In a recent letter to the Asking Eric advice column in the Chicago Tribune, a homeowner wrote that her walls and ceiling had been painted the wrong colors. The store gave the wrong paints to the painter, who didn’t check the cans.
“Who’s at fault here?,” she asked. “Is this just a live and learn situation?”
While saying the store may have gotten the paint codes wrong, Eric blamed the painter: “He should have checked the product he was receiving before he left the store. . . . He should have offered to fix his mistake, if not for free, then for a discount.”
Eric added, however, that “sometimes mistakes can’t be painted over.” I’ve lived with those kinds of mistakes.