Niamh Shackleton
A homeowner responded after a team of builders she hired to build her driveway smashed up the concrete.
Pay disputes aren't fun for anyone, and this disgruntled group of tradesmen felt they had been 'ripped off' by the woman who hired them, and proceeded to destroy all their hard work as a result.
A video of the ordeal went viral at the start of the year, with the person behind the camera stating: "You should have paid. And it's going to cost more to get it all dug up, taken away and poured again."
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Tradesperson Jesse Crowe from Logan in Queensland allegedly negotiated a fee of AU $6,000 (around US $4,012) for the job with the homeowner Viola.
This consisted of laying a new surface on a driveway, which was attached to the side of her home.
Viola had initially paid AU $2,500 ($1,670) for the work, but after getting a dispute with Crowe over the quality of the job and the removal of debris she allegedly refused to pay the remaining AU $3,500 ($2,340).
Viola later addressed the situation and insisted that the builders 'did what they wanted, not what I wanted'.
“[They told me] you pay now or we will smash the concrete,” she continued to share to 7News.
Viola was then asked whether she would have paid the workers once the job was completed, to which she replied: “Of course, but they refused to finish the job.”
She also alleged that the builders tried to 'scare' her, and opted to smash up the driveway knowing that she was home alone at the time.
Viola and her family were then tasked with repairing the driveway for themselves.
Crowe also spoke to the news outlet and said that he'd grown tired of being 'ripped off'.
He said: "I take pride in my work and I love concrete, I love doing it," adding: "I just want to get paid."
Crowe said that he had been in the building trade for a 'long time' and had always been 'doing the right thing by people'.
He added: "They don't want to pay, at the end of the day, what are you going to do?"
The ordeal is said to have caused Viola so much stress at the time that she ended up being hospitalized.
The homeowner said she 'collapsed in the shopping centre two days' after the incident, which Viola claimed to have been stress-induced.