A viral video on Twitter showed a contractor destroying a newly renovated bathroom because the customer refused to pay. The contractor from Colorado Springs, Colorado was filmed smashing the shower tiles with a sledgehammer.
The homeowner, Amber Trucke, spoke with KRDO about her ruined shower and how she had paid the contractor $3,330 of the $7,555 total. Trucke claimed she wasn't pleased with the end results and wanted to inspect further before handing over the final payment.
Terry James Gregory and Jordan Cazares—co-owners of Dream Home Remodels of Colorado—were not having any of it.
They had been let in by Trucke's roommate while she was away.
Her roommate was under the impression they were finishing up and picking up the rest of their equipment. But they only came with a crow bar, a sawzall and a sledge hammer.
Gregory took his sledgehammer to the walls and said:
"I put weeks into this, thousands of dollars into this."
Trucke told KRDO:
"Watching it just brings tears to my eyes."
"It makes me sick, it makes me scared."
"This is more than just trashing my bathroom, my sense of safety is gone."
They had also done work on a fan and the back door, but Trucke wasn't satisfied with the door or the shower.
Trucke said:
"I wanted to be wowed and I wasn't wowed."
"But I knew he was coming back Friday to clean things up and I figured maybe I'd be more impressed then."
"So I was not going to pay them until I saw the actual finished product."
Trucke calmly tried to stop them from destroying the bathroom.
In the video, she's heard saying:
"Sir, I'm just asking you to stop."
"This is not your house to destroy."
Gregory replied:
"This is my property."
"I have receipts for everything."
Amber protested, saying it was unacceptable to "take back" their so called property in this way.
The other contractor, Jordan Cazares, stood in the doorway:
"This is our stuff."
"This is how we need to take it back because we solidly built the construction."
Before they left, Gregory threatened:
"No contractor in the state of Colorado will fix that when they [find] out I took it back because you refused to pay me."
"No one."
Since the video has gone viral and received local news coverage, Cazares said they have received death threats.
They claim the story is fabricated.
Cazares sent a statement to KRDO:
"After several weeks of work for a customer, communication broke down at the end of a project."
"There was no displeasure expressed, and we proceeded to ask for payment on the project by the end of the day."
"Communication broke further after that and resulted in our company repossessing a tile shower."
"We regret that this contract went sour. It has never happened before and is not something that is made regular practice."
"There was several other projects included in the contract that she is also unwilling to pay for, including a vanity, mirror, light fixture, 2 ceiling fans, plumbing work, fixing rotten framing in her walls, and an exterior door replacement."
It's hard to say a story is fabricated when there is viral video and photo evidence, yet many people said they were in the right.
Though many people were saying he made a huge mistake.
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Trucke said she's going to vet her contractors better in the future:
"Obviously people are sometimes not what they seem, and that was certainly the case this time."
Trucke will be taking the case to small claims court.
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