Question 1

Someone knocked offering leftover tarmac. Is it genuine?

Accepted Answer

No. Tarmac is bought hot by the tonne against a booked job and is unusable within hours of going cold — there is no spare load being driven round a town looking for a home. It is one of the oldest doorstep approaches there is, and the right response is to close the door. The claim does not survive contact with how the material actually works. Tarmac is delivered hot, has to be laid and rolled while it is hot, and stiffens beyond use within a few hours. It is ordered by the tonne against a specific booked job, and a contractor with a genuine surplus has a problem to solve within the hour, not a product to sell door to door for the rest of the week. What tends to follow is predictable. A thin skim of material spread over the existing surface or over bare ground, with no excavation, no sub-base, no edge restraint and no drainage. Rolled with something too light to compact it. Feathered out at the edges so there is nothing holding it in. It looks convincing for a summer. Then the edges crumble, the surface ravels into loose chippings, and the first hard winter finds every weak spot. The commercial pattern is as consistent as the technical one. A price quoted for a small area, then a much larger bill on completion because the area was allegedly bigger than expected. Pressure to pay in cash, immediately, sometimes with a trip to a cash machine. Additional work identified halfway through. And no paperwork of any kind, which is the point. You have a specific legal protection here and it is worth knowing before the knock rather than after. Any contract agreed at your own door for more than £42 is an off-premises contract under the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013, which gives you a 14-day right to cancel and obliges the trader to give you written notice of it. Failing to give that notice is a criminal offence and extends the cancellation period by up to a year. The practical advice is simple and worth following without embarrassment. Do not engage, do not agree to anything on the day, and do not let anybody start work. If you want the job doing, take a note of anything you can — a name, a vehicle registration — and get someone out to quote it properly. If you feel pressured or unsafe, that is a matter for the police on 101, and reporting it to Citizens Advice feeds Trading Standards a pattern they can act on. It is worth adding that this affects older and more isolated people disproportionately, which is why it persists. If you have an elderly relative or neighbour in the area, telling them plainly that there is no such thing as leftover tarmac is genuinely one of the more useful things you can do.

Question 2

Man at the door offering to tarmac my drive

Accepted Answer

No. Tarmac is bought hot by the tonne against a booked job and is unusable within hours of going cold — there is no spare load being driven round a town looking for a home. It is one of the oldest doorstep approaches there is, and the right response is to close the door. The claim does not survive contact with how the material actually works. Tarmac is delivered hot, has to be laid and rolled while it is hot, and stiffens beyond use within a few hours. It is ordered by the tonne against a specific booked job, and a contractor with a genuine surplus has a problem to solve within the hour, not a product to sell door to door for the rest of the week. What tends to follow is predictable. A thin skim of material spread over the existing surface or over bare ground, with no excavation, no sub-base, no edge restraint and no drainage. Rolled with something too light to compact it. Feathered out at the edges so there is nothing holding it in. It looks convincing for a summer. Then the edges crumble, the surface ravels into loose chippings, and the first hard winter finds every weak spot. The commercial pattern is as consistent as the technical one. A price quoted for a small area, then a much larger bill on completion because the area was allegedly bigger than expected. Pressure to pay in cash, immediately, sometimes with a trip to a cash machine. Additional work identified halfway through. And no paperwork of any kind, which is the point. You have a specific legal protection here and it is worth knowing before the knock rather than after. Any contract agreed at your own door for more than £42 is an off-premises contract under the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013, which gives you a 14-day right to cancel and obliges the trader to give you written notice of it. Failing to give that notice is a criminal offence and extends the cancellation period by up to a year. The practical advice is simple and worth following without embarrassment. Do not engage, do not agree to anything on the day, and do not let anybody start work. If you want the job doing, take a note of anything you can — a name, a vehicle registration — and get someone out to quote it properly. If you feel pressured or unsafe, that is a matter for the police on 101, and reporting it to Citizens Advice feeds Trading Standards a pattern they can act on. It is worth adding that this affects older and more isolated people disproportionately, which is why it persists. If you have an elderly relative or neighbour in the area, telling them plainly that there is no such thing as leftover tarmac is genuinely one of the more useful things you can do.

Question 3

Is spare tarmac a scam?

Accepted Answer

No. Tarmac is bought hot by the tonne against a booked job and is unusable within hours of going cold — there is no spare load being driven round a town looking for a home. It is one of the oldest doorstep approaches there is, and the right response is to close the door. The claim does not survive contact with how the material actually works. Tarmac is delivered hot, has to be laid and rolled while it is hot, and stiffens beyond use within a few hours. It is ordered by the tonne against a specific booked job, and a contractor with a genuine surplus has a problem to solve within the hour, not a product to sell door to door for the rest of the week. What tends to follow is predictable. A thin skim of material spread over the existing surface or over bare ground, with no excavation, no sub-base, no edge restraint and no drainage. Rolled with something too light to compact it. Feathered out at the edges so there is nothing holding it in. It looks convincing for a summer. Then the edges crumble, the surface ravels into loose chippings, and the first hard winter finds every weak spot. The commercial pattern is as consistent as the technical one. A price quoted for a small area, then a much larger bill on completion because the area was allegedly bigger than expected. Pressure to pay in cash, immediately, sometimes with a trip to a cash machine. Additional work identified halfway through. And no paperwork of any kind, which is the point. You have a specific legal protection here and it is worth knowing before the knock rather than after. Any contract agreed at your own door for more than £42 is an off-premises contract under the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013, which gives you a 14-day right to cancel and obliges the trader to give you written notice of it. Failing to give that notice is a criminal offence and extends the cancellation period by up to a year. The practical advice is simple and worth following without embarrassment. Do not engage, do not agree to anything on the day, and do not let anybody start work. If you want the job doing, take a note of anything you can — a name, a vehicle registration — and get someone out to quote it properly. If you feel pressured or unsafe, that is a matter for the police on 101, and reporting it to Citizens Advice feeds Trading Standards a pattern they can act on. It is worth adding that this affects older and more isolated people disproportionately, which is why it persists. If you have an elderly relative or neighbour in the area, telling them plainly that there is no such thing as leftover tarmac is genuinely one of the more useful things you can do.

Someone knocked offering leftover tarmac. Is it genuine?

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