Can anyone help please? I purchased a small apartment in

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Can anyone help please? I purchased a small apartment in Umbria in October 2018. In 2019 I engaged the services of a local tradesman to clearout my basement which was kneedeep in rubble from the previous owner. Gradually I engaged him to do other works for me including preparing internal stonewalls for pointwork, replastering and eventually knocking down and rebuilding the small bathroom. I always paid in advance for this work.  He iis a trained geometra and also has this handyman/ tradesman business. He has always been very lax in providing updates and photos always with some excuse. The weather, he is sick, his workmen are sick, covid, he got covid, later on he couldnt work for two days because of mandatory 48 hr rest after covid vaccination etc etc. Anyway two years and two months after handing him the keys and having paid him for all works I still don't have a finished bathroom or anything. The only things that are finished are the works he organised actual tradesmen to do eg the plumbing, new windows. I beg him 2-3 times a week for updates and photos and he always responds and assures me he will send them but never does, or if he does they are out of focus or too dark to really see anything.  Obviously I am being taken for a ride but do not know how to extricate myself and my money from this incredibly stressful situation. Thanks for any helpful advice.

 

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Hopefully someone can offer better advice on this stressful situation. I hope the payments are recorded as a bank transfer so receipt cannot be denied and some correspondence on what was agreed. If so then can ultimately challenge via notary or failure to provide a receipt but it is best to up the ante without going straight to litigation. Easier done via a face to face meeting. Perhaps list the payments made and the work agreed and highlight what is outstanding. Best of luck and I hope someone can offer better advice.

Thank you so much for your kind response. Yes, all the payments have been paid via bank transfer and there are hundreds of emails, mainly from myself, concerning all the work requests.  They are also all in Italian. I neglected to say that I am in Australia and have not been to Italy since 2019 which makes it that much more stressful because I cannot physically see if there has been any progress and obviously cannot speak to this person face to face.  I have one card up my sleeve in the fact that I made friends with a local who I am thinking of asking to  enter the premises to take detailed photos for me. Luckily he has a key but last time he passed my place there was a lock and chain on the front door. I am going to give him permission to break the lock and will use this to try and push the tradesman to communicate with me on a more detailed level. Wish me luck!

I think its time you set up a blog and told the story of your renovations, (facts only) and give the geometra a link to it, telling him that its 'to help other people buying in the area'.  Once he grasps the fact that he will never work for another foreign buyer, he might do the work he's been paid for.