A detailed account of Everlast Construction's (lic 986126) dishonest shady business practices

Month: August 2016

Everlast Construction files an invalid lien against my house

Shortly after I created this website, Everlast Construction filed a mechanic’s  lien against my house.

If you don’t know what a mechanics lien is, it’s basically a method for anyone who does work on your house to ensure you pay them for the work that was done. They can file a lien against your house which prevents you from selling it and just in general causes you problems.

There are however certain restrictions in place as to when and how a lien can be placed. One of the simplest ones (in California anyhow) is the 90 day window of completion. Once work has finished, they have 90 days from the last day any work was done to file the lien.  And it has been well past 90 days since the last day any work was done when they filed this lien.

The only reasons I can think of why they would do this is either they are incompetent and don’t know when the work was finished or don’t know what the rules are regarding liens.  Or they did this as an intimidation tactic to try and scare me into taking down this site and my negative reviews.

Either way, this reflects very poorly on Everlast Construction and I think just serves as further proof as to how disreputable and unprofessional they are.

I contacted them and told them to remove the lien, otherwise they would be liable for any legal fees I incur in having the lien removed myself.  And on August 3rd their lawyer said the lien would be removed. As of 8/14/2016 I’m still waiting for notice that the lien has been removed.

Everlast Construction has threatened legal action if I don’t remove my claims

So Everlast Construction’s lawyer sent me a letter basically claiming I’m the big bad wolf and everlast is sweet innocent little red riding hood.

They made several claims in the letter, most of which were false. To be fair, they did point out two things I was mistaken about. The subcontractor who built my deck, ABA Construction, did not in fact have his license suspended, it’s expired.  He does however, as of this date, have an issue with an outstanding bond payment that needs to be resolved before he could renew his license. This why I initially thought his license was suspended. I think everlast is picking at straws here but I don’t have any need to lie.

I was also incorrect about needing to use water resistant sheetrock in the kitchen.

I will refute some of the other claims in the letter (which I will attach to this post) here.

Their lawyer claims I have the ‘gall’ to blame everlast for screwing up the final payment when the event that triggered the screw up was everlast trying to cash a check we gave them that did not have sufficient funds in the account.

In fact, Everlast Construction screwed up the payments three times.

1. the $10,000 check that bounced did so because everlast failed to follow our directions – we told them to wait 2-3 days for us to transfer funds, and they did not. So they owe us a $35 bounced check fee.  And even if this bounced check was our fault – what sort of company just loses $10,000 since it was redeposited and cleared the account a day later? And the reason the check bounced – Everlast broke the payment schedule in our contract and showed up one day demanding a $10,000 payment, which is why the money wasn’t sitting in our account.

2. They subsequently lost a payment of $20,000 dollars and I willingly agreed to go to the bank to try and help them locate it, even though it was clearly their problem as the check was cashed by someone from everlast and I had no obligation at all to help them. They did eventually find the money – again – what kind of company loses $20,000 after depositing it?

3. when they sent the final bill they again screwed up the final amount.  Even though the contract stated a total of $103,000 they had a total of $110,002.23 and they were missing $10,000 from the total we had paid to that date.

So somehow a $10,000 bounced check results in a $7002.23 increase in the final payment.

The lawyer further claims that the photos I posted are misleading in terms of work completed. I never once claimed they didn’t finish the work. It’s how they finished it. Finishing the work is almost besides the point if it takes 3x as long as it should have. And you have to be on the job site managing the work yourself because no one from everlast was managing it. And it means you have no functioning kitchen, not even a kitchen sink, for 6 months. Or a backyard because it’s being used as a garbage dump for 6-7 months.

You’ll notice the lawyer said I had to retract all of my false assertions, not just the ones listed in the letter. Well, if I had so many false assertions, don’t you think they lawyer would list them out? The fact is that my account of what everlast did is my honest accounting of it. If I made a mistake, such as saying ABA’s license was cancelled when it really just can’t renewed due to an outstanding bond payment issue, I will admit to it.

I also find it interesting that a company that’s so strongly protesting it’s innocence would have offered to pay me $10,000, on the condition I remove all my reviews, if they are truly innocent.

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