A Primrose Park family say they have paid over R100 000 to a builder who left them with a broken building.
Shereen Noordien said she made contact with David Januarie late last year to build a separate entrance for their 35-year-old son in Greenhaven, but was left with swak workmanship which he has refused to repair.
“When he started in November, he did a lot of jobs on the house like the roof, ceiling, tiling, electricity, cupboards, windows and skirting,” says Shereen.
“For all the jobs, he came to us with quotes which we felt were reasonable, so we transferred the money to his account before every job because the prices were good.
“My son-in-law also worked with David at a few jobs before so he seemed trustworthy, but when we checked after he was done in February, we saw that all of the jobs were done with inferior [materials].”
The pensioner said they had to call in and pay other builders to fix the work done by David as their son needed to move in.
“The roof was missing so much stuff like flash band and polybuttons that, if it rained, the water would just fall through.
“The vibracrete was not put up properly and you could just push it over without any effort, some of the doors were skewed and the windows could not even close properly.
“Every job he did was with inferior products and it was done poorly. He simply overcharged us for stuff and did a rush job.”
The 67-year-old says the Brackenfell-based builder dodged them when it was time for the final inspections.
“We were supposed to meet for a final check after the job was done but on the day, he had sent the keys with somebody else so I think he knew he did a bad job and was now running away.
“Whenever we tried to contact him after he left, his number just went to voicemail and he never answered us back.
“If you add it all up, we gave David over R100 000 but we had to pay the other builders, those costs were just over R10 000.”
When the Daily Voice tried to contact Januarie, his number went straight to voicemail while the WhatsApp messages only showed one tick. He didn’t reply to queries