this post was submitted on 10 Jun 2025
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Why is NZ so corrupt? (lemmy.nz)
submitted 2 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Recently I talked to three people who were ripped off by builders and tradies. One of them was out by more than a hundred thousand dollars, the others were in the tens of thousands of dollars.

People signed contracts and then didn't finish the job. In one case when confronted the builders said "you can't move in until I am done and if you don't accept this I won't be done for at least a year".

In the other case the contractor demanded double the money halfway into the build and contacted all other builders in the area and smeared the friend so that they didn't pick up the job.

In the third case the contractor took half the money up front, didn't show up for weeks, finally showed up for a few days and did a few things and the fucked right off. This was for about a 30K job.

Court costs are ten thousand dollars per day of trial (including prep work by the attorneys) so all of them had no choice but to take being ripped off. The tradie community seems pretty tight too so once you are ripped off you are known as a mark because all of them had issued with other tradies they hired afterwards.

Needless to say cops and the courts are useless.

Learn to do things on your own I guess. You can't trust any builder or tradie in NZ.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Since posting this I have talked to a couple of more people and they had very similar stories. One guy talked about how the tradie took half up front and didn't show up. He took him to small claims court and the tradie said he was having mental health problems and the judge ruled in favor of the tradie. He had to appeal to get a judgement for his money back. He did win that case but the tradie never paid.

The second guy told me he too took the tradie to court but the tradie had sheltered all his assets under a trust and his wife so he just claimed poverty and the judge bought it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

@BalpeenHammer, I guess that's where the 'buyer beware' comes in.
I do background checks or recommendations from people I know. I think you still can be unlucky as times. I like to trust people but I verify as good as I can, especially when big sums are involved.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

How do you do background checks?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

@BalpeenHammer, Trade Checka, Builders Check, looking at jobs done, word of mouth...
I do a lot of stuff I need done myself so my dependence on others is low.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I lack both the skills and the time to do things myself.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

@BalpeenHammer, I'm a control freak, haha, not really.
I've, from early age, loved pulling things apart and figuring out what makes them work and found hands deserved to be a tool worth for more than just ten finger typewriting, etc.
These days we're often ending up in the 'monetary scraping by/time poor'
box and so rely on others in their fields of (greater/lesser) expertise...

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago

More often than not just not doing the work at all and letting things degrade.

Sad state of the world.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

You're one of the awake people who sees it, I like that. The problem with New Zealand is not "tall poppy syndrome" or "she'll be right". The problem is that we are a hyper-sensitive shame-based society, but at the same time, we're too afraid to call people out on their bull**** so the crooks feel bold. Mechanics will put busted brake pads into your car so you have to come back, and in the building industry has plenty of tricks too.

New Zealanders need to wake the **** up and stop being so dopey and slow. We have websites where you can write reviews for tradies. We as a society need to stop trusting everyone and being so superficially fake. Just because someone addresses you by name and makes polite small-talk as they invoice you, that doesn't mean you can trust them. In fact, the more fake friendly people are, the more they try to build rapport with me, when I don't even know them outside of their job, the least likely I am to trust them.

A long time ago in 2015 I worked under a house in east christchurch, just for a couple of days on a temp contract. I never did this type of work again. Anyways the house was on jacks and I had to dig the clay and smooth it down to a certain mm depth. Then they wanted me to install insulation in the roof. So I went up there with a cheap fabric protective suit and goggles and a mask. The mask kept expelling hot air from my breath around the edges, which fogged up my goggles. I couldn't see anything and there was all this fibre/dust floating around. In the end I just gave up because I couldn't even see what the hell I was doing, and I couldn't take the goggles off or my eyes would get filled with weird dust from the old bats.

When I explained that I couldn't do the damn job, one of the guys on site scoffed and grunted at me, but didn't use any English words, just a scoff and a grunt. These are the punks and pieces of crap that you will often meet in the construction industry. At least one of them will openly tell you what pornography they like to masturbate to, and their manager will ask every candidate at the interview, if they have a girlfriend. Weird bunch of people with no morality... and no taste in music either. Just perverts and thugs who think that the Rock FM is the best radio station in the universe.

Mechanics often have the same attitude. Every town and city has one punk who is a total asshole. He will do work for most people without any issue, but as soon as a woman or a young guy shows up, the mechanic charges them heaps more and rips them off... Doing jobs that they never actually did, or putting broken components into someone's car, risking people's lives just so the customer comes back a few months later and pays to fix the damage that the mechanic did in the first place.

Basically, New Zealanders are too trusting and gullible. I'm very sceptical about everything these days and I wouldn't hesitate to turn down an employment offer or get a 2nd opinion on something. I don't care how polite someone is, I want to know their reputation, motivations and background. You can look up Psychopathic Personality Disorder to learn more. I always want to know basics: Who knows this person? How can I ensure that they won't do a poor job and run off with the money? What are my options to destroy this person's reputation or drag them through the courts? How far should I pursue this person to teach them a lesson and warn others?

A lot of crap is justified in this country on the basis of "muh struggles to make ends meet" and that's why you'll often hear that the cash machine is broken. People will tell a lie if they think they can get away with it, and you'll be shocked to see how much cover these assholes have. When I worked for an e-scooter company a few years ago, our warehouse was looted by former employees who had the access codes. They came in and stole laptops from the office, they stole a power bank, and they also stole the central hub for all the CCTV cameras. We didn't even notice this for several days. It turns out that there were dozens of PINs that could deactivate the alarm and nobody ever revoked access codes, even though we knew that previous workers were extremely dodgy, never got any work done, and were basically taking advantage of the company.

You can't really trust anyone these days. I also heard a story about a dodgy builder in 2017. I wasn't there at the time, but the guy was installing window restrictors and he claimed that "the job took a bit longer" so he charged a bit more. We couldn't prove anything as we weren't there at the time, so the owner just had to pay what the builder asked. New Zealanders need to sharpen up and start watching people like hawks. There are heaps of deadbeat tradies. Some of them are good and they just happen to enjoy practical work, but there are also guys who just sucked at maths and english, failed in life, and they do tradie jobs because you can be pretty thick and still do that kind of work. Once I worked with carpet layers on a short contract and there was some joke in the van, because the other 2 guys were laughing and I didn't know what was so funny. Must have been the weed or the glue they were sniffing earlier that morning.

Ripping people off, stealing from your own company, driving with no lights on at night (or having only one functioning bulb) - these are just normal kiwi activities and it's our right by birth to do these things. If there are no consequences, if they think they can get away with it, then they probably will. Personally I think there should be more sting operations (even shows like Target), people need to back up their friends and investigate jobs that other people have done, and we need to build bigger prisons and actually punish these people. Start locking a few people up with no exceptions for mental health, and watch as everyone suddenly starts behaving themselves LOL

There is no reason to be reasonable with people these days. Who the **** gives $15,000 before someone even starts a job? People who own houses need to be smarter. As soon as you reveal that you own a house, and have additional money to renovate it, it's just a license to steal. I try to reveal as little as possible about myself. If I catch on that someone is ****ing with me, then I up my security. You can't be too social or reveal too much to people or they'll take advantage. New Zealand has a culture of being back-biting, back-stabbing little twits. Even when you catch someone running a scam they will lie about it and pretend you are just crazy and have got the wrong person or wrong info. The crooks are ashamed of nothing, but are offended by everything. Like if you even accuse them of doing a shoddy job or being dishonest, they will play the victim and do everything they can to gain sympathy, turn people against you, or at least, buy time so they can keep scamming as many people as possible.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago

The problem is they ask for money up front to supposedly buy supplies for the job. I have learned that you should just go ahead and buy the supplies yourself even though it's going to cost more for you to do it than them. This way when they fuck off and don't show up at least you still have the supplies.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

It depends on what you mean. NZ is better than the majority, if not all of, the world's nations.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

It's definitely not better than all the nations. It's certainly not better than any country in the EU for example.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 days ago (1 children)

New Zealand has ranked higher than the EU in terms of both democracy and happiness.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Why are you changing the topic?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 days ago (1 children)

You say that like mentioning happiness and democratic stability in comparison to EU countries is irrelevant to the assertion that EU countries are somehow doing better than it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

First of all the topic is corruption and a court system that doesn't work for the consumer.

Secondly those surveys are measuring people's feelings. We have gotten used to corruption and accept it as a fact of life. We don't get upset when we are ripped off or when government contracts are given to politically connected companies or when jobs in both the government and the private sector are given mostly on the basis of mateship, how likely it is that you can pronounce the name of the person and their skin color. Or when parliament hands up punishment based on the political party of the supposed offender.

To us that all seems normal and matter of fact so we don't get upset and go about our daily lives pretending all countries are also this corrupt.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

You don't think the EU or its member states have any corruption? The streets of cities like Rome and Paris are filled with scammers whom they just let roam around to do their thing. Spain in particular has a massive burglary problem. UK police don't even necessarily trust themselves during public events. I know that in the very least, Auckland isn't lazy.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

You don’t think the EU or its member states have any corruption?

Why the straw man? Did I say they had zero corruption?

I said they have less corruption.

The streets of cities like Rome and Paris are filled with scammers whom they just let roam around to do their thing.

That's not the same thing but hey if that's what you are going to hang your high horse on OK I guess.

Spain in particular has a massive burglary problem.

We are not talking about burglaries though.

UK police don’t even necessarily trust themselves during public events.

This sounds like something a right wing zealot would say. You aren't one of those wingnuts are you? One of those white supremacist trump loving idiots who hates everybody who isn't a white straight christian male.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

They don't have less corruption though. They're literally dismantling their own democratic processes. New Zealand at least has its declared values in mind. And perhaps this is all not helped by their desire for American defense or by talks that Canada might join the EU. The rest of what I said were just pointers.

I am a transracially mixed race asexual woman from Vermont; you are shooting the messenger with overvigilance if you think I'm saying anything inspired by a random menagerie of bigotry.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

They don’t have less corruption though.

I think they do.

They’re literally dismantling their own democratic processes.

Which ones?

New Zealand at least has its declared values in mind.

No they don't. Nobody cares about these so called declared values (whatever the fuck they are).

I am a transracially mixed race asexual woman from Vermont;

Sure you are. I totally believe you.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

You can think what you want, and I'd respect that. I would not impose out of mere disagreement. But I am who I am.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Uh huh. Sure buddy. Whatever you say.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago

Why the skepticism anywho?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)
[–] PatrickStar -1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Dude, I don't know what this conflict between you and her is about, but you've got to stop eventually. I can tell a certain amount of it is deception on your part, which is why you're already banned from both lemm.ee (something that happened multiple times) and on your lemmy.cafe account which your recent fedilore post that got removed (because it's deception) makes explicit, which means you are ban evading, something the people here take seriously. Maybe that's why some people said you were banned from Tumblr (where your posts are archived but where you aren't). Going by the rabbit hole, this deception of yours also got you banned from Reddit (quite a few times, more than can be linked), Twitter (as the user StalkDat; I'm not going to link to there as per the rules, but you are ban evading as StalkDeez), and DeviantArt (again, a few times; their forums are filled with your crusade), which has begun turning into a pedophilia website going by the replies to anyone bringing it up. You also recently had a video removed from YouTube, which they rarely do except in absolute emergencies; which, again, shows the gravity of the deception). I don't know how it could be easier to read the room. People are catching onto the fact that this is tiring and deceptive, and the modlogs being the modlogs doesn't make them accurate or honest.

Take your own advice. Disengage. Unless you're providing said advice only as a form of attack. In which case stop.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

You're back on yet another alt.

you were banned from Tumblr

I was not banned from Tumblr, I deleted that blog because when I proved you wrong that your impersonation account was the person you're impersonating and I explained how you're banned from 10 instances on your main, you blocked me and deleted my replies on your blog. My posts had served their purpose and I'm not the biggest fan of Tumblr's UI, so I deleted my blog.

got you banned from Reddit

I've never had a Reddit account.

Twitter (as the user StalkDat)

I don't have an account on Twitter. The site owner is a Nazi.

your recent fedilore post

I don't have a recent fedilore post.

You seem to be conflating me with everyone who is wary of you. And it's perfectly normal and reasonable for lots of people to be wary of you considering you are a Kiwifarms troll with a history of Nazi apologia, and genocide denial. The links I just posted go to you own comments. May I ask why you are banning yourself from your own communities on your sockpuppet accounts and inserting a link about autism in the modlog? On some instances the "Filter by mod" feature allows a person to see which mod banned which person. Nobody's banning you for being autistic, that was something you completely made up.

[–] sicksigma 3 points 3 days ago

You’re back on yet another alt.

Agreed. See also https://sh.itjust.works/u/Jedikkeneus

I recommend not wasting your time arguing with her. It never goes anywhere, and drama for drama’s sake is what she wants.

[–] PatrickStar -1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I'm not an alt. I picked everything up from a conversation in the ModlogAbuse community. Stop referring to me as "you", because I'm a totally different animal.

I literally linked to the fedilore post. Shows you're lying out of your teeth.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

https://lemm.ee/modlog?page=1&actionType=All&userId=19444489 https://lemmy.wtf/modlog?page=1&actionType=All&userId=16883667 https://lemmy.wtf/modlog?page=1&actionType=All&userId=13651221

Right after your other alts got banned after 2 months of no activity this account suddenly comes back to life rushing to defend Leni. Sure, buddy.

literally linked to the fedilore post. Shows you’re lying out of your teeth.

It was a comment, not a post.

[–] PatrickStar 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Isn't she getting banned all the time? That would make everyone who comes back after a long break suspicious. Not that it would be conclusive in the first place.

It was a comment, not a post.

Same difference. You even said on there that you couldn't post images on that instance in that post. Then miraculously you appeared on your current account to provide some.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

That would make everyone who comes back after a long break suspicious.

No, it wouldn't, because other people don't suddenly come back and immediately start defending a just-banned Kiwifarms troll with Nazi apologia and genocide denial in their posting history.

You even said on there that you couldn’t post images on that instance in that post.

I didn't say that. You're conflating me with someone else.

[–] PatrickStar 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

It wasn't sudden considering we just talked about where I picked up the information. I link to these. It shouldn't escape you where I'm coming from with this. Again, stop lying out of your teeth.

I also looked into much of it before coming by. I don't defend the Kiwifarms part unless she signed up to defend people at the source (look into that), but the claims she "denies" a genocide or "defend" Nazis are based on semantics. From the looks of it, she acknowledges the tangible actions. What other people do regarding her should be none of your business and shouldn't be publicly pressured by you.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

but the claims she “denies” a genocide or “defend” Nazis are based on semantics

You commented 50+ times in this thread where you doubled down on trolling about how the AfD aren't Nazis and how Elon Musk's Nazi salute wasn't a Nazi salute.

Here, you said Elon's Nazi salute "has been debunked though".

You dismissed what's happening to Palestinians as "war crimes" "not genocide".

unless she signed up to defend people at the source (look into that)

You made replies on Kiwifarms where you mocked people for being upset that you defended Kiwifarms as a "free speech" site on Lemmy, saying they're probably from two demographics who are most at odds with Kiwifarms (autistic and trans people). You also referred to people as lolcows there.

[–] PatrickStar 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Also, stop editing your comments after you post them to make the replier look bad. That's just dirty arguing.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

I'm not. It's a habit to fix links, typos, formatting. You're already doing a good job of making yourself look bad by logging in to an inactive account and immediately rushing to defend a Kiwifarms troll whose alts got banned a few hours ago and saying the AfD being Nazi-aligned is "debatable" when I've posted the AfD's official posters and I also included links of the AfD's leaders using Nazi slogans.

[–] PatrickStar 1 points 3 days ago

Except we discussed that's not happening. I also wouldn't call inserting small bits like sentences about autism to be "fixing typos". Nice try. And I told you why all your other accusations are misapplied.

[–] PatrickStar 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Hence semantics. And once again, you're conflating me with someone else just because I said something about the issue. The whole AfD thing is a debate in its own right. Look, be mad at her if you want, but don't shoot the messenger and don't drag every single person on earth into it. You're obsessed.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)
[–] PatrickStar 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Wow, that was fast. You watched the video already?

No, no you didn't. Otherwise you'd be responding with something else. Watch the video. Notice that's Simon Whistler speaking.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I'm not watching a YouTube video. One person saying the AfD aren't extremists does not prove anything. Did you look at the AfD's official posters?

[–] PatrickStar 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

One whole video versus two posters. You believe in the posters. And some people believe in the video. If one isn't conclusive proof, neither is the other. That's why people consider it a debate.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)
[–] PatrickStar 1 points 3 days ago

You say that like you didn't just admit to ignoring the video I provided. And I'm not even defending them, you're just seeing an enemy everywhere you go.