Condo Kitchen Remodel Nightmare

[Faustian]

Wow Gadfly!

 

I admire your restraint...! I'd have been all over this shitbag. At the least he urgently requires the attention of the law. However, I appreciate your reluctance, but what he did amounts to theft and fraud.

 

Regardless, if you require a friend, let me know. C*nts like him don't understand rules and laws...that's for the little people...

[shygye]

Maybe the store used the MiB to force the guy to pay for the stolen merchandise.

[..]

Maybe the store used the MiB to force the guy to pay for the stolen merchandise.

They certainly should have. Gaddy handled it 100% correctly, pushing the legal shit to the supplier and letting neighbors know what a cunt this guy is.

 

It *will* work out in the end, to that guy's demise.

 

Not as satisfying as seeing him off in cuffs yourself, but that was the Asian solution. And that's where we are, so that has to be good enough.

 

Cheers,

SD

[Gadfly]

Status

 

It is slowly working out.

 

My Kitchen is taking shape, but more time is needed since they need to special order some parts to fit my kitchen. The parts that had been special ordered based on measurements of my kitchen are apparantly in my neighbour's kitchen.

 

Neighbour's Kitchen is apparantly a nightmare. The parts and counter that were designed to fit my kitchen don't fit his; not even close. Surprise.

 

I had breakfast with another neighbor, and the crooked neighbour is now telling everyone he thought he was directly ordering from, will call it "E Kitchen", through the workers at my place since those workers were from E Kitchen. In his story, E Kitchen is now the bad guy. He says he paid them, but has no documents to prove it.

 

The designers from E Kitchen never even saw his kitchen, let one measured it. The materials he has in there now simply don't work. It's a mess. Lots of nice looking material that doesn't fit in his kitchen. I guess he never thought throug this part of the scam.

 

When E Kitchen complained about the theft, he responded by complaining that E Kitchen's workers did a bad job and never finished. From what I am hearing, neither side is budging in their positions.

 

Older Workers fled the scene when I complained. No one knows where they are. Sort of like the proverbial bus driver that flees the scene of an accident.

 

MiB treating this as a civil dispute. I don't think they want to get involved, and since the thief's kitchen is a mess - he can't use most of the stuff he stole - I am not sure they will really pursue this.

 

We'll see. I am amazed that this guy tried to pull this off. I am now even more amazed that he didn't think this through and realize that a kitchen designed for my condo could not possibly fit his.

 

The story is out, and his reputation in the building is pretty bad. He was never friendly to begin with. He is blaming the old workers, but no one is buying it.

 

It's going to be a bit more inconvenient for me than planned since everything is delayed while they re-order, cut, etc. I thought last night they could finish, but I am now looking at several more weeks.

 

What a mess. I pretty sure my situation will sort itself out. As for the crooked neighbour, things are worse for him now than when this little escapade started.

 

Thailand!

[shygye]

So the thief has store E's goods with no receipt or contract and the MiB say it is a civil matter. Seems the MiB are waiting for some grease for the wheels of Thai justice.

[CTO]

My gut feeling is the only people who'll see time in goal will be the poor stupid workers. Rich neighbor won't, but TIT

[Bangkoktraveler]

Sounds like the crocked neighbor may have to pay the big bucks to get his kitchen back in order. Serves him right if that is how it turns out.

 

It amazes me that the crocked neighbor actually believed he could get away with this crime. He must think all farangs are stupid. What else has he stolen?

[khunsanuk]

Hi,

 

"My gut feeling is the only people who'll see time in goal will be the poor stupid workers. Rich neighbor won't, but TIT "

 

Of course. Even though he is the main culprit, rich people never go to jail in countries like this

 

Actually, not that different in other countries either. The richer you are the less likely you are to do any serious time.

 

Sanuk!

 

[rchapstick]

According to Gaddy, dude drives a $200K car. \

Somehow I doubt he got it thru hard work....

[ranma500]

May I present a scenario:

 

Your neighbour sees that you are having a new kitchen installed.

 

He needs a kitchen himself, and when he sees that what you are getting is good quality, he becomes interested.

 

He knows that it's expensive stuff, so he speaks to the workers installing it.

 

He says to them,

Look, I like the work you're doing. But the price is really expensive.

 

They say,

Yes, a German owns the company. He mainly sells to farang, and it's expensive.

 

He says,

Well, can't we cut him out? You know where he gets his supplies. And surely you get an employee's discount. And hey, maybe a few bits and pieces might disappear from the company's stores and find their way into my kitchen. (Of course, I wouldn't want to know about that.) I'll pay you well, and you make the money instead of the German.

 

 

The workers see this as vastly preferable to the few hundred Baht they make a day normally. They don't really understand why a Smeg hob is better than a cheap Technogas one anyway, and why you have to use expensive granite rather than that cheap stuff at the place on Lad Prao. They reckon they can make money by swapping certain components of the kitchen.

 

So they take on the job, and even get some money up front from the Thai guy - far more money than they're making from the farang kitchen. What a nice guy!

 

And, well... I suppose it is true that they like the Thai customer rather better than the farang one. That's natural, isn't it? And he tells them that if they do a good job, he has lots of friends. They could maybe even start their own kitchen company, and then they wouldn't need to work for the German. They trust him, of course. He drives a fancy car. He must be successful, so he must have lots of successful friends.

 

So, its only natural that perhaps rather more of the good stuff ends up in the Thai kitchen than the farang kitchen.

 

And they might have got away with it, except that the farang customer notices that the stuff that they put in is not the real McCoy. For some reason, he's really fussy.

 

And then the shit hits the fan.

 

The Thai guy protests his innocence. He paid for his kitchen. He gave cash to the guys who worked for the company. Of course he didn't get a receipt. He never asked them to steal bits of another person's kitchen.

 

The workers hear about police visits and realize that they've fucked up, so decide to spend a couple of months back home in Surin until it blows over.

 

The German is left with a hell of a mess. He could maybe lay a charge of receipt of stolen property to try and reclaim the good kitchen equipment. But the police aren't interested.

He has to supply to the farang customer what he said he would, so must replace the equipment himself.

 

Meanwhile the workers have scarpered, and the Thai guy is left with a cobbled together kitchen that's half-built, visits from the police, and all because of the bloody farang who blew the whistle.

 

Doesn't the farang know that what he did was perfectly normal in Thailand? Whenever you are supplied anything in Thailand, you always get the personal number of the install engineer, so that if you want another item, he can get it for you cheap, and you bypass the company. It's standard.

Why do farang have to come here and mess everything up?

 

ranma