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Comment by jvanderbot | Hacker News Reader

This seems like the just-world response. But how can one force this? If they just say "No" you end up taking them to court and delaying the construction of your house. You endanger the contracts for downstream work.

I had a landscaper screw up just about everything they could building a retaining wall, and they couldn't even get me an extra bag of grass seed after the fact.

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Depends on the country. In France, and I think in Europe, you have 4 (IIRC) legally mandated visits during the construction. At each one of those visits, you have the right to suspend the next payment (you pay a legally mandated percentage of the house after each one of those visits).

I also had measurements issues and a contractor that tried to force it to me. I just said I will not pay until it's fixed. The next week everything was fixed.

That makes a lot of sense as a system. No courts, just I'm not paying you until it meets specifications

Surely, a delayed house is better than a house built incorrectly, no?

Something something Nintendo video games....

The guy a few comments up wouldn't mind a day one patch lol

You tell the inspector. Point out that the hallway is 25cm short of code. I'm assuming since they are using metric they aren't in the US, but at least here the contractor can't say no the inspector without losing their license.

so what? delay it. as you see the house is messed up, that's going to be an issue when it's time to sell. many people will notice a very narrow stairwell or tiny bathrooms. when we were house shopping there were many houses we passed because the stairs were too narrow, or too steep or the bathroom was tiny or some room was so tiny it didn't qualify as a bedroom in our mind or the ceilings were too low. all those tiny flaws cost the seller serious money and reduced the number of buyers.

To add more context, the staircase is within local building standards minimums. Our architect at least was able to enforce that.

The bathrooms have slightly smaller tubs, though we scratched one of the larger tubs while trying to fit it in, and the supplier wouldn't accept it. It's still in our garage lol.

We were building on a contract where we paid for material at cost, and the contractor made their fee on the labour. They were inexperienced, I'd obviously never use them nor recommend them. We made them pay for most of the damages that we could quantify, and for things like crooked walls/non-90° corners we couldn't really do much.

To an untrained eye, the house is not bad, but we know where all the mistakes are.

Also im the US builders routinely create a separate shell corporation for each job so it can simply go bankrupt if they get sued rather than paying out.

I routinely check the age of a contractor license for just this reason

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