Hi there,
As I told you in Jaime Roriz’s post, another lawyer had told us that, in order to go to trial, we first had to legalize the house and pay everything that had to be paid since that was the only way to account for the financial damages.
The lawyer passed me the contact of Zé Carlos Costa of Ubenco Green and I sent him an email telling him about our situation.
José Carlos Costa of Ubenco Green replied to my email telling me that he had made an appointment at the Municipal Chamber on July 10 to ask exactly what needed to be done.
As I had already told you in other posts, the Municipal Chamber had told me that a part of the house had been built illegally and that there was a possibility that I would be ordered to demolish that part that had been built illegally.
The architect called me that same July 10 and told me that he had found a cartographic record from 1942 in which the complete structure of the house appeared so what we had to do was a legalization as low impact works and demonstrate that there was no modification of the structure (As in the end we found out that this guy is a liar and stole 1230 euros from us, probably this is also a lie).
He also told me that the law regarding legalizations had changed a few weeks ago and that now the process was going to be more favorable for us.
He told me that initially he would do an architectural project and a topographic survey (1230 euros), but that we should keep in mind that they could ask for more documentation in the future to approve the legalization.
In the end, when they approved the legalization, we would have to pay between 600 and 800 euros for the Municipal Chamber to issue the Licença de Utilização.
On July 19 the architect came to do all the measurements and photographs and on August 1, he sent me the architectural project.
On August 23, 2023, the architect came again with the topographer to do the topographical survey.
As you can see, it took over a month to come with the surveyor. Supposedly, the surveyor had a lot of work to do.
On September 14, 2023, the architect sends me all the documentation by email and asks for the payment of the second part of the budget, 615 euros.
We made the payment, and we were waiting for him to confirm that he had delivered the documentation to the Municipal Chamber. He sent me a link to request the updated certidão and offered to request it himself if we could not. I told him to request it himself and then tell me how much to pay him.
A month passed and we heard nothing more from the architect. His phone was turned off and no one responded to emails.
In this case I didn’t think he had ripped me off because the guy had come twice to the house, had done the work and documentation. If he had wanted to steal from us, he would have disappeared after the first payment.
I even contacted the lawyer who recommended him and he in turn talked to his colleague, who was a friend of the architect. They both tried to find him, but there was no way.
The architect showed up a month later and said he had had a family problem and had been ill.
At first, he had acted offended because I had left him a negative review as a last resort to see if anyone would show up. Then he apologized and sent an email saying that he had gotten respiratory bacteria 6 times and then had to go to Luxembourg because his only sister had given birth and the baby almost died. Even so, he is still incompetent for not even sending an email to warn his supposed employees.
This denotes that the architect was not remotely qualified to have his own company.
Since he failed to send the documents, it remained for him to request the new certidão of the house and I was to create a profile on the Municipal Chamber website for him to send all the documentation.
On November 6, 2023, the architect tells me that he has been trying to send the documents for days for the legalization of the house and the system gives error.
On December 15 we were still with the story.
I received a reply to the complaint I had made to the Municipal Chamber, and they told me that the problem had been solved the same day.
I wrote again to the architect, and he said that now he had to modify a document and I waited.
The last time he answered he told me that he was at the hospital for his mother’s medical treatment and from then on, he disappeared again.
I checked the WhatsApp conversation to see how long I had been waiting for the architect to do his work. I had been waiting since July 10 and already on July 14 the guy was apologizing because he had been sick.
This man when he wasn’t sick had some family tragedy. Which can happen, but if you are the owner of a company, you must delegate for your employees to take care of the pending work.
On January 5, 2024, someone deigned to respond on Facebook, and they said, “that the architect had had an accident and was hospitalized”.
There were already too many misfortunes for one person.
On January 11 the architect sent a general message by WhatsApp in which he said he was sick at the end of the year, then he got Influenza A and finally he fell and broke his head, so he was hospitalized for several weeks.
He was supposed to return to work on January 15. As of January 27, he still had not deigned to deliver the documentation.
It was clear then that this guy had stolen the 1230 euros from me, so now I would have to report him for fraud and ask him to return the money and pay me compensation for the time he had wasted.
I honestly didn’t feel like going through another legal process and that’s why I had waited so long, but I had no choice.
While in Australia, I decided to write another email asking the architect to return the 1230 euros because in almost 10 months he had not been able to deliver the documentation.
We got an application to schedule the emails so that he would receive a daily email from Diego and one from me.
Finally, Zé Carlos Costa showed up on March 13, 2024, with a very long email in which he told again about his misfortunes and that he had supposedly been swindled by his colleagues.
As the emails kept arriving to him and we still had not responded to the message of March 13, this man took the trouble to keep sending emails every day and even wrote that he “had spoken to my lawyer and that there was no action on the house”.
In other words, the architect Zé Carlos Costa had had time to write 5 emails, to write on WhatsApp to go and ask things to who he thinks is my lawyer (which is illegal) and yet, he has not had time to do the work for which he had been paid 10 months ago.
I replied with a very long email in which I said that he should write less and get to do the job and that he had not yet deigned to tell me the deadline by which he was going to deliver the documentation.
After my email, he disappeared again, so we went back to programming so that he would receive the same email every day.
After receiving several emails, he sent another long email, which probably took him hours to write, saying that it was our fault for not having given him the “updated certidão“. On September 14, 2023 he himself had offered to request it and I said yes and then he would tell me how much to pay for it.
In fact, as you could read above he had supposedly already tried to send such documentation so he should already have the updated certidão. So, anyhow he was lying.
As the emails kept coming to him, he also took the trouble to threaten us with a complaint for “harassment and intimidation” by “his legal team”.
The incompetent Zé Carlos Costa has time to send emails telling stories, saying that his colleagues ripped him off, to go talk to the one he thinks is my lawyer to ask him questions, to send the longest emails I have ever seen in my life, to threaten, to supposedly talk to his legal team to sue us, and yet, after all this time, he was not able to send the documentation to the Municipal Chamber, which would cost him 5 minutes of time.
I sent him one last email asking him to tell me at once if he was going to need any other documentation along with the certidão to avoid more wasted time in the future with his multiple illnesses, hallucinations and memory loss. I received no response.
My lawyer proceeded to send him the letter to formally request a full refund of the money paid.
