Un completed bathroom left in shambles, with around R40,000 loss

Sharaaz Amod of A- Z renovations, based in Milnerton Cape Town was contracted by us to renovate two bathrooms in November.

An initial small job of outside paving was done well, but problems soon started, as there was endless demand for down payments for the work on the first of the bathrooms. This was to consist of re-tiling floors and walls, installing two custom made cupboards , a new bath and toilets and installing new ceiling spot lights.

Thankfully he never got to start on the second bathroom.

The floor was tiled well, and part of the walls, but then troubles started. It was a constant battle to get him to reconcile costs, and he would regularly just send his team, and avoid promised face to face meetings. This was annoying and very wasteful of my fiancée and I’s time, to keep waiting around for him, not to honour meetings.

The two biggest issues are; • A down payment for an amount of R14 265 for tile adhesive products, an incredible amount but no proper invoice or receipt was ever produced. Delivered product to site only had the value of R4 601 – in short an outrageous mark-up

• R22,385 was paid as a down payment for cupboards to be made. Despite endless promises the material was never delivered to us, and nor was the promised 3D drawing. Our suspicion is that he did not give proper instructions to the wood cutters, who made an error, and he faced the prospect of a double payment. In summary

Only the floor was tiled properly and toilet installed.

Only approximately a 1/3 of the bathroom walls were tiled The rest of the bathroom was left as a shambles. There is also no evidence of water proofing done on the wall behind the shower. The bath itself was not level and was damaged during installation. Also, the hot and cold-water position on the bath/shower mixer have been swapped. Total loss R9 663 (unaccounted product purchases) plus R22,385 (un-delivered cupboards) => R32 048 + bath damages+ time wasting + cost to swap pipes + R500 hire of trailer to move rubble off site = approx. R40,000.

We have now paid for a different contractor to complete the job.

Our e-mails to Shaaraz remain un-answered, and our phones blocked, I have though been able to catch him out by ringing from a friend’s phone.

Some of his team are quite skilled hard working people, the problem is their manager has no ability to manage money or logistics, and lacks the common decency to even apologise and negotiate a compromise on our financial losses.

Do not consider these guys for big jobs.