“BAIK punya kerja, boss”. (It will be good work, boss.)
Most home owners will have encountered this scenario. Truck carrying tar with workers knocking on the gate offering road tarring services making a sales pitch with the guarantee of quality workmanship, often at a claimed bargain price.
This was precisely the scene encountered by Threader sioh (@sioh_bulu) who fell for a good sales line and unfortunately, the fear of missing out (FOMO) on a bargain.
Recounting these tar merchants who offered to do the necessary to the front of her house for a reasonable RM200, she then enquired how much it would cost to do the entire porch of her semi-detached home following which she was quoted RM3,000 for the job.
When she bargained that “I don’t have that much money”, the enterprising businessmen countered with a RM1,000 offer to cover half the yard space. Sensing she had struck a good deal, the poster agreed.
Adding that her spouse was stuck at work and unable to return to personally deal with these individuals whom she described as looking like criminals, she was unable to reverse her decision as they had quickly poured the tar onto the road in front of her house.
The slip shod job to cover the agreed space was done inside half an hour with the white pebbles from the garden still visible through the thin layer of tar grumbled the unhappy customer. The total damage was RM1,200.
The unhappy lady also shared that she had read that these tar scammers would use excess tar that was rejected from road projects.
The lack of foresight from homeowners meant they risked having tar that would deteriorate after just two or three months, thus leading to wasted funds.
Hasty decision, long-term regret
Admitting to her foolishness in agreeing to tar her front lawn instead of cementing it as originally planned, she is now left with an ugly front porch that is covered by a thin layer of tar.
Lamenting it was a poor job that has made her home look less appealing, she warned others to not fall for these tar scammers’ shtick though she admitted that part of the blame lay with her for agreeing in the first place.
Some commenters noted that this was nothing new with these tar trucks circling housing areas in search of gullible types. The poster claimed ignorance and said she would have run far, far away if she had known this was a known scam.
However, most disconcerting was the amount of racist vitriol that accompanied this post.
A person claiming to be working in the quarries that produced the premix or tar outlined costs associated with such a job with the raw material coming up to RM120 per tonne sans transportation.
One tonne of tar would be good to cover 10 sq metres or 100 sq feet with a thickness of 22mm, usually with a layer of oil underneath. It was also noted that these tar merchants would operate on a profit margin of 1,000%.
Whether one thinks these tar scammers are unscrupulous thieves preying on the ill-informed or FOMO-afflicted individuals, it is wrong to tar (pun fully intended) an entire community for the actions of a few.
This was the contention of a qualified engineer of Indian descent who is involved in roadworks in a professional capacity, arguing that there are honest and irresponsible types in every community.
It is very unfair to make generalisations which were due to one own’s mistakes or foolishness of being a cheapskate in the first place. – Oct 15, 2026
