They will always come down quite a lot when you say no. We had a couple of blokes call at the house offering to do the same type work. My wife tells me to just say 'no thanks'. She's far more amenable to deal with on the doorstep than I am..lol. Anyway, I told the lad, he was about about 20 years old ,that when I want a job doing I don't have it done because someone knocks on the door offering to do it and I don't have jobs done by anyone who comes door-knocking, anyway. He didn't take too kindly to this and as he turned to go up the drive told me 'F-off.' The next day, to my dismay, I saw that young man on the garage roof of the house behind...bottom of our garden but to the left . It's a cul-de-sac behind us. What he did was to get on the roof with a high pressure hose and blast the tiles. As you may know, roof tiles are coated with a textured surface for weatherproofing and durability and a high-pressure hose blast will strip it off. The grit and dirt went all over the place including onto our fence and back lawn and it also went all over the adjacent side of our neighbour's house and their conservatory roof. I have to say that my neighbour tries to get everything done on the cheap. Needless to say, they left the job without washing it all down. Infact, I offered to do the conservatory roof as it was not easy for my neighbour to access all of it . I did,infact do that and got a box of biscuits for my trouble..Lol. When I went round to see him shortly afterwards, to give him the name of the brothers we have who do our gutters and downpipes each year, he wanted his doing, he pointed out that these two herberts had high pressure-hosed his drive,too. The garage roof cost £200 and the drive..£250. The road outside his house is the turning circle of the cul-de-sac and guess what ? It was covered in the grit and dirt from the drive. He was going to hose it down.
The roof looked awful...still does.It's now 'raw beige'. It has an apex, so sloped both sides. I suggested to him that he should never give work to people like that who cold-call. They were probably travellers who, as we know, rarely travel other than round local neighbourhoods ripping people off, especially the elderly and vulnerable. Get recommended local workmen.
Just as a post-script. The neighbour asked me who does our gutters because he wants his done at the back...which faces us. I told him, we have our gutters and downpipes cleaned each year by them (brother)and they are are excellent and trustworthy and we recommend them to people who have actually had them do jobs and are now on their books for annual visits. That neighbour behind did have the gutter done but by someone-else. Fair enough BUT..the gutter front needed cleaning and the young man had actually cleaned a third of it and I shouted up..no too loudly..lol.."Nice to see the gutter front being cleaned. He shouted back..also not too loudly, that my neighour had just told him not to clean the gutter front just the inside of the gutter. It was to save money..he won't pay said the lad. Hard to believe,really. So, the lad stopped. One third is clean ,the rest is still dirty. Not long after I was talking to my neighbour over the fence and he said they'd just got back from a holiday in Dubai. Was it good,I asked ? Yes, but quite expensive and he said they'd been a few times. He then went on to tell me his wife was up north visiting her parents and an elderly driver had come out of a side road and crashed into their car and it was going to be expensive to fix it.. paid for .by the other party's insurance ,of course. I commiserated with him saying it was a pity as it was a lovely 5-Series BMW. No..they'd changed it. It was an E -Class 350 Mercedes..Lol.I suppose you can afford holidays like that and cars like that if you don't have to pay for the gutters to be cleaned as well as cleared..Lol.
People can be very strange, can't they...
