DaninFLA
0
well novcruisin, good luck, keep us posted and I hope you stick around and maintain your pool the TFP way! you got a lot of good advice here I think,
It has never made sense to me that pool builders get paid prior to work being done. I have to wonder how that started.
I am in new home construction and either the whole project is paid in full at the end (other than a nonrefundable deposit) or payments are made based upon completion of phases.
When I built my pool we bought the kit from a company that later went out of business. When they did there were several people who had paid in full for their kit and never received them. As far as I know they never recouped their money either.
If I was a PB I would want terms similar to those offered to you and would be reluctant to accept any deviation. The risk of nonpayment wouldn't be worth it.
We don't anticipate being done in time to swim this year and for that reason we were able to talk them into a large discount
You people with the prepay mindset must live in a different world. Do you guys have jobs where you get paid at the beginning of the pay period rather than 5 days after it's over?
Any chance the OP would consider posting the full details of your pool build? It seems to me that you folks in TX have a higher baseline for pool builds. For $50k+ you can get a really nice pool here in Tucson (two friends of ours have been through pool builds, they both have very nice pools and neither of them paid over $50k)
Rough Basics (leaving out a lot of the stuff about PVC, etc.):
15x24 IG Gunite (Rectangle)
#6 bar
Stonescape Mini Pebble Plater
Hayward Equipment - VS pump, 425ft Cartridge, ProLogic P4, Salt Chlorinator, Sharkvac XL
One LED light
Lueders Limestone Coping
450 sq ft of Belgard pavers
6" waterline tile
22x14 Cedar shade structure (integrated into roof with matching shingles)
Stone fireplace with Lueder Limestone caps
Stone retaining wall (10ft) with Lueder Limestone caps
Stone kitchen area with leave out for mini fridge and grill with Lueder Limestone counters
Your paycheck analogy shows you are the exact same as them, but you hacve never thought about it that way.
Why is it OK for you to wait 5 days for your paycheck. I work 2 weeks, and on day 14, I leave with a paycheck for those 14 days. I am not left hoping my pay comes a week later. For you, you are taking a risk. The company goes bankrupt before you get your last paycheck, and you can easily be out money. You are hoping that you get paid, like a prepay person hopes that they get their goods.
If you have ever in your life bought any good online, then you have prepaid. If you have ever in your life had a subscription to a magazine, you have prepaid. If you have ever bought an extended warranty on anything, including a car or a house, then you have prepaid.
IF a contractor wants to screw you, he will. You can negotiate anything that you want, any type of post payment, terms, deliverable list, etc, but at the end, you can get screwed one way or another.
Have you ever bought a plain ticket with a credit card? Then the risk of the airplane's nonperformance is on you.
Have you ever bought car insurance, health insurance, or an annuity? You prepay on the hope the insurance company will be able to fulfill its obligation.
Have you ever bought a product on vacation? If it is defective when you get home (or is shipped to your home defective) the fact that you used a credit card will not protect you under the law unless (under the Fair Credit Reporting Act) you purchased it within 100 miles of your billing address. Visa or Master card could elect to help you out, but in many situations they won't and are not required to.
Have you ever signed your kid up for a basketball or soccer league? You prepay and hope the league is around to perform its obligations.
But the notion that this PB should be summarily dismissed simply because of his allocation of risk onto the homeowner is just not good advice.
The only ones that get duped by this scam are home owners, and it's because they are just not sophisticated. I have had contractors ask for money up front "to buy materials," in my private dealings. Each time I sent them away, they always relented. There is no custom that this is just the way it's done. They do it because they get away it. Is it always going to be a problem to prepay, no, but when it is, it costs people thousands of dollars that they usually can't afford to lose. If a builder's cashflow is that tight, it's a warning to run.