A young student couple claim they were left almost £10,000 out of pocket when a builder took money from them without completing the work.
Luke Watson had recently moved to Dundee from England to start a degree at Dundee University.
He and his partner, Alessia Monesi, bought a property on Aboyne Avenue, just before the start of the academic year.
The couple had saved enough cash to convert the loft into a storage room and used popular social media page Facebay Dundee to search for a tradesman.
Luke, who is 23, said he came across builder Jason Christie on the site and at first all seemed well.
Before the work on their home was complete, Mr Christie demanded the final payment, then stopped showing up.
Luke said he handed over £8,500 to the builder, and that the work was never finished.
The young student said Mr Christie, who traded at the time as J&L Developments, came up with far-fetched excuses as to why he could not finish the work.
At one point, he said he had been pulled over and arrested by police for drink driving while on the way to “finish” the work.
Luke said: “As he approached what I believe was the end of the job, he just flat out refused to finish the work without getting the final payment, which seemed strange, but we obliged and handed him the money.
“After he received the cash, he just kept failing to show up.
“We kept trying to call him; he would come up with a whole host of excuses saying why he wouldn’t be there that day. At one point he phoned to say he was stuck in traffic.
“One of the stranger answers we had was when he said: ‘I’ll be there when I can, I’m 30 to 45 minutes away’.
“Then he called back, an hour later to say he had been pulled over by the police for drink driving. Then he said to us ‘actually it wasn’t drink driving, I was pulled over for road tax and I spent a night in the cells’.
“In total, we spent £8,500 on renovation work for what should have been a loft conversion into a pretty standard storage room.
“He put massive holes in the ceiling and just left it like that. I have had to pay someone else £800 to finish the job, but that might get closer to £2,000 once it is finished.
“I have tried to pursue the matter through the civil court and also raise the problem with trading standards, but it is difficult because he has shut down his original company who he carried out the work under at the time and set up as a new enterprise.
“My partner and I are a young couple who have had to put up with all of this, which has been terrible. I can’t believe someone could take such a large amount of money and then not feel they need to finish off the work they’ve been paid to carry out.”
The Courier attempted to contact Mr Christie but he could not be reached on any of the numbers provided.
He is listed as the owner of J&L Developments – a private limited company –which dissolved on May 30 this year, having set-up in 2015.
A spokesperson for trading standards said they were aware of the complaint raised by Mr Watson.
