Thank you for the Cliff Notes, They definitely make the points stick. However, while I was a volunteer financial at Air Force Family Services and later as a County Volunteer Income Tax Advisor (VITA), just stating the rules, the procedures, etc… many times needs context to drive the points home…
And it the Context the often gets long winded. I try to write to the “lowest common denominator” and that is not intended to insult, embarrass, or humiliate anyone, but for the person who just have no experience that a particular arena, the first time car buyer and other who might have fallen prey to the slick tongue sales person.
Granted, I have a jaded view on this, I served for over 30-years in the Air Force, and after I retired, I never went back to the Rat Race, so all my experience is limited to senior officers and senior civilians in the Air Force and Government Service. But Whenever I had a presentation to make, the “White Paper” (executive summary or point paper) served little than an intro to the full-blown, long winded, epic novel version… On more than one occasion, I pulled from Aesop’s Fables to drive a point home…
Telling someone that “Everything is negotiable” means little more than Sonny Boy trying to negotiate and “extra hour later than curfew” from his Father… A lot of folks see a printed contract and think it’s printed in stone, it’s not and if they are not given an example, the Cliff Notes are not driven home…
I always found the executive summary useful. Since it summarized the remainder of the document, it told me whether the report contained the information I was looking for. That saved me a lot of time finding useful technical information for my work.
When I wrote technical documents, creating the executive summary helped me in understanding the subject and sometimes caused me to edit the document body if the summary and the balance of the document didn’t agree well enough.
I read it all, and I’m glad it worked out for you in court. I wouldn’t trust anyone just coming around asking if I’d like for them to fix my roof, it’d have to be insurance approved workers/companies, even if it took longer to fix. As you found out, it sounded like it took longer to fix it twice than it would have waiting for the first go around.
One final point, like a lot of neighborhoods, we had a snoopy neighbor who would “patrol” the neighborhood looking for gossip… When they were tearing off the condemned installation, we were outside watching and she stopped by. She did not know the details of our issues and she asked why they were tearing off the “new” roof, my wife came up with the perfect response, “We didn’t like the color…” Old Snoopy said, “But isn’t that the same color?” and my wife responded, “Precisely.”
My wife then looked at her watch and said, “Opps, look at the time, gotta go, nice talking to you.” And we went inside, leaving our neighbor to stare at the roof, scratching her head…
Based on the responses to my recent postings, I think I need to admit, some lessons were hard learned.
Executive Brief…
OP got hoodwinked.
OP overpaid.
Op did not know his rights…
Before we were assigned to Italy and received our Lessons in Negotiating, we owned an older brick home and its roof was in need or replacing… We contacted several companies and one, associated with an aluminum siding company, offered us a contract to re-roof the house, the large 12"x24" deck and the 12’x16’ shed and at the same time, replace the old rain gutters/downspouts and cover all the wood trim around the roof and soffits in aluminum siding…
The offer was very competitive to the other offers that did not offer the gutters or siding…
After we signed the contract and gave them a deposit, they came back a week later and the salesman apologized and explained he miscalculated the size of the roof and the new price was $500 more. He kept emphasizing that he had a signed contract and he needed the extra money to do the work…
We were naive and with him having a “Signed Contract” we missed the entire point of a “signed contract” and never thought about just saying. “Right you are, the contract is signed and you will complete the work for the agreed upon price…”
We wrote him another check for the $500 and he gave us the Modification to the Contract (the Addemdum…) with the new price…
We had hail one night. After promoting by neighbors the insurance adjuster inspected. Wrote a check for 75% on the spot. I got a couple references from a friend at the lumber yard and got a quote and picked one. I paid $2000 to commit. He ordered the shingles but didn’t make it that summer. The next summer we were first on his list and they did a great job. No big contract, just a one page agreement and worked out fine. We just had damaged shingles no big problem. The same guy did my neighbors too. It just depends on the circumstances but the guys at the lumber yard know who to trust.
Said this before but when we were building our cabin 200 miles away we dealt with the local lumber yard. We had a basic floor plan but I was still working on the blue prints. Wife got a call from her cousin saying how the construction was going. Huh, never signed anything. The builders were just doing it the way they thought it should be done. Of course we had more details as the thing progressed but the wanted to get it closed in before winter. No contract, no problems, no disagreements. Quality work. Small town America.