A couple have been left baffled after returning home to find their house covered in scaffolding – delivered by a man who left a message saying ‘hello, Chinese takeaway’.
Doorbell camera footage shows three mystery construction workers turning up to the home of married couple Mike Keeling, 56, and Leanne Smith, 45, while they were out on Saturday.
The footage shows workers taking scaffold tubes out of a flatbed truck while another man presses the couple’s Ring doorbell.
The man, not wearing any identifiable company uniform and driving a van without a company logo, then says: ‘Hello, Chinese takeaway’ in response to an automated voice asking him to leave a message.
Mr Keeling was stunned to arrive back home in Warrington, Cheshire to find the scaffolding – admitting he initially mistook the house for someone else’s.
He said: ‘I turned onto my road and thought “oh, somebody’s having some work done”, and then I realised it was my house.
‘I was a little bit gobsmacked at that point, thinking “hang on a minute, I didn’t order this – unless my other half has sanctioned some building work without telling me about it,” which seemed unlikely.’
In the past, police have warned that rogue scaffolders can seek to extract cash from homeowners by putting up staging and refusing to take it down until they are paid. There is no suggestion at this time that this is what has happened to Mr Keeling.
Ring doorbell footage shows scaffolders turning up at Mike Keeling and Leanne Smith’s home in Warrington
One of the men then, oddly, says ‘hello, Chinese takeaway’ into the doorbell when asked to leave a message
Father-of-one Mr Keeling has canvassed houses on his street, called local scaffolders and knocked on all the number 13s on neighbouring roads but is yet to find any leads.
He said: ‘Quite a few people had seen this work being done, but the guys who’d done it had absolutely nothing on them to identify who they were.
‘Normally when you see scaffolding on a building they put a sign on it. There’s nothing like that.
‘There’s nothing on the van, which we could see on the Ring camera.’
Other companies have offered to take the equipment down and to accept the parts as payment – but Mike says he’d feel uneasy about giving away someone else’s property.
He said: ‘If we were to take it down and dispose of it, potentially that’s theft, even though it was put on our property without permission.
‘At another scaffolding firm one of the guys said “Look, we’ll take it down, we won’t charge you for it, but we’ll keep all the poles as payment”.
‘Well, again, that makes me feel a little bit dodgy because it’s not my property to do that.
‘The scaffolding boards themselves are worth hundreds of pounds. The whole thing has completely flummoxed us.’
As well as being unsightly, payroll company director Mike said the scaffolding has left his wife, Leanne, unable to charge her electric Mini at home. It also creates security issues, he said.
He said: ‘When we charge it at home, we can charge it completely for about £3 or £4, if that.
‘At the charging point, to do it three-quarters full it was £17. It’s a financial cost to us.
‘But, that’s less of an issue. It’s more the fact I’ve got a house covered in scaffolding, which is not ideal.’
Mr Keeling says neither he nor his wife have sought the services of a scaffolder for their home
Mr Keeling and his wife Leanne Smith outside their home in Warrington – before the scaffolding was erected
Now, Mike is hoping media attention will help reunite the scaffolding with its rightful owners. Until then, he’s considering using it to check his gutters ahead of the winter.
He said: ‘We just don’t know what to do next, because of the fact there’s no way we can identify these guys. They may have come from a different town.
‘We were hoping that maybe some building work was going to start – a team of roofers would turn up at another address and realise there’s no scaffolding there, they’d phone the guys who did it and they might come back and take it down.
‘But how long do we leave it for?’
In the past, police have warned of scams involving similar setups elsewhere in the country.
In 2023, Hertfordshire Police warned that rogue traders in St Albans were setting up scaffolding, completing no work and asking for payment to remove it.
The Hertfordshire Advertiser reported that a trader set up scaffolding after quoting for roofing work and was paid in advance. They then left, did not carry out the work, and demanded further cash to take the fixtures down.
And earlier this year, BBC News reported on an elderly Yorkshireman who lost his life savings after builders put up scaffolding and replaced his entire roof – after telling him they would fix a single loose slate.
And in 2019, Crouch End local Carl Ryan found scaffolding put up outside his house, per the Ham&High, which he had not asked for.
The error was later rectified after the scaffolders admitted they had been given the wrong address.
