Asked by Brett Maynard from Northumberland County, Ontario Canada

 

Hello Aaron,

I just recently stumbled across your site, and like it very much. I hope that it will become a useful tool to my company as well as others on your site.
My company Bored Barn has been in the salvage and reclamation of old period barns and homesteads for several years.

Within the last 6-8 months, there has been an influx of people claiming to “take down barns for free”, or “we pay for your barn” across Ontario, Canada. Unfortunately, they are giving companies like ours a bad name.

Due to the higher unemployment rate and the demand for barn board (that is dropping) several people feel that this industry is the new “goldrush”. While these people make a desirable sales pitch, the property owners are also driven by cost. However once they have fallen prey to these people it is often too late.

The scam is that these companies will often offer to clean up everything in exchange for the wood, or even go as far as offering $500-$1500.00 for the barn and still offer to clean everything up.

Not true. The people strip all of the usable interior and exterior board and a couple beams and leave the less desirable skeleton that has been butchered even for a kit along with the scrap.

The owners have often called us to say that the cost to seek legal recourse is far greater than to just have the site cleared. Unfortunately when the reputable companies like ours try to explain this to customers at the beginning, they feel that we are doing a sales pitch also.

So my question Aaron is this, is this a common occurrence nationwide, or only across Ontario, Canada? And how can we make more people aware of the various scams such as how to deal with vendors that claim to be insured but aren’t?

I would very much like to hear from your experience.

Kind Regards,

Brett Maynard

Bored Barn

[email protected]