Charles Small from Hamilton

We paid this company over $ 3,000 in advance for work on the exterior of a property we own. The work was done shoddily, where it was done at all, and a good part of it was not done at all. We had contacted them at first primarily with respect to stonemasonry work. Good stonemasons are hard to find on short notice. Jason (the owner of the company) claimed to have one available. After over two months of waiting, he never actually showed up to do any work for us. In the meantime, our deck, porch, pillars and columns had been demolished. For the deck and porch, we had badly and sloppily built replacements; the porch and pillars were not done at all. The porch was propped on shaky four-by-fours that caused the roof to tilt and were a safety hazard. The deck, which we contracted to be cedar, was mostly cheap pressed lumber,and second-grade at that, cracked, damaged and chipped. Skirting was missing. The steps were chipped and cracked, and were not even built to code (stairs not wide enough), so they need complete replacement. A patch of sidewalk they put in was crumbling, footprinted and pockmarked. Through all of this, Jason was pretty much unreachable,either by phone or e-mail. When we did got hold of him, he never had more than thirty seconds to talk, was perpetually angry, foul-mouthed and annoyed ("fast, friendly service",LOL !),and always implied, or told us,that he had somewhere more important to be right now,but that he would be back in touch, soon, soon, soon. And then the excuses: he was out of town, he had pneumonia, the weather was bad, he had thrown his back out, on and on. It took us a while to realize what the plan was. Basically: to extract as much money as possible,as quickly as possible,and then pull a vanishing act when the heat started to get turned up. When I finally started to demand a date when the work would be done, a plan, or even a time we could MEET to talk about it (and of course he still had a $ 2000 deposit from us for unfinished work), Jason told me angrily that I had no business leaving so many messages. Again he promised to meet soon, soon, soon. Again he didn't show up,or respond to e-mails. His voice mailbox was full. I e-mailed to let him know that I would be coming out to his office address to get some answers. It was getting toward winter at that point and soon it might be impossible to do the stonemasonry work. It had been over two months, and our insurance company was threatening to cancel our policy if needed repairs were not done as soon as possible. When I finally got him face-to-face,I was told: (a) I would not be getting a refund. (b) He would finish the job, but couldn't tell me when (c) He would call me in an hour,and (d) If I ever came onto his property again,he would throw me off. Jason did not call me in an hour. I had to call him at the end of the day. Amazingly,I reached him. The gist of the conversation, which was the last we had with him: The reason he had not done the work was that we were at the bottom of his list (which contradicted everything he had been telling us for weeks about being number one on his list,and the stonemason being ready on the first sunny day). The reason we were at the bottom of his list had to do with, shall we say, some activities he claimed I had been carrying out with respect to him that involved the use of a certain male organ. It is, unfortunately, impossible to describe much of the conversation that followed, which consisted mostly of a volley of obscenties and threats of violence directed at me by Jason. The upshot was that he had decided that he would not be doing any more work for us after all. His words: "We're done, buddy." He ended with a final obscenity and hung up on me. Lovely customer service. Stay far away.