April visit 11

Meeting with M. Boyer:

The usual topic of conversation cropped up immediately – we will be wholeheartedly relieved when Dominique (D) is no longer the bête-noire of our project – but we can’t really start to do anything until the issues over his work have been resolved. We would, ideally, like him to refund some money so that we are not totally out of pocket, and officially agree to have nothing more to do with our job. The system in France is different to England because of the guarantees given by workmen. No one wants to give a guarantee if their work has been done on a foundation started by another firm – if the original work is defective, it will be the chap who finishes the job who will end up having to put it right. We have already become reconciled to the fact that the work will all have to be stripped back to bare bones so that we will be able to find new workmen to finish the job (and because a lot of it is defective), but there is still a danger that Dominique could take us to a tribunal and sue us for the money he would have earned had he finished the job. That feels like adding insult to injury!

M. Boyer has been persistent in trying to pin Dominique down (and preferably get him to give us a refund, rather than insisting on redoing the defective work), but has ground to a complete halt. Dominique is no longer responding to messages or letters (the most recent letter, sent by recorded delivery, asked him to show up on the Saturday of our meeting and return our keys). The last effort M. Boyer made to contact him by phone ended up with Dominique’s mother shouting that there were no problems with the job until M. Boyer started butting in. She then slammed the phone down on him. Part of me wants to write a letter to her pointing out a few home truths: we never would have needed a project manager if Dominique had done good, timely work and finished our (3 to 4 month) job in less than the 2+ years spent so far. I feel quite strongly that she shouldn’t allow her address to be used by Dominique as his business address if she can’t behave in a professional manner! She’s obviously got a blind spot to he “baby”… Either that, or she’s never had him do any work for her! I feel it’s best that I don’t write the letter though!

Part of me wants to write to Crédit Agricole and tell them what a bad job he’s done at our house, but the part of me with experience of CA knows that it’s highly unlikely that anyone will care! So that’s another letter I shan’t write.

M. Boyer has finally had copies of Dominique’s insurance certificates: he wasn’t insured for insulation, metalwork (that will include the rails our plasterboard is mounted on, I’m sure, as well as the RSJ holding up the grenier floor!), plumbing and something else (which I forget). He was insured for building work, I think, but if you discount all the bits he’s not covered for (insulation under floors, metal reinforcing under floors, insulation behind the plasterboard, not to mention the electrics!) that only leaved the doorway between the kitchen and hall that doesn’t need ripping out and starting again! All of the insurance he did have (at the time of doing our work) has now lapsed, probably because he hasn’t paid the premiums. So even if we wanted him to re-do the work on the house, there is no way M. Boyer would let him!

The latest idea is maybe we could claim on our insurance… Which of course has thrown up a new problem: of course we should have checked the documents more carefully at the time (but with all the nightmares that the Halifax were throwing up with their failure to actually send the money they’d agreed we could borrow, [a simple re-mortgage took 13 weeks instead of the promised fortnight!] we seemed to have greater problems!), but it seems that our insurance is for main residence, not second home. We’ve got the photocopy that clearly shows we wanted second home insurance, so we’ll have to get that sorted out, as I doubt we are covered at the moment!!

M. Boyer showed us some more sketches – I feel we are nearly there with the plans. David and I spent all Sunday morning going over the later versions of the plans (M. Boyer had posted the changes to me at the house). We’ve got to send a few minor changes, but if he accepts those I think we’re there!

We both felt more positive after that meeting: we feel as though we may make some forward progress in the not too distant future… I am particularly heartened thinking back to our meeting: he told us to choose sanitary ware, so it sounds as though we may have need of it!! Fingers crossed…

We learnt an interesting thing: apparently “onerous” is NOT as expensive as “expensive”!!

Following our last visit, we bought a new chain (the sort used for securing motorcycles) – that should foil the bolt-cutters! But still no success in getting our keys returned… I think we should change the locks, but we ran out of time!