Unfortunately, we were referred to Steve Arnold by an on-line contractor referral site, that is obviously no good and does NOT check out the people they recommend.
We contacted Steve Arnold, solicited his bid and even called several of his referrals that he gave us. Since we were jilted by Steve, we have since decided that his referral list was made up of those with work completed for jobs over $10,000, since all of us others screwed have been under $10,000, so invariably Steve knows the law and those under $10,000 can only go to Small Claims court instead of Criminal Court. That is how he continues to skirt through the system screwing so many people.
When contracted with him in late 2007; he stated it would only take about 3 weeks to complete but then he put 5 weeks on the contract. That was fine with us as we were going to be out of town a couple of weeks.
When we returned it took Steve a couple of weeks to start. When he did finally start, he would never call to say when he would be there and if he left he never stated when he would return. He would not contact us for days at a time. Finally, we got the demolition done and he piled the debris up in the back drive, leaving it there so long we got a notice from the city. I personally had to get rid of it.
When he did do some work, he would pick-up and drop off one worker, give him his tasks, and leave; the worker would work until completion of that task, have no lunch, and then have to wait for hours until Steve came back.
Once we started complaining about the lack of progress and lack of returned phone calls, Steve feigned he was on his deathbed, to legally slide the completion date back due to sickness as noted in the fine print on the contract.
The worker he left complained about Steve and stated he had only been hired the week before. When it came time for him to do electrical work as contracted, neither he nor Steve knew how to do it, thus I, once again, had to personally complete the work.
As we continued to complain, Steve got more people involved to do some painting as required and their leader swore that he was never going to work for Steve again but thought he would help this time since Steve pleaded with him for help. (He later got paid by Steve by check and it bounced.)
As progress seemed to pick up, a midpoint payment was made by us, in hopes to spur along the purchase of the long promised doors and drawer fronts and since we were finally seeing some action.
Well, with my check in Steve's hand, we never saw him again. His painters came to us wanting us to make good on Steve's bounced check, we were out $3200, work was incomplete, we had no doors and no drawer fronts, and our kitchen was left destroyed and dirty, all compliments of Steve Arnold and Avalon "Screw You" Contracting Company.
In the next several weeks as we tried to find out what was going on and not yet realizing we had been stiffed, Steve actually returned a phone call, because he was wanting some tools he had left, and ended up threatening my wife causing her to call the police and file a report. He BS'd the police officer and the report that we later got a copy of completely ignored his menacing behavior.
It took us about 15 months to go through the process of Small Claims Court. We did win, of course, and Steve did not show as expected, and we won our judgment of over $3200 and the experienced advice of the judge, who said, "Good luck on collecting it." Be aware that Steve Arnold continues to change his cell phone numbers, addresses, and company names. I am surprised he still uses Avalon as the beginning part of that company name. I know he changes addresses because we drove past the one he gave us and it was not there.
It would be great if there was some way we could all collectively get a judgment against Steve Arnold and put him in jail for a long time as he so justly deserves.
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