Fool me onece, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me!
I wish I would have remembered that little cliche during my recent dealings with Paul Dipippa, a designer in NYC that we contracted to help us with a remodel of our home in Florida.
It all started when we looked at our AMEX bill and saw around $8000 in unauthorized charges from Paul. Of course he explained it all away, saying, "Oh my assistant must have charged the wrong account..." and then he gave us over a month of excuses of why he just couldn't seem to refund the money to our card, or send us a check, or pay us back in any way. This guy is the MASTER of 'dog-at-my-homework'-style excuses as to why he doesn't pay you after he promises to. Well, after a month of "Oh, I'll get the money to you tomorrow by noon", he finally just advised us to do a chargeback on our AMEX card. Which we did, and got our money back. How weird is that? As if American Express will just forget about it?!
Some months later, we decided to buy a very expensive bed (around $12,000) and wanted to have Paul buy it for us so that he could get his designer discount with the furniture vendor. Paul told us that we had to pay the entire amount up front, which we did. After a few months, Paul starts giving us excuses as to why the bed is so delayed, just one thing after another. Well, we finally called the vendor and found out that Paul never paid them anything for it. He just took all the money. After lots of round and round with Paul and the vendor, lots of excuses and finger pointing, somehow, Paul managed to pay 50% of the money needed for the bed so that they could start building it.
By this time we knew that Paul was a thief and couldn't be trusted, so well before the 2nd 50% was due, we started telling Paul that we were uncomfortable with him holding our money and that we wanted him to pay the remaining payment immediately. So started the excuses again. "Oh yes, the check went out this week", "Oh, I'm sending it tomorrow", etc. HE NEVER SPENT IT BECAUSE HE STOLE IT AND HAD SPENT IT AND IS NOW BROKE.
For nearly two months now (it's actually become quite funny, in a very perverse way) Paul has given us lie after lie after lie about where the money is. He has finally admitted that "somehow them money got spent on something else" but cannot or will not pay it. About every other day, he tells us, "Oh the money will be coming in tonight, I'll be making the payment tomorrow before noon" — maybe Paul has a bad memory, becasue he's used that one maybe 5-6 times. My all time favorite was "Oh, I'm going to put all this behind us — I'm going to get a personal loan from my mother, just give me two more days, she is getting her account at the bank setup for wire transfers" — AMAZING this guy has the nerve to involve his mother in his lies and fraud.
All in I think he's promised to pay the money "tomorrow", "within 24 hours" or my favorite "tomorrow before noon" something like 16 times in two months.
Well now we've filed a complaint in NYC Small Claims Court. All I can get through them is $5000, which is less than Paul stole from us, but it's better than nothing.
Do not do business with this man. He is a theif and a liar!
0 comments