My questions for Iain:

1) How can you do this to all these innocent people? You are the master of all cons.
2) How can you do this to your family? If I were you I would leave your family because they are better off without you.
3) If you have done nothing wrong and everything is ok then why are so many people pissed at you and why are you talking about moving to Ontario and looking at a house worth 1/2 a mil?
4) Where are you getting the money for a 1/2 mil house? Again, from the customers and not paying bills.
5) Is this your 3rd of 4th time driving a company into the ground and bending everyone over?
6) Who paid for all your renos on your house and shop? Oh I can answer that........THE CUSTOMERS YOU TOOK FROM.
7) Are you delirious? or just that ignorant?
8) How on earth were you able to buy a new cabinet machine? Heard you were starting a cabinet business. Oh you bought it with the last customers money??
9) When will you do the right thing? Life is all about choices. You have made many wrong choices and have not tried to rectify any of them.
In the end it still boils down to a lot of Customers, vendors and x-employees that are very upset with you and you have all your trucks, campers, gadgets, and machines for god knows what.

The one main question I have is Why is this man not in Jail???? I read your blog kevin regarding the fraud issue and I don't understand why the authorities can't/won't do anything?
 
Paintr - 11/8/2008 1:26 PM

I commend Mr. Garratt for building this forum. I too made the mistake of chooosing T & C and Iain Hall as the contractor on a major renovation that I performed on my home. The warning signs of T & C were there even before I awarded them the contract, but against by better judgement and the fact that they promised the schedule that I needed, I decided to give them a chance. I should mention that I have extensive experience in the construction industry and it was only due to that experience I was able to mitigate the damages. One thing that I would disagree with Mr. Garrett on, is that I beleive that the Builder's Lien Act is balanced and that the problem with it is that there are very few people including Lawyers who know how to use it properly. It really starts however for the purchaser of construction services to do their own due diligence. You should start not oncly by contacting the BBB, but also the local Builder's Association and/or Trade Associations. If they are not members, then it is likely there is a reason and do not do business with non members. Your local Home Builder's Association require a number of Certifications to be tracked and knows who is building home compliant to the different certifications. The same holds true for many Trade Associations. Your next step is to find out the last 4-8 projects completed with that contractor and call the owners to find out their experience. Do not take a reference list, as it is easy for the Contractor looking to get the work to give the owner only the best 3 jobs they ever did. The next steps are critical. First, request a copy of the contractor's Certificate of Insurence, and Name you as Additional Insured. Then request a Letter of Good Standing from Worker's Compensation Board(WCB). Then request a copy of their Safety Policy. DO NOT ALLOW anywork to begin before you have these items. As for a deposit, the best way to do this, is to have it placed in trust, but that is rarely done. You can set up a Trust with your bank for the whole amount of the construction contract and the Bank then becomes the Trustee third party ensuring to the Contractor that the funds indeed are available for the project and ensuring to the homeowner that the funds will only be released as per the agreed upon terms. Now that the work is underway, the contractor requests a Progress Payment. Before a PP is released, the homeowner must get a Certificate of Progress from an Independant Inspector. The Certifier will calculate the amount of progress that has been attained (say 25%). That is then compared to the Contractors Progress Invoice and the lower of the two is prepared to be paid with a copy of the Certificate attached for the contractor to review and/or appeal. The contractor must also provide the owner with WCB Letter of Clearence for the Amount of the PP, as well as a Standard Statuatory Declaration showing the costs, if any, that are outstanding in relation to the project. This is a critical point as Mr. Garratt did say that enforcement of the Lein Act was impossible/costly because it was a Civil Case. The Standard Stat Dec is used so that any misrepresentations now become a Criminal Case and are then able to be enforced through the Police and Public Legal system. If the contractor declares that he has paid all trades and a lein shows up, it is paramount evidence that a fraud has been committed and the police with investigate and charge the offender. If the contractor declares that there are unpaid vendors or trades, you can deduct those amounts from your PP, and pay those amounts directly to the vendors, or defer them to the next PP. The PP is then paid less a 10-15%(amount agreed to in the terms) Builder's Lein Holdback. You repeat this these steps until you have obtained the Certificate of Substantial Completion and then wait 45 days, check with the venders that you know of(listed on the Standard Stat Dec) and pay out the HB when you are satisfied that the Venders/Trades have been paid. Once you have the Cert of Sub Completion and the 45 days is up. No one can legally put a Lein on your property. If they do, it then becomes a Criminal Case again, as they would of had to forge a different Cert of Sub Comp. Once the owner has a Cert of Sub Comp, they should not allow any Venders or Sub Trades back onto the project unless they have a Maintenance Only Service Contract. This is because if you claim a defect and the Contractor then returns to repair it, they can then agrue that the clock has restarted again after that repair and they can indefinately estend that 45 days. It terms of Extras and Credits and Time delays, the owner should always be diligent in making sure these are always up to date a agreed upon. They are treated, in terms of the PP, the same as the Original Contract. If your contractor has not kept to schedule you can give them 3-7 days to become compliant and then charge them back your costs for the Time Delay.
 
Trades - 11/7/2008 10:38 AM

Ok first of all Mr. Garratt I truly appreciate the kind words you have spoken of Bob, he most definatly does not desserve the slander spoken by Montana. I do feel extremely sorry for anyone that has gone through this with the old company and with Iain Hall, but as for Bob his only down fall is that he is too kind and trusting and just like everyone else he was taken by that lieing prick!!! If Montana is as upset with Bob as it sounds maybe they should take the time to call him and listen to his explaination of what happened with his bankruptcy and what the causes were. I can tell you and all your readers that one of the causes were due to the people (sorry some of the people) he had working for him prior to the bankruptcy, not finishing there work, he put two individuals from the states into concrete business which turned out to be a terrible mistake by the time all the bills were payed and the problems cleaned up it cost the original Town and Country hundreds of thousands of dollars. Iain Hall came along and offered to take over the projects that would be left incomplete if Town and Country homes failed at no additional cost to the home owners, However when the transaction was complete he did in fact charge the home owners additional amounts. If the managment of the original Town and Country homes had had any indication that Iain was not a man of his word and had absolutly no crdit they would not have closed the business and turned the projects over to Iain Hall. This in itself tells that Bob was lied to and taken for a ride just like everyone else. Iain also owes Bob an incredible amount of money that has made life very difficult. If he was a person that didn't care what happened to others he would have just walked away from everything and everyone instead of trying to help them finish what had been started.
From my own personal experience Iain hired me as a plumber (with only minimal experience) to complete the plumbing on one of the houses, stating he would help me through the process and then left me to do the work myself with no direction.
 
Kevin Garratt - 10/20/2008 10:07 AM

What is really amazing is the Bob is now picking up the pieces of Iain's failed business and building some of the houses Iain did not bother to. At least Bob had the decency to declare bankruptcy and let people move on. Iain has just let his business license lapse. If he entered into bankruptcy he would lose his house as he was either stupid or trying to protect his house from previous fraud and put the house in the town and country name. We too are experiencing issues with quality, Things like cupboards that don't close, basement floor that is not level just to name a few. After adding up the amounts to finish our house we are looking at somewhere in the neigborhood of $60,000 that we are going to be out. Hopefully you have gotten your issues ironed out.
 
Montana - 10/19/2008 7:09 PM

I can't believe I stumbled onto your site. We too had an awful experience with Town and Country Homes. Owner Bob Botkin supposedly filed for bankruptcy while building our house. He took with him about $25,000 of our money with services not completed. Iain Hall assured us that he was buying the company and that if we would just let the $25,000 go, he would finish the house if we would still pay the last two scheduled installments (we ended up paying five installments instead of four). It was such a gamble, but what were we to do? Our house was 350 miles from home, in a different country. No lawyer in the US wanted to touch it. They advised us that it would probably cost us more in legal fees than what we had already lost. Iain came up with a plan that if he recieved any payments from people that owed Bob money, it would go directly to us. We knew that this would never happen, but they had us over a barrel. We contacted some suppliers for T&C and they were all in even deeper than us. A lumberyard was owed over $100,000! We contacted the cabinet builder that Iaian subcontracted and he agreed to finish our cabinets even though he had not been paid for the last several jobs. I think he felt sorry for us! After nearly a year of heartache and sleepless nights, our house was finished. I do think that the construction was good. We have had very few problems (except our exterior doors were only held in place by the finishing trim!). The mover doubled his prices during our wait and we had to get a bridge loan that cost us $9000 in interest all because of the delays. It seems like a miracle now, but a finishing team was sent to fix the cracks, replace a broken window, and finish the stucco (four months after our house arrived). The stucco job was sub-par (it was the crews' first crack at stuccoing). I am so sorry that you were caught in the trap. If only we could have warned any potential buyers. For us $25,000 was unbearable. We have a basement we can't afford to finish and a garage that will never be built, but at least we have the house. I wish we could read your entire story. I hope you are able to post it again. Good luck to you.