carrying concrete...sand, gravel (usually 3/4" rock) and cement (and maybe some other additives).  And water, of course.   Those mixes are engineered for specific strengths.  The concrete used in bridges and dams is a different mix than the shit used for a backyard patio.

    Cement and sand alone is called "mortar".   It's most often used when laying bricks.  

  5. 3 minutes ago, Steel Shank said:

    This is what I don't understand - two different rates:

    According to our concrete slab material estimator, the average minimum cost per square foot of a concrete slab is $1.36 and the maximum is $1.88. By comparison, the price per square foot for a cement slab is $5.50.

    authentec frontier gibberish.  There's no such thing as a "cement slab".  There was also no such thing as a "cement pond", but I would have pushed the critters out of the way to lay some pipe on Miss Ellie.  

    • Like 1
  6. On 12/22/2018 at 7:22 AM, RMac5 said:

    Do you think the concrete supplier will let you pay the bill? I would be surprised if they do, they would try and protect their customer not knowing what he marked the concrete up.

     

    So...I'm in California, and lien rights vary from state to state.  Having said that, yes, absolutely 100% the supplier will let you pay the bill, for 2 reasons.

     

    1) they want their fucking money

    2) they can only lien the job for their actual cost.  They can't lien the job for their cost, plus the contractor's markup.  Out here, the subs and suppliers (concrete, lumber, etc) have to send a notice to the owner saying "hey, we're supplying materials to your job at the cost of X, and if we don't get paid, we're gonna lien your property".  This is to prod the owner to make sure that the contractor doesn't take the money and run without paying the suppliers and subs what they are owed.  You simply ask the concrete supplier for a conditional release, and you pay them the amount stated on that release. 

     

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