Frustrated customers await money that court says P.E.I. contractor owes them

A P.E.I. contracting company owes thousands of dollars to people after either not completing jobs or doing them poorly, according to the contractor's customers and court documents. 

Colton Chaulk, owner of CWD Construction, is named in five different P.E.I. Supreme Court judgments viewed by CBC News. 

Documents filed in the last few years show him owing about $80,000 to former customers as well as a building supply store.

CBC talked to all of them, and only one reported being paid, saying they accepted an agreed-upon amount of $6,500 as opposed to the $10,800 claimed in court. 

Michelle Benoit and her spouse Corina Benoit are still waiting to be paid about $34,000 after CWD Construction failed to insulate their mini home in Hunter River and put an addition on it. 

The Benoits live in Alberta, but bought the home hoping to eventually retire there, since they have family in P.E.I.

While seeking a contractor, "we just looked on the internet, Facebook and Kijiji — mostly Kijiji," said Michelle Benoit. 

Chaulk provided contracts and asked for a deposit, and Benoit said everything seemed okay at first. However, when they asked for photos of the work he was supposed to be doing, and updates on the job, she said it was hard to reach him. 

Before that, "he was asking for an awful lot of money, deposits for materials and such," she said. The couple said they used all their savings to get things rolling. 

Then a relative who stopped by the property told them nothing seemed to be happening. 

"We had thought that the work was getting done," Benoit said. "We started asking more questions as to why it hadn't been done." 

Benoit said holes were dug in the wrong spots around their mobile home and a deck was destroyed. It also appeared that someone had used a couple of cans of spray foam underneath the structure. 

They eventually took legal action, and a court judgment from November 2021 ruled they are entitled to about $34,000 from Chaulk.  As of late March, Benoit said they still hadn't received anything. 

"We're heartbroken. We're devastated," she said. "We feel we were ripped off."