We're going for the record!!! :-D 9 months in Italy and I'm already involved in 3 courtcases! I dare anyone to do better, hehehe!
It was to be expected that Nasty Little Nezio would go sulking and moaning with his sollicitor, not coincidentally Big bad Danilo's little nephew. This courtcase isn't cast in stone yet. For the moment his sollicitor has only sent us a very polite registered letter, asking us to pay our good friend Nezio 37.000€ plus 200€ for "sollicitor's intervention". Failure to do so within two weeks will result in further legal action. This figure is, of course, vastly exaggerated and is based on Nezio's calculation, totally neglecting the fact that Nezio can't count. If you subtract the things he counted twice or the works he had planned to do but hasn't carried out, the total is already down by a third.
Unfortunately for Nezio, I don't think he has already informed his sollicitor about the "slight" water problem we're having. It's only a minor detail, I know, but nevertheless I think that his sollicitor would like to know about it. So our sollicitor will take the burden off Nezio and inform him herself with a very kind reply letter. She will also include the expert's report that will soon be finished. The expert eventually found the drainage tube, just put in the ground like that without any cloth to keep the holes in the tube from being covered in dirt. The tube was also laid at a measured depth of... 30cm, whereas our foundations go down as much as 70-80cm. And this measurement was carried out somewhere half way. Since this tube is supposed to be laid in a slope, we can only guess what the depth at the beginning would be. According to the expert there is no doubt where the water in our walls originates from. The problem now is that since we had a wall constructed behind our house to stop the hill from crumbling down, there is no more room for a crane or bobcat to make excavations behind the house. Whoever is going to repair the damages will probably have to dig by hand. Through thick clay and rock.
But I haven't told you the best bit yet. A couple of days ago, we received a visit from the local stone cutter. He's a very friendly man but he had a very delicate message. He had already been asking our good friend Nezio about the money the latter owed him for the external window sills on our house (which had already been installed in autumn 2009). And do you know what Nezio told him?
- "They refuse to pay me so if you want your money you'll have to ask them!"
So that's why the poor stone cutter came to visit us. We explained that we indeed had paid Nezio. We've paid him about 3/4 of the total amount due and we've certainly paid him for the works carried out over a year ago. And then we've showed him our internal walls. The man's eyes opened so wide that his eyeballs almost popped out. He immediately understood what a nasty trick Nezio had played on him. He also showed us the total amount due. It was about 600€. This gave Christine a shock and when the man had gone, she immediately leapt upstairs to find her notes. In Nezio's estimate, he claims that the materials for the window sills, installation excluded, amounted to almost 1.150€! Nearly twice as much! We had already found a couple of serious discrepancies between Nezio's price for the materials and their real price. But this was obviously a rip off.
So, what are we going to do? We are going to the stone cutter and pay him his 600€. Not only will it make this man very happy, it'll also be another blow to Nezio because we can then subtract another 1.150€ from his bill. "Ah... of course, because we've already paid for the window sills! You asked the stone cutter to send his bill to us, didn't you?"
Oh... I'm really beginning to enjoy this! :-D
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