WHEN a 74-year-old woman wanted to stop her garage and porch from leaking, she thought she had done all the right things.

The Yarnton homeowner shopped around, asked for quotes from three companies and decided to go for one that was reasonably priced, claimed it was Oxford-based and did not involve replacing the whole roof.

But little did she know she had hired a rogue trader who conned her out of more than £20,000.

“I felt like a complete idiot and ever since the incident my self-confidence is battered,” said the victim, who wanted to remain anonymous after a company called Homelife Developments Ltd left her with a huge bill for work to her detached bungalow, some of which was worthless.

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She added: “I question everyone’s intentions now after this incident. I thought I was above it.

“I checked where the company was from and thought because they were local it would be fine.

“They were very pleasant when they came to look at the job and I was quite happy that it could be repaired as it would have been a lot more expensive to replace.

“They were very respectful and nice, but I suppose, now, that’s how they work. I will never get caught again.

“I want to get the message out. You see so many tradesmen out there and you never know which ones are conning people. You have to be aware.”

The company quoted the woman £1,000 for the repair job in March 2013 and started work the following month.

Once working at her bungalow, the company managed to convince her to cough up £9,000 for re-tiling the full roof before saying the joists needed replacing and that she would have to pay £20,000.

She said: “The price just snowballed out of control and I didn’t know what to do.”

In the panic and stress, she turned to her friend who loaned her £19,000.

After the work was done, she noticed the bungalow roof was still letting in water and said she quickly realised everything Homelife had touched was leaking.

She said: “I had a strange feeling and it was then that I thought I should go to trading standards.

“I felt so stupid and embarrassed but they were so nice in handling the situation.

“I’m so grateful for what the trading standards team has done and if by spreading the word it helps someone else then it’s worth it.”

Property surveyor Charles Leigh-Dugmore found the actual value of some of the works carried out on the three roofs were worth virtually nothing.

He added the main roof repair was worth about £2,000 and the main roof verges £1,145 – not the £20,000 that she paid. The other repairs were worthless.

The homeowner received £12,000 in compensation and was able to pay off her debts to her friend, but to fix the roofs properly she had to pay out another £8,000.

Trading Standards team leader Martin Woodley said crimes like these were a problem that was never going to go away.

He said: “These people try to do anything and everything and are very clever at what they do.

“Quite often the homeowner will just tell them about a problem with their house while they are around, and they will say they will do it.

“It’s a form of grooming. They are looking to get more and more money out of it and they often befriend the person and make them feel like they are doing good things for them. These people don’t care.”

Roofer James Richards conned three elderly customers out of thousands of pounds by grossly inflating prices for shoddy and unnecessary work.

The 38-year-old, of Worcestershire, appeared in Oxford Crown Court on October 23 as a judge heard how he committed fraud worth £13,000 in total.

He targeted people in their 70s and 80s in Yarnton, Aston and Carterton during 2013 while trading as Homelife Developments Ltd.

He admitted two counts of fraud by making false representation and engaging in commercial practice that was misleading. Richards was given a seven-month suspended sentence for two years, and ordered to do 200 hours of unpaid work and pay £1,200 in compensation.

He had already paid compensation of £12,000 and £1,400 to two of his victims respectively.

Martin Woodley, trading standards doorstep crime lead officer, who investigated the case, said: “This is a typical doorstep crime scam where the offender approached the victim and made out that work was required on the roof. After convincing the victim that the work was required, he then grossly overcharged for carrying out poor quality work which was unnecessary.

“Our team, working in partnership with Thames Valley Police, will continue to target those individuals and organised gangs that prey on the elderly and vulnerable, with the aim of putting them before the courts to account for their actions.”