Morag

As you say, Tony, fraud is criminal.  What the company did was contrary to chunks of the Code de la Consommation, but on the subject of involving the police - do you think they would believe us?  See what you think. After being pressed for months on whether timber frame timber was really properly treated NF EN335 Class 2, it issued 3 'attestations de conformite' certifying that the more than 1 mile of timber we had bought was treated.  Unfortunately, they didn't quite get the story straight because they claimed it was the bright yellow treatment they'd used....  our wood was nice and blonde!  3 days later they admitted most of it wasn't treated at all, but only after I insisted on an independent lab test - shame they didn't read their own internal paperwork when we first asked.  What has caused us the major problem is that most of the wood was then the load bearing structure of our house.    The firm brought in to try and retrospectively treat the wood has caused more damage to the existing building - around 14k of euros!   The saga has not reflected well on what is supposed to be a very reputable company and now you know why we are looking to take this further. There is no question of misunderstanding of what the treatment should have been or what the timber should have been used for - my partner has been in timber frame construction for 30+ years and the nationally-available 'Batimob' timber frame system offered the right kind of wood for the job. While I might not be fluent, my French is good enough, but I've had to learn a whole lot of vocab I'd rather not know!        

Thanks for that TeamedUp - just drawn a blank with the DDCCRF on the grounds that 'well you're the only ones who are involved, so you'll have to pursue the company yourself' .  Anyone fancy taking on PBM (aka Reseau Pro, Simbpla, Brossette, etc....)? M

Hi - has anyone any experience of taking a French (large) company to court over fraud?  I'd welcome any advice Thanks  

[quote]Whatt hey do is drill the beams and inject fluid into the core of the timber. Cleaning won't be necessary as a result. They will probably spray externally too, but dirt will retain the fluid, I guess,...[/quote] Thanks Nick - I'm still at a loss tho, cos we told the chappie that all the beams will be left showing. How will the treatment spread thru all the wood? The oak up there is like rock! And won't the treatment all come off when we clean up the beams to finish them? Anyway, I'll see if there's another company with another view on the matter of treating birds nests! They might charge us less if we tell them the birds don't have woodworm!

I'm hoping someone on here might be able to help! We need to get the 300 yr old roof beams and attic floor treated for woodworm etc. We've had a company in to look at it and they seemed to think that we didn't need to worry about cleaning off the the birds nests from the beams and the layer of ancient agricultural mud and muck from the floor 'cos the treatment would deal with everything! Ummmmm.... everything we've seen about treatment (on the backs of cans mostly!) says you need to make sure everything is clean, so the question is "who's right?" They also say it'll just take a day to put in lots of little plastic plugs in the wood and spray everything twice over - are we being taken for a ride here? At a cost of around 3.5K plus vat I'm beginning to think we're in the wrong business - fighting woodworm sounds less stressful than fighting Year 10.... Thanks in advnace to all (or any) who might have an answer. Mo PS they also said they won't guarantee the floor - it's too eaten, tho the topside looks fine to me... that might be the mud hiding zillions of holes, of course!