It has been six months since I last posted here. A record for inactivity. That doesn’t mean I haven’t been busy. A lot has happened. Some of it will get recorded here, but not now, and maybe not soon, or in great detail.

One of the things that happened I will tell now.

Thursday, February 9

Water is leaking through the drywall in Michael’s bathroom. I called Legacy Plumbing and Restoration in the morning, but the guy never called back so late in the afternoon I called Arvada Plumbing, LLC. Levi answered the phone. I told him we have a leak and he said he could be here in an hour. I told him it wasn’t an emergency. He said he’d come over at 10 the next day.

Friday, February 10

Ten o’clock came and went with no sign of him. He finally got here a bit after 11:00 and had a look around. He was here for fifteen or twenty minutes and talked the whole time. He tells me he’s a marine, his father does some business with Tony Hawk, and he invented something for his AK-47. After he looked around, he said he needed to get a helper and that it would be a total of 6 or 7 hours – five or six hundred dollars. He asked for “half” up front, saying $250 or $300 would be good. I wrote him a check for $300. He said they’d be back at 2:00.

Two o’clock came and went with no sign of him.

At nearly three they showed up. His helper has face tattoos.

They needed to start cutting holes in the drywall to find the leak. Levi said they’d clean everything up and not to worry about the mess. Directly above the leak, on the main floor, is the wall between the laundry room and the kitchen. There, they pull the washer and dryer away from the wall. There’s already a hole there, with no signs of water. Not satisfied that the leak isn’t here, they cut another hole in the wall. Dry as a bone. They move to the kitchen and check under the sink: dry. They pull the dishwasher out of its place: nada. They go upstairs to my bathroom (directly above the washer and dryer) and cut two holes and generally sliced it up. Dry. That one had me scratching my head. Why’d they look there? If the leak was up there, we’d see it on the main floor.

They go back down to the basement. In Michael’s bathroom, instead of using their saws, they just tore big hunks of the ceiling drywall down, causing a bit more damage than was necessary. There’s a lot of water up there, but nothing is obviously dripping. Levi tells me to aim a fan at it to dry it off and they’ll come back tomorrow at 10 am. They leave the washer and dryer in disarray (dryer vent not together, appliances in the middle of the way to the bathroom). They put the dishwasher back, but Genae says it’s not all the way in. They disposed of the big, damp chunks of drywall but cleaned up nothing else.

They were here for about an hour (approximately 2:45 pm to 3:45 pm).

I run a fan in there and it looks to be drying out after a while.

Genae ran the dishwasher and it seemed to be taking a long time for the heat-dry cycle to end. She finally stopped it and when she opened it up, it was obvious that no water had ever run. The liquid soap was just dribbled down the inside of the door, and the contents of the machine were at room temperature.

Everything was still dry under the sink, so obviously they’d never turned the supply line back on.

Saturday, February 11

Ten o’clock came and went with no sign of them.

At 10:56, I texted him, asking for an ETA. A bit later, I called him – went to voice mail.

So, he’s taken off with my down payment, ripped my house apart, and doesn’t want to finish the job. I texted him again, saying he needed to call me. About half an hour after that, I put a stop-payment order on the check.

Five minutes later, he calls. He’s sorry. He had an emergency. Somebody’s house was flooding and they didn’t get done until 4 am. When I ask why he didn’t call or text me, he tells me plumbing isn’t a 9-5 job. I ask him if he wants to finish the job. He says he does. I asked him what he did with the check. He told me he’d already cashed it. I told him I’d put a stop payment on it. I asked him again if he was able and willing to do the job. He said yes and told me they’d be there in an hour.

He never showed up and ignored my subsequent text messages.

I don’t know if my stop-payment order will go through in time. On the other hand, he may not have actually taken it to the bank. If the check clears, I’ll take him to small claims court.

We turned on the water supply for the dishwasher and all is now good with that. I reconnected the dryer exhaust line and put the machines back in place.

Sunday, February 12

When Genae ran a load of laundry through the dryer, we discovered that they’d shut off the gas and, like the dishwasher, didn’t turn it back on.

We called another plumber, Ralph, and described the leak to him. He’ll come by Tuesday and fix it.

Days Subsequent

Ralph was a bit flummoxed by this one. He saw a place where a copper supply line was up against a stud. The pipe vibrates when a faucet is opened, and there’s a little wear there. He repaired that section and we set the fan up again.

The next morning, it was just as bad as ever. Ralph came back again, looked around some more, and made another repair. He wasn’t feeling that good about it. I asked him if I had a ten thousand dollar leak. Still no go.

He came by the next day. He told us he couldn’t sleep last night, obsessing about my leak. It finally hit him. He pulled the range away from the wall. The line that supplies water to the fridge is fed through the back of the cabinets. It had a slight kink where the range was pushed in. He shut off the supply to the fridge and the next morning, the ceiling in Michael’s bathroom was clearly drying out.

Ralph installed a major upgrade on the supply line to the fridge and we’re good.

All that remains is a bunch of drywall repair. Something I’ve never done before.

What About That Check?

On the 24th, I received a letter from Money Tree. It was a Notice of Dishonor.

Levi did what he said he did: he cashed the check. At Money Tree. Maybe it’s just me, but I expect somebody running a business would have a bank and wouldn’t need to pay the high fees that check-cashing places charge.

The Notice of Dishonor tells me that even though I stopped payment on the check, I’m still liable because my check was “negotiated with a third party”. That’d be them. They tell me that I (or my attorney) should look at a couple of Colorado Supreme Court decisions. They give me a number I can call to make a payment.

I promptly called them and told them I refuse to pay. I explained that the guy was a crook who cut and tore holes in my walls and never came back. Their agent wasn’t impressed. They have a point: why should they be injured?

Here’s my calculus. It’s $300. For that amount, you go to small claims court. I’d be happy to have them take me to small claims, even knowing I’d lose. But I know that it’ll cost them way more than $300 to take me to court. It’s a losing proposition for them. So they’ll sell the debt for pennies on the dollar and collection companies will hound me. I’m not paying.

My credit score will take a small hit, but it won’t affect me. My credit rating is stellar, and I’m not looking to borrow any money anytime soon.

And I feel no guilt that an innocent third party will be out $270 or whatever they gave Levi for my $300 check. I know full well that Money Tree budgets a non-trivial amount for bad debts like this. It’s built into the system. I don’t knock Money Tree for providing services to the unbanked, but they certainly aid crooks like Levi. Had he taken my check to his bank, he wouldn’t have gotten the money.

When I got the Money Tree letter, I decided I needed to cry into the wilderness: I posted on Nextdoor. It was a long paragraph telling what Levi did (with photos!). That got about forty responses, including a few from other victims. Nextdoor sent me a message that that post had been viewed 9,600 times.