Frank Moynihan is a scam artist! Whatever you do, DO NOT HIRE THEM! We hired them to build a simple rectangular deck with stairs leading down to the backyard, and then they were to stain it dark brown. The cost they quoted us was $6,200 and they wanted $3,900 up front for materials. We signed a contract and we paid them the $3,900 down payment and a few days later a truck delivered a bunch of wood, but it wasn;t pressure treated like it was supposed to be! My husband took one look at the wood and knew it was just regular framing wood.
We called Frank Moynihan junior (who must be 6 foot 3 and weigh at least 400 pounds) to come to the house and look at it. We showed him the wood and my husband said this isn't pressure treated. Frank Moynihan saw it and said, Yes it is. My husband said, no it's not. Frank Moynihan actually stood there and argued with my husband about whether or not it was treated lumber for 20 minutes.
The next morning, we called Reisterstown Lumber and found out that it WASN'T treated lumber as we knew. Frank Moynihan then apologized and said that Reisterstown Lumber made a mistake and that he would order treated lumber but that it was going to cost another $1,000 in materials! We refused and told him that the contract calls for all pressure treated lumber to be used and we had already paid $3,900 up front and that was all we were going to pay.
We called Reisterstown Lumber and they said the cost for the treated lumber (same qty) as was delivered before was only $2,600 so we were baffled why Frank Moynihan wanted $4,900! When we called him and asked him why the discrepancy he got very angry and just hung up on us! At that point, we still had no treated lumber and they hadn't started the job yet! We were not going to take this sort of treatment and we were now seeing that he was trying to pull some sort of scam on us.
We called him right back to tell him to end our contract and give us back our money but he didn't answer so we left a message telling him we were ending the contract. The next day I faxed him a letter stating we wanted to cancel the contract. Over the next week, we called him repeatedly requesting our money back, leaving messages each time because he would not answer his phone. He never called us back and never returned our $3,900!
After a week, I called an attorney that my accountant recommended and he wrote a letter to Frank Moynihan demanding a full refund of the down payment within 7 days and threatening a civil lawsuit if he didn't give us back our money.
Well, 7 days passed and we did not receive our money so now we must file a civil lawsuit, since small claims court wouldn't cover this large of an amount. This aggravation will cost us thousands of dollars in attorney's fees but in the end our attorney thinks we should be able to get a judgement in our favor. But as our attorney has warned us, even if we are awarded the full amount, actually getting the money from Frank Moynihan may be much more difficult.
In any case, we are infuriated by this whole experience and we will see this lawsuit through to the very end, no matter how much it costs us. We can see now that he intended to use cheaper wood to build the deck (if he ever was planning to at all) and then spray stain it hoping we wouldn't notice. Too bad for him we noticed before he had a chance to trick us. The only thing I can say from this experience is if you live in Maryland and need a contractor, DON'T EVER hire F.A. Moynihan LLC! Him and his father who is also named Frank will rip you off and lie to your face without batting an eye. They are crooks plain and simple. If you need to know, their address and contact information is as follows
F A Moynihan Building LLC
7521 Norris Ave
P.O. Box 1060
Sykesville, MD 21784
(410) 795-4253
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