A 'cowboy' builder has 'lost everything' after his customers shared bad experiences of his service on social media and said they had lost thousands of pounds. Over the last few months, homeowners have taken to Facebook to reveal the identity of the Lancashire builder who they say has left them in the lurch when it comes to their household renovations.
Three customers told LancsLive they have been on the receiving end of "lie after lie" from builder Michael Brennan. But he says the 'unfair' comments have forced him to close his business Ruby Constructions and Renovations Ltd based in Bamber Bridge.
Mr Brennan claims comments about his company posted in a Facebook group after a few unfortunate experiences have 'blown everything out of proportion'. One customer, Brendan Conlin, 56, from Lostock Hall, planned for an extension at the side of his home and says he agreed to pay £12,400 with Mr Brennan's company.
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A three-stage payment plan with installments of £4,133 was set out, which Brendan agreed to, and work began on November 17, 2021. But he soon realised there were issues with the project.
He said: "He (Mr Brennan) very very quickly had the cement laid and I said to him 'surely you need to be getting the building inspector out to look at these before you lay the cement' and he said 'no no it's all alright I've sent pictures to him and he's happy with the pictures and said we can continue'.
"I'm not a builder but I used to be in the building trade - I said to him you've laid the cement but where are the drain pipes. He said 'when the concrete's dried we can cut the channel out and bury the pipe in' I thought surely not. I rang the building inspector, and said 'no I've not heard from the builder, I do need to come out and inspect it before he pours the concrete', I said you're a bit late for that."
When the building inspector arrived, they told Brendan that the work currently done would need to be ripped out before any other construction. By this point, Brendan had paid the first installment.
Brendan then told Mr Brennan he no longer wanted him on site and asked for some of his money back. Later, following a wait for the cash to be returned, he said he "had enough" and put up a post on Facebook which he says was a in a bid to "name and shame" Mr Brennan.
Following further disputes over the repayment schedule, Brendan said he felt he had no choice but to set up a Facebook group. Other customers then joined, coming forward with their own accusations against Mr Brennan and his company.
One of those was 39-year-old Luke Parkinson. He also hired Ruby Constructions in July 2021 for an extension for a total price of £20,000 split into three payments of about £6,666.
Work started that month, where the first stage payment was paid. On top of this, due to "some problem with the pipes", Mr Brennan received an additional £800.
While away visiting family, Mr Brennan had told Luke he had got up to wall plate of the extension and asked for the second stage payment. The third stage payment was made when they arrived home in August after seeing the progression.
"The first day we was back he was asking for the second payment and stupidly, we looked at it and thought well yeah he's gone to a certain height, so we paid the second payment but I think it was the very next day- our brother-in-law came around," Luke said.
"He took a look at the brickwork and he said- because his dad is a bricklayer - he said there's something wrong with that bricklaying."
Luke reached out to a building inspector and arranged for a meeting. Later, he was told there were a number of faults with the build, he says, including an unstable inner layer of the wall and incorrect installation.
Luke said: "I stopped him that evening and we gave him about two weeks to try and pay us something back... Anyways, two weeks went past and nothing had come back from Michael."
At this point, Luke says he wasn't confident about getting his money back so left a negative review on trade aggregator Checkatade, outlining the money spent and the quality of the job done. Here, Ruby Constructions replied: "I would like to apologise to the clients, I take full responsibility for the build I had other trades on their job and the work was to a poor standard [and I] should have been around more. I offered them a refund of a stage payment which they declined.
"Never had a bad customer as my reviews show that and anyone that knows me am an easy going person. As for the accusations towards the building inspector never had any problems with building inspectors. [Brickies] that can lay 800 bricks a day are house builders. Tried to resolve the problem with the customer got nowhere. Built loads of extensions never had any issues, this is my first one. I offered them a refund they declined. I wish them best of luck in the future."
Now, around £14,000 out of pocket and with a half-built extension and damaged driveway, Luke says he doesn't know what he'll do next. "We're at a point now that even if we do something, it might be that we can only do the driveway. We've possibly lost too much money to go for the extension that we wanted to do- for me, he needs to be stopped."
Elsewhere, a mum from Leyland claims she's been left with no kitchen since November 2021 and lost £11,000 in the process. Speaking on behalf of his stepdaughter, Paul Goodall told LancsLive that she had opted for a kitchen extension and to convert an orangery into another room which she had agreed to pay £15,400 for the entire job.
The mum also agreed upon a three stage payments of £5,133 and work started on October 22nd 2021. Paul says Mr Brennan told his stepdaughter the job would take four to five weeks and that "he only does one job at a time". After hearing this and seeing himself and his team came on site Paul's stepdaughter was confident the job would be done.
He said: "He (Mr Brennan) said I won't leave you without a kitchen for long... Christmas came and went and the build started going slower and slower, eventually I went along and had a look at the build work after he put the roof on and it just didn't look right when I went along," Luke said.
"I took my spirit level and tape measure and we started measuring and looking at the quality of the work and it was awful, absolutely appalling, none of the walls were perpendicular- the brickwork was up and down, there was no wall ties, it just didn't seem right.
Two weeks later, he says nobody had turned up. But two lots of stage payments and an additional £1,000 for the kitchen fitters had been paid.
In an inspection report seen by LancsLive, many issues with the work done so far were flagged including the "roof pitch was found to be 13.5 degrees not the 18 degrees the builder has claimed" and "the wall plate was also not bolted to the wall or secured correctly."
Paul told Mr Brennan he and his stepdaughter no longer wanted him on site and gave him seven days for a refund. After not hearing back from the builder, Paul and his stepdaughter say they had to get the work pulled down and look for another builder to start from scratch.
He added: "Not only financially are we out about £15,000 - my stepdaughter has got a five-year-old, and expecting, and she's had no kitchen since the middle of November. It's been so stressful, absolutely unbelievably stressful for everybody really to try and deal with this person who says all sorts of lies, it's just been one lie on top of the other."
LancsLive contacted Mr Brennan following talks with the three alleged victims. He says that the impact of the Facebook posts and the letters sent to him by the customers has ruined his personal and professional life. On March 18 2022, Mr Brennan says he signed the documents to strike off his company, Ruby Constructions and Renovations Ltd.
Mr Brennan told LancsLive he was pushed into making this decision because of the detrimental impact the Facebook posts have had on his business. The builder claims that customers have pulled out of jobs and his family life has been impacted too.
"I didn't deserve that, losing business, not a problem but to lose your wife and boys is not good. As far as building goes, that'll never happen again, I've lost friends, family kids, everything, absolutely everything," he said. "To have everything taken away in less than two days, and for that, I'll never forgive Brendan Conlin and Luke Parkinson.
"They've shot themselves in the foot with all this stuff on Facebook because now - if it ever went to court, and the business shut down, they're not going to get anything at all. They should've let me carry on working and just let me crack on.
"My customers left me in a week, I lost over £100,000 in a week. It's not a case of I've took this money and I can't pay it back that's not true - there's only two times that has happened one of them is Luke Parkinson and the other is Brendan Conlin. Brendan Conlin's job wasn't going fast enough and the building inspector kept stopping us all the time, stopping us about manholes and all that sort of stuff. One day, he just turned around and said come to the house, when's it going to be done this.
"I spread myself too thin, I was on loads of different jobs and then one day he says right I'm going to stop the job, I don't want you to do it. An hour later he rang me back and said I want my stage payment back and I said what £4,300, he went yeah, well we've been there two or three weeks, my guys don't work for chocolate buttons. Next minute I'm all over Facebook- and my wife's ringing me up asking me what's going on.
"Same with Luke Parkinson, one day he rang up, stopped the job, he said, 'I'm not happy with the build, brickwork's rubbish' and I said 'right, no problem'. They're the only two that wanted the stage payments back, everyone else, I lost because of these two.
"It's just blown out of proportion. Half the people want to kill me and hate me and the other half say I don't believe this is you. Even the customers say you're one of the nicest guys we've met, you're just a crap builder that's it pure and simple- I've stopped building, I don't build anymore. They've caused me more amount of problems, it ain't going to go away for a long time."
When asked about the job with Paul Goodall's stepdaughter, Mr Brennan said: "Her dad intervened actually, this is what I mean, it's absolute rubbish. Her dad intervened and basically went 'if you haven't done this work by blah blah blah, you're off the job'. I couldn't do the work because people had savaged me so he then took over and I think he's finished it off don't know."
In response to Mr Brennan's reasons for why the jobs might not have been completed, the former customers had their say.
Brendan said: "He had no intentions of paying us back- of everyone on the Facebook group if you speak to them, no one had got back a penny that he owed them. How he can blame it on us, I don't get that, yeah I've cost him a lot of business but nothing more than he was already doing in the first place.
"When I asked him for my money back, I hadn't affected his business so he could have given me money then and I had agreed a repayment structure with him which he didn't keep to and he didn't adhere."
Luke said: "We haven't shot ourselves in the foot because if we had shot ourselves in the foot and we thought we were going to get the money, there would have been no way we would have done this. Michael had previous chances - on the evening he stopped I said to him I doubt you will pay me and he said no give me a few weeks, we did give a few weeks and we never heard anything."
Paul said: "We gave him a list of snags that were wrong and obviously you can see from the building inspector there's so much wrong so all we did was intervene to say, this is wrong- you haven't done a proper job and that was the situation. He took £1000 for the kitchen fitter and obviously he hadn't done anything. The materials, I would estimate, he probably spent about less than £3000 on materials. All I'm saying is he's totally wrong, he promised money back on the phone and intervened because there was so much wrong."
