This is a standard ad for NZ Sleepouts, with the text written by Grant King, the Principal of NZ Sleepouts.

http://www.trademe.co.nz/Browse/Listing.aspx?id=430951962

Now, here is how the system seems to work:

Buyer B sees the ad, and purchases the Sleepout. The money paid by Buyer B doesn’t however actually fund Buyer B’s Sleepout – no, the money paid by Buyer B goes to fund the Sleepout of Buyer A (Buyer B: you weren’t aware there was a Buyer A? Who knew? Grant King knew, that’s who).

Buyer C then sees the same ad, and purchases a Sleepout – yes, you’re on board now: the money paid by Buyer C goes to fund Buyer B’s Sleepout, and so on.

One great big Ponzi Scheme, and utterly fraudulent in its execution – you see, when someone buys a product or service, they naturally and legally expect that their money will be used to fund their product or service, not pay for someone elses product or service.

I discovered that NZ Sleepouts and Grant King were engaging in this practice when in November 2011, Grant King asked me for a specific payment of $3500.00 to pay for labour to complete the off-site build of my Sleepout, by 1/12/11. I even have on record an email from Grant King whereby he confirms the start date of not one, but two additional staff for this purpose. However, Grant King used my $3500.00 payment to build another clients’ Sleepout.

When I confronted Grant King about this issue, he remonstrated with me that he had a “priority job” to complete another clients sleepout, before building mine. However, in all of the time leading up to me making the $3500.00 payment, Grant King NEVER mentioned this “priority job”. His appeal to me at the time was that he “needed some help” to build my Sleepout, and Grant King nominated 1/12/11 as being the completion date for the build if I would extend him the $3500.00 for labour costs. Once I paid him the money – he promptly went and used my money to go and build another clients Sleepout.

Dodgy much?

There was a catchy song on the children’s program “Sesame St” that went something along the lines of “one of these things is not like the other, one of these things is not the same”.

See if you can tell the difference between what was promised:

verses what we actually got, for our $23,500 payment to Grant King & NZ Sleepouts:

Can YOU tell the difference?

We read these sorts of stories all the time, don’t we?

Someone hires a tradesman, be they a plumber, a builder, a stonemason, a roofer, or whatever, and pays them some money to do a job.

The money is paid to the tradesman in good faith by the client, and then, over time, things don’t quite go quite right – products don’t arrive on time; the tradesman seems a bit unreliable; stuff that was supposed to be done by a certain deadline doesn’t get done – that sort of thing.

The client is most often reported in these stories as being initially patient, and stretches their understanding to accommodate the issues that arise – until one day, the client starts to do a little digging………………………………….

Eventually, the client realises (despite the reassurances of the tradesman that all is well) that they are being taken for a ride. The client then calls the tradesman to account – and the tradesman runs for cover.

This is just such a story, and will hopefully serve as a warning to the 100’s of 1000’s of people who everyday, hire tradespeople.

The tradesman in this story? His name is Grant King, the principal of NZ Sleepouts, which is located in Mill Rd, Helensville.

The story that follows will shortly be winding its way through the District Court, the media, and every single Council in New Zealand, and the utter audacity of the tradesman named in the story will literally blow you away (more to come).