Newmarket resident Pam Martin thought she was getting a good deal on her driveway paving. Instead she said she was left with poor work and a big pile of rubble on her lawn.
Martin said she was cutting the grass out front of her house when she was approached by a man who said he was doing other paving work nearby.
“He had an Irish accent, very charming, and said, you know, that they were in the area doing paving and had excess,” she said.
He told her to pave her driveway would normally cost $6,000 but he could do it for $4,500, according to Martin. She said no but he countered with $3,500. They eventually came to $3,400 and Martin got her husband, who agreed. Martin said they got to work that same day.
“They came back in the afternoon and started putting asphalt down. So, what was happening was it was sort of like a top-up over our existing driveway,” she said.
That is when they first noticed issues. Martin said the man informed them he would be putting down three-and-a-half inches of asphalt but, as her husband was watching, he doubted they were really doing that much.
“‘Look, there’s no way,’ he said. ‘That is going to crack over what is there. It’s not three-and-a-half inches. You have to dig out that portion.’ So, anyway, they ended up doing that,” she said.
While this was going on, the paving company had also spoken with the neighbours across the street, who also agreed to have their driveway done. Martin said the neighbours paid $5,800 for it.
After the work was done, both properties were left with a pile of debris and asphalt at the edge of their lawns. Martin said she phoned and they said they would have a truck there the next day. It never came, and though she kept reaching out they eventually stopped responding.
Martin said to avoid being fined by the town for having this mess in her yard, she contacted 1-800-GOT-JUNK, which quoted her $350 for the job.
“The poor guys; it took them about an hour. I felt so sorry for them. They had to pickaxe the stuff. At this point it had kind of congealed and it was heavy, so anyway, they took it away for us,” Martin said.
Her neighbours, who had a slightly smaller pile, according to Martin, worked on theirs themselves and chipped away at it slowly and made runs to the dump.
Aside from having to deal with the mess left behind, Martin said the work was not well done.
“We didn’t go on it for four days. And right now it still feels spongy. It still feels like there’s dips and what have you,” she said. “(My neighbour) tells me she can’t even park at the top of the driveway, it’s so thin up there. She said, ‘I’m afraid to park. It’s just going to wreck it.’”
After all that, Martin said she also learned it was overpriced, after she heard from a friend who had what she called a reputable company come and pave her driveway, which cost $2,100.
“It was stupid of us to actually, you know, let these people do it. We should have had people quote and stuff like this, but he seemed like a nice person,” Martin said.
She said driving around she saw others in the neighbourhood who also had big piles of rubble by their driveways and realized the same thing had happened to them. And it’s not just Newmarket. Aurora resident Carole Simmons found herself in a similar situation.
She said a man knocked on the door and spoke to her husband about paving. She said they heard him out because “our driveway needed it badly.”
While she said her husband questioned how quickly they would be able to get everything done, they decided to go for it, but told the man they would need some time to get the money together. They were told it wouldn’t be a problem and work started the next morning.
Simmons said the work appeared to be going smoothly. They were adding asphalt and pulling some material up, leaving it in a pile in her yard. She said they asked them if they would be removing it and they were assured the company would come back that night for it.
After a couple of days, Simmons said they got the money, about $5,000, and paid them, but the pile was still there. She said they phoned every day and even went to the building in Concord, where they said they were based, only to find out they were never there.
“It was a huge pile with huge pieces of asphalt and my husband has a bad back. I, who (am) 60, will have to get a sledge hammer and break up these pieces, put it in something, us drive it to the dump and that’s the way it was going to have to get done because we spent our allotted money. We couldn’t spend any more money to get rid of it,” she said.
Fortunately for Simmons, she said a man heard their story and offered to come take the pile away free of charge and all he wanted in return was for them to sign a petition he had going about housing for addicts.
She said she has since realized there are more problems with the paving job that was done.
“We didn’t know the price of getting your your driveway paved. We now know that it’s not just them not picking up the asphalt. It’s not a good job because it’s just a single layer,” she said.
“It’s a total scam and we got scammed,” Simmons added. “I didn’t want other people to be scammed.”
Both women wanted to share their stories to warn others to be aware and do their research.
“I think the important lesson that we learned is don’t trust people like that who stop in your driveway,” Martin said. “I just want people to be aware.”
