Building Work : the Bad and the Ugly

Given the prices for Danish building work, you might be forgiven for expecting high quality.

The worst story I can relate, is living in Hobro, we employed a VVS (translation : plumber) company with a name related to the town (hint!), to put some new plumbing in for our kitchen. As the job dragged on for days, the chap made several trips out of several hours each to "buy parts" and nothing was getting done. Next day, my wife popped out with the kids and I stayed in to work on something at home on the PC. 5 mins after my wife left, so did the VVS guy, finally returning a few hours later. It looks as though he thought I'd gone out too and thus could sneak away.

We called VVS company boss and told him to get rid of this bloke and send a new one out, as it turned out he was working on a cash-in-hand job on a house down the road. This wouldn't be so bad, but aside from not completing our job, the final bill showed he was actually trying to charge us for the hours he was away!!!

We eventually settled on 5000 kroner for the job, as originally agreed, although this took quite a while with the VVS company initally sending a bill for 13000 kroner. They also sacked the employee for pulling the same trick elsewhere, apparently.