Pool conversion by Abacus Gardens, Randburg

In June 2017 I was awarded a default court judgement in the Wynberg Magistrates Court in the amount of R 56, 096 plus costs against Abacus Gardens Pty Ltd for damages due to poor / incomplete workmanship. I had a complicated Pool / Jacuzzi conversion that one of the directors, Mr Harold Horne, of Abacus (I later discovered they were not even members of the pool builders association) showed great confidence they could do, at one stage about 2-3 weeks into the job (May 2015) even indicating that the work should only take another 2 weeks to complete, but that ended up being the biggest nightmare of my life that lasted a very long time. During those months, various individuals at Abacus aggressively pushed for progress payments, despite inadequate progress on the project, until I had eventually paid at least 90% of the job, but still had a leaking, malfunctioning jacuzzi installation in my pool. After about 7 months of struggling with them to get them to finish the work properly and fix the malfunctioning / leaking installations, in December 2015, the other director, Mr Timothy Horne came to look and although we may have had differing opinions on what was acceptable or not, he did admit that they had failed to do a proper job. I requested a settlement of R40,000 for us to part ways but Mr T. Horne only offered only R20,000 which he eventually said they would / could not pay, after which they closed down their Cape Town operations. I have spent about R80,000 on resurfacing the pool, fixing all the water leaks where they installed Jacuzzi nozzles that didn't work properly and a counter current jet, repairing water damaged pumps and blowers etc. I submitted a conservative claim for the R56k that was awarded by the court, however, upon attempting the recover the money, the sheriff found that Abacus were no longer at their premises and my lawyers believed that The Hornes had shut the business down.