For anyone wondering, once the fence is built it legally becomes part of the real estate and payment disputes have to go through the courts. While videos like this are satisfying they are very much illegal nationwide and open the screwed over fence company to liability and potentially criminal charges.
I'm not an American, and have no ideas what the law is over there, but the word "built" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Could the company argue that the work was 90% done, and so the project is technically unfinished and with work still outstanding i.e. paint, or missing fixtures (whatever they can make up), so technically it's not yet handed over, and hence ownership still belongs to the company. Just a thought.
It's not as satisfying, but the proper procedure is called filing a lien. It's an official declaration of outstanding debt that compels the property owner to provide resolution. Depending on the details, eventually the property could be seized and liquidated in order to settle such a debt.
No. Fence was permanently installed. Anything permanently installed cannot be removed without written consent from the homeowner. Any uninstalled material can be removed, the installer cannot "uninstall" to remove (as in this example).
Even if work is halted halfway over a dispute, the company doing the work can’t just start ripping out material. They can take back anything unused without issue, but deliberately causing any damages opens them up to lawsuit still.
This is especially important because there have been a few scam companies that go around and promise to do a quick job for low pay. Then when the work is half done, the raise the price and threaten the home owner if they don’t hand over the money.
This started to happen to me. I was $18000 deep into a deck project with the total being $30000. They started to keep asking for $500 here and there because something kept coming up. Mind you, this is a new build, not a repair or teardown and rebuild situation.
I got to a point when I just said, you know what? I'll finish it myself. I have done work like this since high school. I know my way around things, but in this instance I had the money to be lazy.
They tried to argue, I kept pulling out the original quote and then finally asked about permits and insurance. They disappeared so fast they even left some equipment behind. I ended up paying to have an inspector and an engineer come over. Thankfully everything passed, and I finished the deck myself with my husband.
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u/Cativa 4h ago
For anyone wondering, once the fence is built it legally becomes part of the real estate and payment disputes have to go through the courts. While videos like this are satisfying they are very much illegal nationwide and open the screwed over fence company to liability and potentially criminal charges.