WALLYS GAS WORKS

I called him for an estimate and he came to my house that very day. He gave me the estimate and we agreed to go forward. I gave him half to start the job. (700.00) He said it would be a few weeks but I said not to worry because we agreed that I would call to get a new meter added to the house before he started . I gave him the deposit that day in good faith that we are confirmed to do the work. I got the meter put in. That took about 8 weeks. I called him to tell him he could start. He was very hard to reach and at times he never return my call for weeks. We agreed to get the permit going, so I signed the permit application for him to take to the city. Again I did not hear from in so I called him again and again and finally he called and told me they would start. I gave him the deposit in May of 2008. It is now March of 2009. After numerous attempts to call him, and him finally telling me that he got the permit and I needed to pay him more to get it out of the city ( which was a lie) I looked up our permits and there was no permit application sent in to the city for this job. So he tried to get around it by telling he paid some girl to go submit this permit and she never did. He then told me he was on his way to start my job. I told him he is not allowed to start this job without a permit. He said he would find out what happend and call me first thing on Monday. It was a Saturday he said this. Monday comes around and no call. I call and call and call. He will not answer my calls. I finally had to give up and send him a letter return receipt demanding my deposit back of $700.00 for non performance. He never responded. I sent him three letters return receipt and only claimed one of them. The others got sent back to me. I have no choice but to take this to small claims court.