On The Block last week, Ricky and Haydn’s landscapers came to them with information regarding the reputation of the contestants on Phillip Island. Courtney and Grant were called out for not paying their tradesmen and tarnishing the show’s name.
The boys decided to call a body corp meeting to set things straight, but their fellow Blockheads weren’t having any of it.
“We know there’s outstanding invoices,” one of Ricky and Haydn’s landscapers told them. “We live here, we know all the trades services and everything. So the minute we hear that someone’s not getting paid, we get told.”
Word quickly spread around the island that Courtney and Grant hadn’t paid their glaziers, which brought the reputation of The Blockheads into question. This didn’t sit right with the boys in house three, so they decided to arrange a body corp to make sure everyone was on the same page about doing the right thing.
All of the teams were happy to attend the meeting, except Courtney and Grant.
“What’s it about? I’m not going to attend unless I know what it’s about,” Grant, AKA ‘Grumpy’, said.
“My landscapers have rolled up today and they’re like, ‘The word around the island is that trades aren’t getting paid here’,” Ricky shared. “I believe it might have started at Betsy’s Glass.”
“Oh, the ones who didn’t call us back?,” Courtney replied. “Well, you’ve told us now, we don’t need to be at the body corp. That’s obviously our issue.”
Ricky was adamant, noting that it had implications for the rest of the contestants too.
“My landscapers have just come to me, and now they’re asking for contracts and prepayment.”
The discussion escalated pretty quickly, with the house two contestants being adamant they’d done nothing wrong.
“Let’s not make this a big deal, there’s no word on the street,” Courtney responded. “We pay all of our builders.”
“They obviously didn’t deliver their shower screen, so we’re waiting for them to fix it and then we’ll pay for it,” she added.
“It doesn’t need to be a big deal though with a body corp. I’m just saying that, and that’s final.”
Courtney later revealed she was frustrated that Ricky made a big deal out of the situation, instead of going directly to them. She also emphasised that they had paid most of their invoices.
“There’s definitely two sides to every story. We have paid two of the invoices – two of three – because the job was completed. [But] the shower screen glass wasn’t cut correctly as to what [measurements] we supplied,” she shared.
However, they sent the measurements through four weeks prior, and Grant didn’t give the company a design or any specifications for how they wanted it.
“That’s his fault,” Foreman Dan said. “Normally, you draw up what you want with the opening sizes and the end panel sizes, and then you get it signed off. He’s missed that step, so this is on him now.”
In the end, they just decided to pay Betsy’s Glass “so everybody [would] shut up.”
Speaking to TV WEEK about the altercation, Ricky said, “I don’t want to make a mountain out of a molehill – I thought it was something pretty important that as a whole, as a collective, as a block, we should really discuss. And, yeah, as we say, I think Courtney and Grant fiercely disagree with that.”
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