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Exposé #1 He signed a design contract with me for a combination deck-arbor and only paid me a portion of the price to begin the work, saying he would pay the balance of the contract when I returned with the design-plans. (My design work was to be prepaid to avoid situations just like the one that will be described here.) His situation was very complicated because he wanted to convert an old, bland ranch-style house on a hillside into a Spanish style mansion in a community of other mansions. He had formerly hired an architect who attempted to meet his vision but the resulting design had a price tag around $1.2 million, way beyond what he was willing to pay out for his vision. He stated that he was no longer involved with the architect because his design was too expensive. So he contacted me to design a deck and arbor for him anew for $600. But once I was there on-site, he maneuvered me into including the design of the house's exterior walls to complement my designs. He also wanted me to throw in a design for a dilapidated deck at the rear of the house around the swimming pool after I had already quoted him the price for designwork, for free. That he didn't get just out of principle. I had spent a lot of time doing the plans for Nazari because I had to resolve many architectural conflicts and physical complications posed by existing structures and landscaping in coming up with a consistent integrated design.
Anyway I resolved all these complications
and to my eye the resulting design looked spectacular. And my
associates thought it was spectacular too (as seen here to the right). Then his wife arrived home with their 4 kids, the oldest of which was 6 years old. His wife deposited the kids around the same table where I had laid out the plans and began to question me as to how things would be constructed and what materials these design elements would be made from. On the table was also my album containing hundreds of photos of my work over 20 years to which I was referring for examples. The kids were allowed to get into this album. They were climbing all over the table, yammering and jammering. They scrunched up my drawings laying on the table too. Both husband and wife treated it as if it were no big deal; after all, they were just kids. The communication began to get louder and louder just to be heard above all the commotion. Nazari continued to take his cell-phone calls, but now when his cell-phone would ring, he would answer it and then go off into another part of the house beyond the commotion, leaving me fending off his wife's aggressive grilling of me. And that appeared to be bordering on confrontation because she was speaking evermore loudly to overcome the kids' yammering and never once was congenial. When he was finished, he returned to the table where I had laid out my drawings and attempted to pick up where we had left off. Then to my utter surprise he brought to the table with him a revision of the architect's plan which he claimed he had just received from his "former" architect. After having me redesign the exterior of his house to exhibit Spanish-style architecture, unbeknownst to me, he already had revised plans from the architect in his possession and he still wasn't satisfied with them. Between telephone calls, he compared my plans to the architect's revised plans, conceptually deleting a number of my key design elements to incorporate some of the architect's. In fact, he wanted to cut the long slender columns which gave the arbor a distinctly Spanish style to half their height and place them on the semicircular deck. He said he liked how I had simplified the design, but he kept adding all these ancillary but substantial items from the architects revised plan to my design, and this clearly was adding yet more to the cost. Yet his chief concern was to simplify the original design to keep down the cost. He would pose questions of why couldn't we do this or that in the architects plan, and every time I began to lay the groundwork for my answer, he would get another cell-phone call and head off into some other room. He never stayed around long enough to get my answer, nor did he care what my answer might be because he would return again and again and pose yet another question about yet another design element. He knew the terms of the design contract which stated explicitly that he had to pay $250 for any quotation relating to the design I would furnish, which he hadn't paid, but he kept asking how much I thought the project would cost as he modified each element of the design. He made numerous attempts in trying to get me to proffer guesses. (I don't do this as a matter of course because I found, to my detriment, that I always seemed to "underguestimate" the cost and then have a price-ceiling imposed upon me henceforth.) He stated that he had in his computer all the architect's revised plans as email attachments and that he would forward those to me for incorporating these additional elements into my layout -- his intention was clearly to manipulate me into redrawing my plans with my beautiful arbor & deck combination as the centerpiece and then junk it all up by adding most of the architect's fanciful but incongruent details throughout the rest of the plan -- and all for free, because he implied that he was going to handover the whole job to me -- it was mine for the taking on the promise of payment. I asked him why he just didn't get another architect if he was not satisfied with his current architect's plan, because as a designer-contractor I was really only authorized to design auxiliary structures, not modifications to the house. He got another phone call and left the room again, without answering my question. His game plan became more transparent as the meeting went on because now Nazari was running out of time. He didn't care what my objections were; he was just trying to get all of the architect's ancillary design elements, that he also wanted, transferred over to my drawing board regardless of why I said that it wouldn't work with my layout; all because he thought he could move forward with my getting the permit from the city without involving his architect any more. He was trying to manipulate me into being the central figure in a copyright infringement scheme in order to keep his project moving forward without having to pay me or the architect. Nazari went off again to another room with yet another cell-phone call. I just had enough of his cell-phone routine and his wife's confrontational inquisition. I packed up my things and stated to his wife that we were finished, like "we have no further business" finished, and that they needed to get someone else. I left saying "I'm out of here". I couldn't get out of there fast enough and left their door wide open -- I just had my fill of that scene with their rudeness, confrontational mannerisms and the obvious coercive manipulation. I just didn't know at the time what was behind it all, but it stunk and I really did smell a skunk. Of course Nazari never paid or offered to pay me the balance of the money owed on the plans, nor for traveling to and from his home to do the on-site inspection and evaluation in the first place. He was holding the balance owed me as ransom to get more from me for free. His bait was to talk big money. Nazari made a point in one cell-phone conversation that he carried on right alongside me by saying, "OK, you will have $100,000 deposited in my bank tomorrow?". One can disconnect a cell-phone conversation with a mere push of a silent button and keep right on talking. I believe that cell-phone conversation ended before that statement was uttered and it was made for the sole purpose of my overhearing it. His game was to talk as if he had big money but to try to get my participation cheap or free in whatever manner possible, including misappropriating designs, shorting payments and making implicit, but empty, assurances of getting his business. Both Nazaris' demeanors were not that of the accomplished residents in the affluent neighborhood where they lived. They were new-comers to the upscale neighborhood and recent immigrants to the United States at that. I also found out from his architect that Nazari went back to him the morning after the day of our meeting and tried to persuade him to incorporate my distinctive deck-arbor design into his revised plans with a promise to bring the architect's account current. The architect refused to misappropriate my designs and iterated that in any case no more work would be forthcoming without complete payment for work he'd already done -- Nazari was already in arrears for two plan revisions. These people projected the attitude that since they were going to spend big
(?) money, the
builder should subordinate his dignity to their rudeness and
indignities if he wanted any part of it. I have no way of knowing for
certain if Nazari really had sufficient money to do what he wanted to
accomplish but I refuse to work for
anyone who is ignorant of common courtesies and can't differentiate their
mannerisms from disrespect. I don't work just for the money. What a devastating disillusionment this was for me because I was really looking forward to building this spectacular one-of-a-kind arbor. He held in his hands one of my most beautiful arbor designs so far and then became so disrespectful and overtly manipulative, he lost my participation. The irony is that presently there is no one else within a thousand miles that can build that design. Now it's just another orphaned design in the Design Orphanage. (See the Spanish-Colonial arbor.) However, all is not lost: someone with class will see it and I will get to build it.
Email from website visitor to this page Mr. Deck, Somehow I came across your web page entitled "Manipulators". Coincidentally, I had also just read an article where Allen Nazari’s name had appeared. I thought you might be interested in it and get some satisfaction in the universal justice served to those who try to cheat an honest person. Here is the article: (see article's page 2.) http://www.voiceofsandiego.org/articles/2009/04/11/sommerset/sommerset-one1041009.txt I too have been a victim of a deceitful customer who wanted my product for nothing, taking it to the Santa Clara county superior court, suing me twice and dismissing each case. Standing up to and being victorious against a bully has given me a deep sense of satisfaction, but the legal bill is still giving me a headache. I commend you for standing your ground, for living according to your values and ethics. Too many people have allowed themselves to cave in to unethical behavior because “everyone else is doing it”, and to capitulate when bullied by someone like the two customers your write about. I applaud you for standing up for what is right. I think that your actions, and the example you set, is all that our country has left to counteract the incredible deceit and fraud we are seeing come to light. Bravo, Mr. Deck! |
