A cowboy builder who fleeced a customer out of almost \u00a330,000 and left her home at risk of falling has been jailed<\/p>\n
Wolverhampton mum has spoken of the devastation a cowboy builder caused.<\/p>\n
Andrew Tedstill took \u00a329,000 of Affy Paul’s money after threatening to knock her walls down unless she kept paying up.<\/p>\n
He walked away from the job after bleeding her dry and leaving the family home with a leaking roof and no heating or washing facilities.<\/p>\n
Ms Paul explains how she had trusted the builder to complete the work on their home, but instead was left facing a further \u00a320,000 bill to put the botched job right.<\/p>\n
“I trusted Andrew to come and do the work in my house and as it unfolded he was a rogue trader,” she said.<\/p>\n
“And it’s actually had an emotional, physical and financial impact on my life and my children’s life.”<\/p>\n
Affy paid Tedstill stage payments and questioned him when he wasn’t completing each stage before moving onto the next.<\/p>\n
She added: “It was a case of it was all about the money, that’s all it was, it was about the financial gain for him.<\/p>\n
“But it was a life-changing lifestyle for myself and my children that I wasn’t expecting to have.”<\/p>\n
Ms Paul says rogue traders like Tedstill must be made an example of and prevented from targeting residents, especially “vulnerable women”.<\/p>\n
During the works, Tedstill cut through cables, leaving the property in Penn, Wolverhampton, with no internet for 18 months and a house alarm that didn’t work.<\/p>\n
Wolverhampton Trading Standards took the case up and Tedstill, of Green Oak Road, Codsall, was jailed for seven months at the city’s crown court on Tuesday, March 27.<\/p>\n
Ms Paul said: \u201cI chose to trust this man and allow him into the privacy of our home, to renovate an extension I\u2019ve wanted for so long.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt soon dawned on me that my home had been invaded by a cowboy builder, who had no intentions of completing the job and every intention to take all of my money.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feared not being able to afford my mortgage payments and often laid awake at night, scared my house would cave in.<\/p>\n
\u201cI do not want anyone to go through the trauma I have experienced both financially and emotionally \u2013 caused by the mindless criminal behaviour of Andrew Tedstill.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am so grateful to Wolverhampton Trading Standards who have enabled me to pursue this matter and get this cowboy builder prosecuted and today, brought to justice.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lee Jenks, senior trading standards officer at City of Wolverhampton Council said: “I\u2019m pleased justice has been served.<\/p>\n
“Cowboy builders cause a huge amount of stress to the victims who have worked hard and saved to pay for improvements to their home only to be badly let down.<\/p>\n
“It\u2019s vital that we bring cases like this to the public\u2019s attention \u2013 to ensure they avoid becoming victims of reckless cowboy builders.<\/p>\n
“As a council, we have a duty to protect consumers from rogue traders who break the law and carry out sub-standard work and will continue to work to bring rogue traders to justice.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A cowboy builder who fleeced a customer out of almost \u00a330,000 and left her home at risk of falling has been jailed Wolverhampton mum has spoken of the devastation a cowboy builder caused. Andrew Tedstill took \u00a329,000 of Affy Paul’s money after threatening to knock her walls down unless she kept paying up. He walked […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26106,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53,3,112],"tags":[955,954,953],"class_list":["post-26103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest","category-news","category-top-stories","tag-andrew-tedstill","tag-builder","tag-cowboy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26103\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}