Today I heard from Guillermo,

He told me that the topographical study I commissioned was done, but not well done. The local guy I hired had neglected to designate on the survey, where I might find the large trees. This might be deemed mere oversight if it were not the case that Guillermo had specifically asked him to note any trees over 8".

Apparently he wants to be paid more money to go to the site and add the trees into the survey. The local guy not Guillermo.

I say, horseshit. We asked him specifically to add the trees, furthermore he was asked to coordinate with D0's local office. He never recieved nor returned calls from D0. But I gave away my leverage when I paid him for the work. I am not used to working with people who refuse to do what they said they would do. I don't particulaly like weilding a contract in one hand, and a club in the other, but its time to get rid of that squeemishness. This house needs to be built.

I will call Ms. Ashley White tommorrow and ask her what to negotiate on my behalf with this gentleman.

In the good news department, aparently the survey was misformatted, but Guillermo's CR office was able to reconstruct the information. So we have a contoured map, even if we do not know where the trees are.

Lessons:

1) be explicit
2) get confirmation
3) pay AFTER reciept of satisfactory service.

The only silver lining on this experience was that I may have learned my lesson early, to prevent a more costly, and infuriating, mistep later based on trust.

Guillermo was great about the error. He was aghast at the surveyor's actions. He followed up with the surveyor, and then offered to pick up half of the cost of the blackmail, just to get the job done on time. He wrote me a letter explaining that he regretted the experience, that this was not the way that he works, and that he was embarrased that a client had to endure this treatment.