The wood guy calls ME!

I just received a phone call. I recognised the voice right away: Mike Salvisberg, from Mike's Firewood - the guy who damaged my garden wall and won't apologise for his accident or fix the damage he caused.

He didn't realise who he was calling at first because he was returning an earlier message I had left about "Ah, firewood delivery."

The conversation went like this:

Mike Salvisberg: What can I do for you?
Me: Well, you damaged my garden wall. I'd like it fixed.
Mike Salvisberg: Oh! That Mike. Look, we talked about this.
Me: No we didn't. You hung up on me.
Mike Salvisberg: Well, fix your garden yourself.

And then he hung up on me again!

This guy is a real gentleman, eh? Based on his attitude with me and my neighbrour, not in a million years would I order wood from him nor recommend him to anyone else.

I'll be finishing the small claims court papers this afternoon.

Looking for firewood delivery? I can tell you who NOT to use...

As I mentioned in a previous post, a guy who delivered wood to my neighbour took out a hunk of my garden's rock wall with his trailer in the process. That guy was Mike Salvisberg of Mike's Firewood, located in the Haines Junction area.

If you've ever built a rock wall, you know they're not easy to make and are even more difficult to repair. At the time, when I pointed it out to him, he said "Shouldn't be too hard to fix."

Good, I thought, I look forward to having you fix it.

It was nice of him to move the rocks back toward the wall before he left. Hardly what I would call "fixing it", though.

Because of mechanical difficulties, Mike had to abandon his truck in my neighbour's driveway that night. It was still there in the morning, but when I came back from running some errands downtown, it was gone. My neighbour and I assessed the damage to our respective yards.

My neighbour's oil tank had been propped up by several logs because it had been hit by the truck and knocked off its post. Fortunately there were no leaks and she told me that Mike had hired Hurlburt Enterprises to repair it.

I hadn't heard from him though, so I got his number from her. I left three messages on his answering machine over a period of several days but never received a call back. I didn't say that I was calling about the garden wall, just that I was "phoning about, ah, wood delivery." Because I was, after all, "phoning about a wood delivery".

Yesterday, my neighbour gave me Mike's home number. I called the home number and got the answering machine there, too. Of course, I left another message.

This morning, trying once again, I finally got through and asked him what he was going to do about fixing my garden wall.

He said (word for word because I was typing out our conversation), "C'mon buddy, there's two inches of snow on the ground and my truck's broken down - don't do this," and then he hung up on me.

Yup, he hung up on me. Now, there's a grown-up way to deal with a problem if I ever saw one.

I called back, but he had turned off answering machine.

What really ticked me off was that at some point he could have apologised. Not once has he ever shown any indication that he was or is sorrowful for his mistake.

Well, he really made a mistake now because I am mad - and you really don't want to get me mad. I have a habit of, um, not letting these things off lightly.

You know why bulldogs look the way they do? They were bred that way. They were bred to be fighting dogs - their short little faces allow them to breathe and hang on when they're biting something - and when they're biting something, they don't let go. It doesn't matter what you do to a bulldog - hit it, kick it, bite it - it won't let go until it knows it has won the fight.

Mike of Mike's Firewood has just picked a fight with me. Well, I am a bulldog and I'm about to bite.

I phoned and left a message on his home number and said, in short, "You've got two choices: deal with this honourably or I'll see you in court." I'm guessing he's not capable of the first option, so it looks like we're going to court.

If he doesn't call back to deal with this by Monday, I've got the registration documents for Small Claims Court all ready to go.

And all I can say right now is, "Bring it on, buddy. Bring it on."

Pull up a log, but mind your butt....

As I was sitting in the kitchen, chatting and drinking tea with Mac, I got a call from my neighbour across the road.

"The wood guy has taken out your garden."

"What?" I asked, confused. I'd been hearing the sounds of a struggling vehicle from beside my house, but had relegated the sounds to the back of my mind - my other neighbour's vehicles often make struggling sounds.

I looked out the window to see a old Ford pickup and 20+ft. trailer, each loaded to their extended brims with split wood, attempting to drive into my neighbour's backyard. Spinning his tires and chewing up my neighbour's packed-dirt driveway, the wood delivery guy was making no progress against the gentle grade and was attempting to rock the truck up and down the driveway, the truck seriously underpowered for its load.

There was mud sprayed onto the road and now, the truck was mere inches from my neighbour's oil tank and an inch from her relative's truck, which was parked on the side of the driveway. In a slightly jack-knifed position, there was no way that the wood truck could move without hitting one or the other.

Then, for some reason, he decided to disconnect his driveshaft.

It was at this point that I went out to investigate the damage to my rock-walled garden. Yup, taking out a full side of the garden, he did a number on it - not easy to fix.

He asked me if I knew how to attach a universal joint. I said "no" but looked at it anyway. It took me one glance to be sure that the part that he had was incompatible with the driveshaft that he was holding. I watched in wonder as he tried to jam the large round pegs into the small round holes.

I mentioned the garden. Since he had done the damage with his very long trailer, he hadn't noticed. He went to take a look.

"That should'nt be too hard to fix," he said, and resumed his efforts to make the too-large U-joint fit into his driveshaft.

This left me wondering; not too hard to fix by whom?

He abandoned his truck not long after that. As of this morning, it's still sitting in my neighbour's driveway.

I'm waiting to see what happens with my garden. I'm not going to bother fixing it now because he still needs to get his vehicle out of the driveway and I'm afraid of the additional damage that will result when he backs it out. I'll be darned if I'm letting him off without so much as an apology.

I'll keep you posted.