Don't Get Ripped Off! Do Your Research! My Parents Just Got Scammed - Story

Hello Steemins, unfortunately I have a not so funny blog for you today. This one is a warning to all of you out there.

So my parents have been wanting to have the gutters done for a while. They are a little bit too old to do this for themselves now and didn't want me or my brother to do it either as this would mean climbing to a certain height. This is understandable. This means that when they got a flyer through the door from a 'company' offering general property maintenance they jumped at the chance!

After a quick phone call, they were quoted £30 for the gutters to be cleaned so they would no longer leak. A bargain in their minds.

Or not.....
Shortly after this phone call, two men arrived in a bright yellow van. There was no logo or information on the van that showed they were from any sort of company.
However, my parents being the sort of people that only see kindness and rarely see anything else, they went ahead and set the workmen to the job they were here for.

This sounds normal enough so far, right?

Well. Shortly after they started working, my father went out to see the progress. The tiles were off and there was some work being done with the metal. He was told there was a 'problem' and this would now cost him upwards of £750 or £590 if my parents could pay them in cash. Somehow, my father decided that he would pay this enormous amount of money as for some reason he was persuaded this needed to be done. (Spoiler, there was no problems with it, but now there is).

So the work was done, my parents were told by the workers that all the drains were cleaned around the house as well as new tiles being cemented in and the work was done. They then asked the workers to write a receipt. This receipt turned out to be an A4 lined piece of paper that said £590 and two or three bullet points of the jobs that were completed.

As they drove away, my parents went outside to realise that it looked a little odd. The workers had taped a few tiles together with what looked like duct tape. The cement they used had the consistency of sand and was not cement at all.

Having found out about this later, I googled them. Nothing on google. I found the facebook of the gentlemen and apparently they used fake names. I did a check of their vans license plate and their tax was unpaid.

In hindsight, my parents should have handled this better and they know that, but what can you do in this situation?

So, the lesson here today is, be careful who you hire! Make sure you research everyone who comes to do any form of work for you and don't let yourself be ripped off! My parents are having to hire another person to come fix this, so let's all wish them good luck.

P.s. The worst part of this entire thing for them is, they didn't even clean the gutters apparently!

Please comment and let me know what exactly they should do about this, if there is anything they can do.
Thanks for reading