Cheap people pay double 2.

[shovelracer]

Today one of my regular customers approaches me about repairing his sinking walkway. To help you better understand what happened picture this. A 150K hardscaping job for free. He owns a printing company and bartered the job so no money exchanged hands. Im not familiar with the process but I cant even image that it was a fair deal. OK so it should have been a 150K job, but the contractor did it as cheap as possible. Imagine 1500ft total walls, a 6000ft paver drive, a 150ft walk and about 50 yards of soil. All work done wrong, everything is crooked, sinking, falling over. No reenforcements, drainage, base, or edging. By far the worst I have ever seen. The project took 2 guys 9 months and the company went bankrupt by the end. This guy owns a million dollar home in a multi million dollar home neighborhood. He has 7 cars including a his and hers porshe. Not even sure what they are cause I have never seen one like it. And he has 2. OK you got it, he has money.

So the other week we had 6" of rain and the back yard flooded. The walkway in the back sank 4". So he approached me about fixing it. He wanted the 30' section removed and releveled. I said no, if I touch it I will have to redo the entire thing because I will only do it proper. So I gave him a quote for $15ft reusing the pavers. I felt this was even low for my taste and the client. He felt it was too high and needs to get some other bids. Fine by me, I wont go any lower. The old walk was built on 1" of stone dust and has no edging. He doesnt understand why I cant just relevel it. I cant understand how he could ruin his property by allowing that kind of work. So we agree to disagree. I can guarantee that in the next ten years he will have payed double for every square inch of that project. He gave out free printing and now he has to pay to have it fixed.

Any thoughts, please share your experiences about these type of people.

[PatriotLandscape]

15 a square for a relay seems high especially for a regular customer.

[amscapes03]

$15 a square sounds very fair.....you need to: demo out and stack the old brick, scape up and stock pile the dust, excavate down another 6" min., plate the crush, screed, lay, stabilizing sand, etc, etc.......man, i hate redoing someone else's mess. $15 is fair.

[orionkf]

15 a square for a relay seems high especially for a regular customer.


It sounds more like a re-build than a re-lay. Think about the price for a from scratch job, then subtract paver costs, then add for picking up pavers, cleaning, palletizing, wrapping, storing, scraping and disposing of stonedust, etc.

I know with retaining wall rebuilds, it's common to approach or exceed original installation costs, even reusing blocks. The extra labor quickly balances out the savings on material.

[shovelracer]

Yes it is definitely a redo not a relay. The whole thing is junk. The only savable part is the stone. The cost of the stone would only be around 350. By the time we remove the old brick he will have spent the same on labor easy.