Warning: long rant ahead!
We live in France, and last year had a glass fence fitted around our pool to make it safe for my preschooler and baby. A small British company fitted the fence, that consists of the owner and a couple of employees. We told him we wanted to be at the property when he fitted it (we were away on holiday the week before). First - is this reasonable do you think? I mean, it’s our property right? Secondly the gate would have been locked!
As we’re fairly isolated and it’s tricky to get any repairs done, my husband likes to watch how things are installed so that he can repair issues himself. Also we had had a run of bad builders/plumbers/you name it who made a lot of costly and stressful errors in our absence, so we decided a few years ago to always be present during works. The owner and fitter stayed at our home while they were fitting the fence, we fed them once or twice, then left them to their own devices meal-wise, we had a difficult and exhausting toddler and couldn’t face all the cooking. Over one of the meals, I recounted some of the tales of awful work done here, and explained that this was why we no longer allow work to be done in our absence. The owner took great offence at this, took it to mean we distrusted him personally and has been an a*hole ever since!
We’ve had a few issues with the fence since it was installed, he takes months to come out to fix the issue, and gets incredibly angry while he’s here. He’s written some horrid emails, one of which he criticised our hospitality. He actually made me cry on my birthday, not that he knew! He came out again this week because one of the gates had dropped and we couldn’t use it. The new panel was the wrong size, too small, so now the gate doesn’t close. He got really angry, and accused my husband of being at fault! He then stormed off saying that he’d had enough and he wasn’t going to fix it. DH called him an hour or so later to ask him to return to make the pool secure, the guy gave him one option which wasn’t brilliant ( a longer lock to cover the gap created by the too-short panel, which would take up to 6 weeks to be installed) and which would look shit. He then got angry with DH who is a super chilled guy, and DH ended up putting the phone down on him. I then called him back, and deliberately very calmly asked him to make the pool safe for my children, saying I’m insanely worried about the danger of the pool not being secure. He said he’d come up with a solution but then started shouting at me! Saying that the project had gone wrong because we didn’t trust him and it had created a bad vibe! What a di#k!!!!! I still maintain that we wouldn’t have employed the man had we not trusted him, but he has such a bee in his bonnet about it. He carried on shouting that my husband hadn’t said hello (not true) or thank you (for a gate that doesn’t work?!) and i had to talk loudly over him saying that my baby needed me and that I was going to end the conversation now, so that he could’t accuse me of putting the phone down on him!
I can’t stop thinking about the encounter, he was so aggressive. If we ditch him we’ll have to pay someone else to fix the fence, which will not only cost a lot but will be incredibly difficult to arrange. There are other issues with the fence that he refuses to take responsibility for (corrosion on the steel supports).
I’m just looking for some advice on how to handle him! He makes me feel sick.