Deal wasn’t set in concrete

By Lachlan Ellis

A Beremboke man is wanting to warn the community to be careful about paying out large monetary deposits on projects, after he was ripped off thousands of dollars.

Jody Smallacombe employed a local Ballan concreter to do some work at his rural property in January, and said he was pressured into paying a deposit of around $5,000.

Not long after paying the deposit, Mr Smallacombe said the concreter stopped coming to work at the property, and wouldn’t answer calls or text messages about when he would return to finish the job.

“I needed some concrete pads put down, quite large, 4.4 metres in diameter, for water tanks to go on. I rang some different concreters up and ended up settling with probably the worst one I could’ve employed,” Mr Smallacombe told the Moorabool News.

“He started hounding me for half the deposit money…the job was worth about $11,500 all up. He kept on hounding me all the time, saying things like ‘you need to book in, I’ve got a lot of work on’…I said to my wife, ‘what do you think?’ and she said ‘he seems alright, we’ll go along with him’. I ended up transferring $5,000 into his account.

“As soon as he’s got the $5,000, I didn’t hear from him for two weeks. I sent about 20 text messages, I rang lots of times, didn’t get any response at all…as soon as he got the money, he just dropped me like a hot scone.”

Weeks went by without a response, and Mr Smallacombe contacted the police, who then called the concreter for an explanation.

To read the full story – Simply click on the following link

https://issuu.com/themooraboolnews/docs/mn_2022-05-03/4

in the 3 May 2022 edition
OR
pick up a paper around your town.