I wish I had done my homework! This is a hard lesson learned. Just the facts - to make this short (not sweet). Hopefully his sentence will not be either! I also found Mid FL Contracting on Reliable Remodeler. Pete came to our house, we signed a contract for him to do a demo job in Lake county. He was to begin work immediately upon our closing. On the closing date in October, we set up a start date. Weeks and weeks went by and he could never pull the permits. We got every excuse in the book from him as to what the delay was. Finally - I offered to pull the permit myself and found out that I could not unless we held the property for 1 yr. Which we do not want to do. He then told me he had a friend who could pull the permit and was very adament that I NOT put his name on the permit because I could get him 'in trouble'. (Wish now i had)
We finally after NUMEROUS telephone conversations told him we wanted to cancel the contract and for him to return our $1866.00 deposit. I sent him certified letters which he claims he never received. I have the receipt showing someone signed for it. Then he claimed he mailed the money orders to us. After 1 week of waiting, he came up w / more excuses claiming it got lost in the mail and 7-11 was cancelling the money order - it would take 2 days to get his money back. I called 7-11 myself and spoke to the person in charge of lost money orders who said it is an outside company and could take weeks to get the money from a lost m.O. (verifying that Pete lied yet again). I told Pete to send me a copy of the m. O he mailed or i was going to contact my attorney. He could not send it because he conveniently forgot them at home (yet he had them 2 hours prior at the 7-11!!) He just continues to wrap himself in LIES, LIES and more LIES!
Our attorney had him sign a promissorry note in February which has now matured and we are in the process of a judgement against him and his company - just another to add to the list. My attorney has also found NUMEROUS judgements and liens against him PLUS he is a convicted felon in Orange county for writing bad checks. I hope that everyone passes this information along so he cannot rip off more people. I may never get my money back, but one good thing is - Lake County will prosecute any contractor who takes a deposit and never begins any work. Maybe I'll go that route - he can sit his % in jail for a few days to think about what a sorry piece of - he is! I am going to contact the news - if enough people report him, they WILL do a story to aware other homeowners. I also contacted the internet company that recommended him and they ARE going to remove him from their referral program. It's a start:)
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