Catherine Armstrong knows she may have made a mistake when hiring a man to build her a fence around her house.
“It was a very poor decision,” she said.
The Lake Country woman said the decision involved a $2,000 e-mail transfer of money she made to a man she found on Facebook.
The two connected on the phone and Armstrong said that’s when they came to a verbal agreement about the fence project.
“Although he doesn’t do wood, he does vinyl, he was willing to give me a break and just help me out and we agreed on $4,000 as a rough guesstimate,” Armstrong said.
Armstrong said the man asked for a 50 per cent deposit so she email transferred him $2,000 at the end of September.
“He was supposed to build it and I was going to give him the other $2,000 but he changed it and wanted another $500 so I agreed but I wanted him here when I gave him the $500 so I could feel like something got started,” she said.
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The work has not yet started. In fact, Armstrong said the man hasn’t even stepped foot on the property.
She said she now knows she shouldn’t have transferred money to someone she hadn’t even met but she blames a head injury she sustained in a serious car accident years ago for her mistake.
“He should give me my money back,” Armstrong said.
The man Armstrong hired is Matthew Beal, who owns Post2Coast Vinyl Fencing.
While he declined an on-camera interview, Beal did agree to speak to Global Okanagan over the phone.
“I don’t feel I’ve done anything wrong,” he told us.
Beal said he won’t return the $2,000 because he’s already spent it on material for Armstrong’s fence. He also said he first wants Armstrong to prove she can pay the full amount before he gets the job started.
“I will not start the job until she has full payment,” Beal said. “I am not willing to do that until you can show me you have $4,000 pretty much, until you can pay me at the end of the job.”
Since he won’t return the cash deposit, Global News asked Beal why not give Armstrong the material he’s purchased.
He replied, “Why is a reporter calling, like she (Catherine) has my number.”
According to its Facebook page, the address for Post2Coast Vinyl Fencing is 3500 Carrington Road in West Kelowna but when Global Okanagan visited the site, there was no such business at that location.
Beal admitted on the phone that’s not the actual address for his business but said there’s good reason for that.
“I operate my business out of my home,” he said.
When asked why he would put a phony address on the Facebook site, Beal replied,” so people don’t know where I live”.
While Armstrong considers her next step in trying to get her money back, she’s advising others to learn from her mistake.
“Trust no one ever,” she said.
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