For $15,000 That bathtub better be coated in gold, and dispense liquid chocolate. Oh wait, it doesn't, and they didn't finish the job, and now the scam plumbers are leaving harassing phone calls and trying to steal doors and parts from the work site.

Hello,

My name is Dawn Green, and I'm writing on behalf of my grandparents. My 83 year old grandfather was hospitalized for 21 days and was told he would have to go to a nursing home if his bathroom wasn't fitted for his needs( he has Parkinson's). In a panic, my grandmother contacted Premier bathrooms after seeing television ads and ads in the VFW newsletter.

They sent out a salesman who knew of their situation, and he told them if they signed up that day, he would knock off $2000.00 to make the total $15,259.00. My grandmother did this as she didn't want my grandfather to go to the nursing home. She paid $5000.00 by certified check that day, and was told another $5259.00 would be due when the tub arrived. It arrived on August 27th, 2007 and on the next day the installers came out. They ripped out the existing tub and started to do the plumbing for the new one. After they had left that evening, my grandparents thought something looked funny so they had a family friend who is a licensed plumber come take a look at it. He said this is all wrong, and he called the plumbing inspector to take a look. The inspector showed up the morning of August 29th, 2007, and asked the installers to show him their licenses, and they had none, so he shut them down. One of these installers went into the bathroom and stole a drain part to stop the new plumber from finishing the job. The inspector called and threatened them that if this part was not there the next day, he would be filing charges with the police. It arrived the next day.

In the meantime, the licensed plumber finished the plumbing portion and my grandfather came home from the hospital with a catheter, and they had to wait until September 17th, 2007 to get the installers back to thier house to finish. This installation was supposed to take 2 days, it should have been done on August 29th.

They show up on September 17th, and started finishing this, my mother had contacted the Illinois States Attorney General's Office, and the advocate tells them DO NOT pay the last $5000.00, you have been overcharged. My grandmother informs them once they are done that she will not be paying them any more money, and that this has gone to the states attorney's office. On hearing this, one of the installers gets on his cell phone and calls his boss. They talk, he hangs up and walks into the bathroom and proceeds to take off the tub door. He walks out of the bathroom with this door and my grandmother says what are you doing and grabs the door. They have a tug of war over it and my mother intervenes and tells him to leave or she is calling the police. He leaves the house and goes into their garage and my mom follows him and says I told you to leave, and he starts sweeping the garage floor. She tells him again and he finally says fine and gets in to the truck and takes off.

September 18th, 2007. Now the phone calls start. This company is calling saying they are in breach of their contract, and it needs to be settled. My grandmother informs them they should take it up with the states attorney's office and hangs up. This job was to be done in 2 days, per the contract, so they are in breach on their end as well. There have been more phone calls and my grandmother has filed phone harassment charges with the local police.

I honestly hope that something can be done to prevent other elderly or disabled people from being taken advantage of like my family has.

Like others, Pierre had found out the hard way just how extremely expensive international data transfer rates are...

Pleading with AT&T customer service got him retroactively on an international plan for $24.99 for 20mb, and $5 per mb thereafter. He used 205 mb total, so his new bill is $900. Still expensive, but a bit more swallowable than 4 g's.

"It's still a lot," writes Pierre. "T-mobile has a plan $19.99 on a blackberry for emails send or receive wherever you are in the world, why not AT&T?"

We don't know, Pierre, or why AT&T would also offer unlimited international data use at $70 per month to its Blackberry customers and not iPhone (except, you know, because they can make more money), but we do know that you can't just flounce over to Europe and use your American cellphone and expect everything to be all right (know your rate plans!!!), and neither should AT&T/Apple expect that customers will know that either. When traveling and using your iPhone overseas, a warning screen should come up warning customers of the high costs you could be incurring. Maybe a slideshow of images from the Great Depression could play in the background.

Pierre's bill below:

RELATED: iPhone/AT&T $3,000 International Roaming Bill Seves As Cruel Warning

We recently got a letter telling us that a lien had been placed on our house by a company that we'd never done business with. Confused and angry we searched the Internet to see if we could find out how and why this had been done. Eventually we came across Findlaw's page on Mechanics' Liens. The long and short of it is when you do home improvements your property is used as collateral for all related transactions. Even the ones you don't make...

(Photo: girl_named_fred)

For example, let's say you hire a contractor to build a deck for you and the contractor hires a guy to carry the wood from the lumber yard to your house. You don't pay the contractor. The contractor can put a lien on your house. That's logical and fair. Now let's say you pay the contractor, the contractor pays the lumber yard, the contractor pays the rental company for the truck but the contractor spends the money he was going to pay the guy who helped him on hookers and blow. The sub-contractor then gets to go after not the contractor, but after YOU. Since your house is collateral against all transactions, it's your house that gets a lien put against it.

In theory if you hired a GC to build a house for you and the GC doesn't pay his crew or the suppliers you could have to pay for the house twice or you could be legally compelled to sell your house to pay the debt. You, of course, are then responsible for going after the contractor to get your money back.

If this all sounds fundamentally stupid, it gets better. According to the guy who actually filed the lien against our house (who is not a lawyer, but has filed countless liens in his life), most people simply pay the money to avoid the lien going active. It seems that what we had was called a "notification lien" it's not the same as a lien lien. The notification lien basically exists to scare you into working out a deal with the person who placed the lien if
you don't do that, they enforce the lien which is when your credit gets dinged and people can start demanding you sell your house.

Of course this all looks like a system designed to make the contractor not at all liable for their own bills and in practice it, apparently, works out that way a lot. In theory at least you have one big gun you can draw. In my state if you pay a contractor in full and they do not pay their suppliers and their crew resulting in a lien being placed against your property the contractor is guilty of felony theft by taking (as opposed to theft by fraud or murder by death). Unfortunately since a lot of the amounts we're talking about here make getting a lawyer impractical most people either don't sue or go to small claims court and never seek criminal prosecution.

Here's some advice we got from the guy who filed the lien against us (who, according to my wife, could not have been any more friendly and willing to explain this entire process to us and who said, "nobody EVER finds out about this advice the easy way"):

1. When you draw up your contract include in it a clause that lists all subcontractor and suppliers, states that this list cannot be changed without prior notice and approval by you and requires all the people on the list to sign a lien waiver stating that if the contractor defaults on their bills they will will sue the contractor, not you.
2. Open a joint checking account with the contractor so that you can keep track of the accounting yourself.
3. Include in your contract a clause to see all receipts for all materials.

Apparently while a lot of people will balk at disclosing their markup, most would rather have work than not have work and "if they're a reputable contractor, they've already signed contracts like this more than once." You might want to consider simply paying the subcontractors yourself, however some information I found while perusing various legal forums on the Internet say that if you do that you want to make sure you draw up contracts that prevent you from looking too much like an "employer" to the IRS (you know, responsible for withholding payroll taxes and the such). There are two lawyers in my immediate family, but I'm not one of them, so you can take that with a grain of salt.

Obviously the other good consumer rules apply, check references. Use contractors you get through referral, check the BBB, etc. That being said, we did as much of that as we could and apparently in over a decade this is the first time something like this has happened between our contractor and the filer of the lien. Construction isn't the most stable business and if it comes down to your contractor paying their mortgage or paying for $300 in lumber a lot will probably pick not living in a box by the river.

I hope this helps someone not get surprised like we did and gives them some idea what questions to ask if they do. Like most things, rules for this change from state to state (and Canada has it, too) so you're best of consulting a local consumer/real estate law attorney to find out the ins and outs of your area.

Anyone ever been in a similar situation? What did you do? — BEN POPKEN