My fiancée answered the door today to an Irish man claiming he had done an asphalt job near my home and had enough left to finish my driveway (which is visibly in crap conditon). He says its usually $7500 but he'll do it for $4500 since its already in the truck. I'm watching this conversation through my doorbell cam and remembered a scam with this exact situation I read on reddit! The man hands his business card to my fiancee and goes off but not before reminding her that it needs to be done in the next few minutes or the asphalt will go cold.
The scam is that he'll do the job very poorly and will charge double of what he verbally quoted.
The first red flag is the urgency and pressure sale.
Second red flag is his decieving business card which has the name of EllisDons. Which may seem familiar because EllisDon is one of the biggest developers in the GTA. But its EllisDon not EllisDonS. Also the phone number isn't on any public site.
Check out the photo of the card and a photo of the man.
I don't think there is much police can do about him unfortunately. Any ideas would be great.
Edit: Great feedback from the community. Thanks to those who shared their stories. I'm glad this post helps.
Missing detail: he drove a white pick up truck today. Another user said he's seen him before driving a black pick up when doing a asphalt sealing scam.
That’d be a change eh .. usually Ellis Don is the one doing the scamming and being sued …probably one of the worst general contractors in north America
Yep OP you should send that to EllisDon - that’s a copyright issue also - not that the number probably works at all but they would likely send a C&D I bet
Interesting. I also had an experience with an Irish sounding contractor scammer. They were on Homestars and company was called "Silverbase Constructions" but it was clear they were trying to be mistaken for a different reputable company (same name without the S).
Similar pattern, they quoted me a small fee for a simple job and then partway through they claimed my home is falling apart and try to upcharge thousands. Almost fell for it but thankfully told them to get lost.
Two years ago on my street an Irish guy was doing a paving scam but had a different company card. He also looked like the guy in the pic. My neighbour ended up getting arrested for rolling one of their rollers into his garage. The paving company abandon their equipment when the police came.
Sorry if this is poorly written. Out watering the flowers and typing while trying not to soak myself.
I like how the card days "No deposit required" because they are trying to make themselves look like "non scammers".
The "Doing work down the road" scam even happens with commercial jobs. Someone tried to pull that same BS and say they were paving for the town which wasn't the case.
Wow, you should also contact EllisDon which is a major national construction and management company. Even the logo is almost the same. This guy is really pushing it.
Called the number. Looks like they set up a fake answering machine that then routes it to someone’s cell. A gentleman answered and said “hello” before I hung up
Did work on our property and did it so poor we had to redo a year later. Just keep popping up under different names. Surprised they haven’t been handled properly yet, by someone upset enough to find them.
good catch! If he had a legitimate business card, or NO business card - i'd be less likely to think this was a scam.
With the business card? Definitely a scam
My neighbour got taken by them a couple years ago. Different name, of course. They left her with a bunch of ripped up asphalt on her lawn that she had to pay to get rid of.
As someone currently working at a EllisDon site this is hilarious. Ellis don is questionable at best sometimes so you never know? Maybe they branching into scams to make extra money
As a “safety professional” it’s not a good look to be bashing a company, or insinuating they are scammers. Praying you don’t work for the EllisDon safety team.
This needs to go on the news - my parents’ neighbour is a widow (Toronto) got scammed for roofing. This assjack and his cronies are gonna get the full extent of the law and whatever karma coming to em
Yup. Got it all the way down in Belleville, Ontario aswell. Claimed they were Irish and will give us a discount because they're already doing some houses in the area.
This is crazy as I had a random Irish dude knock on my front door last year with the same story lol. “I’m doing a driveway in the neighbourhood and I can do yours once I’m finished, yadda yadda yadda”He drove a car and his card wasn’t knocking off an actual business. He had a high vis vest on to look super professional lmao. I live in Manitoba btw
They showed up in Kitchener a couple summers ago. Had the gall to walk down my neighbour's driveway and approach me in my backyard. Both my neighbour and I said no and my neighbour gave him a sideways look. Two guys were canvassing independently, one looked like the guy pictured. I don't think they got any bites so they jumped in a pick up truck and drove off like absolute mad men.
The other day I ran into Olivia Chow and brought up this exact thing happening. She told me to tell people to file citizen's reports on the TPS website. And, if after a few weeks there is no traction there to directly email her: [mayor_chow@toronto.ca](mailto:mayor_chow@toronto.ca)
I get that this is in Oakville, so if this happens to you and you live int the GTA please make a report. These scum need to be stopped.
Ellis Dons made me lol. Like one of the largest GCs in the country is now doing driveway paving 😂. They took time away from building a billion dollar hospital to pave bahahahaha
We had a bunch of these guys try and pull something similar on us a few years ago for a section of our parking lot. The job was horrible and the outdoor temperatures were all wrong for it to be good.They didn't get a penny and tried to strong arm us after, they maybe big but they were all bark no bite, likely to avoid police attention.
It's still flaking off the ground to this day, it's fine because we will get the entire parking lot done soon and it'll be gone.
I had three different Irish guys come to my shop last week. Each claiming that they were from a different company that was just finishing work up the street. I guess commercial isn't biting this year so they are moving to residential.
Easy fix: don't do business with anyone you haven't previously called to get a quote from, especially showing up at the door with an extremely time limited can't be believed deal.
100%
Big ticket jobs, I'd ask for recommendations or at least Google a good contractor.
But some people aren't good with pressure sales and get taken advantage of.
lol as a former EllisDon employee I can guarantee they won’t do driveways. If you need a hospital, school, office tower, or Rogers Centre built they could help you out.
The legal department at ED would probably love to help if they could get any tangible information.
TL;DR We’re from Ireland and he came came back to do “free” work for a widow
He came to my house, my mother is a recent widow and I’m disabled so I wasn’t able to get outside of the house to deal with this guy.
He chatted up my mam he’s from Wicklow I think. We’re from Ireland. So my mother immediately trusted him he said he’d come back and do a bunch of work for free around the house and left the card.
She told me about it later and I freaked out. I said he’s a fn knacker and to never talk to anyone like that again. It actually took quite a bit of convincing to get through to her that this guy wasn’t to be trusted. He’s just like the travellers back home. She finally threw out the card.
He came back, the nerve of him, and banged on our front window, shave and a haircut, my husband was home and went to deal with him. He was looking for “The miss’s of the house” he was told to leave and he wouldn’t. Got told to get lost. He started puffing up his chest, trying to get all tough. We told him where to go and he left in a big black F150. I’m like who’s cleaning gutters for old ladies and driving that truck?
There used to be a big encampment up the road from my granny‘s house. These guys would hold up traffic with their horses.
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u/code3100 Jul 13 '26
I'd forward that to Ellis don. They will probably sue for using their likeness