i have a feeling :

1) he is a chinese contractor
2) he already profit a lot from your rm150K
3) he tried to squeeze in more money by telling you it's free, then later only cheat you for more money
4) he knows he can cheat you easily because no black and white provided.

---

Added on July 17, 2011, 3:05 ami think he is not stressing on the word "FREE". after reading what he actually says,
he is not comfortable with the fact that his contractor says it's free but yet later comes back to him asking for money.
in other words, even before the contractor says he will do it for free, the contractor should
have known some estimation of his OWN COST and yes, whether the contractor rugi or not, actually is none of his business.
Im not sure why so many people here stress on the word "FREE". He's trying to explain to you guys about ethics. What
his contractor is doing is called cheating. I believe if you say people need to cari makan, yes there's always a plus and minus...but obviously not until thousands of difference i guess.

and unfortunately for him, he trust his contractor too much. That is a big NO NO. Now, that is about what he is talking...however, TS you should also think about trying to get the contractor to finish your remaing work. So, for that, I think you should tell your contractor to finish whatever work he needs to do, and then see of there's any defects then need to do touch up, and then only pay the rm5K. You have to think if you can get someone else to do the remaining work for rm5K or not, else please tell him to finish the remaing work and put in rm5K into his arse...and end of story.

my advise to you : im not sure if you are a cost effective person or a stingy person, but either way, you need to know in certain situations, it's best to pay a little more just to get done with this...you need to choose wisely contractor, and hope you can also advise who is that lucky contractor to get a rm150K work ?

This post has been edited by sakura888: Jul 17 2011, 03:15 AM

simple, then why did the contractor say it's free(for whichever work he says) ? since you take the effort to elaborate so long. you can argue until the cow comes home, but the main point is Why say it's free ? ( please note that the customer dont have any background in this field, so please dont expect the customer to even disbelief the contractor he is lying when the contractor SAY IT'S FREE, and also you are implying that before the contractor even started his work, he dont calculate his profit ? Any businessman who is doing this way, wont be long in this industry. It's like the contractor is desperate for business and just hentam the price in the quotation ?) Im not sure if the TS did expect the staircase is done free ?

between, i really think you miss the main point here, you keep defining, explaning, and wondering about the word FREE, when the actual issue is about the ACTION OF SAYING IT'S FREE, not the word itself.

This post has been edited by sakura888: Jul 17 2011, 01:10 PM

then the contractor should have CALCULATE his profit even before saying it's free or even before the work is being done. but once the contractor have said, do you think it's the customer problem anymore ? seriously ?

true nobody will do things for free, but again another main point here, dont expect the customer to carry the burden for a contractor's mistake. If the customer is good person, he will do that at his own goodwill. I think there should be a negotiation here between the contractor and the customer, instead of applying stubbornness here. Life is not perfect, so both also have to at times give in.

This post has been edited by sakura888: Jul 17 2011, 01:18 PM

so you mean life is not perfect so it's ok for the contractor to do such things ?

what's wrong with i join yesterday and start to do posting ?