Binding by Chris

I was referred to Chris by a local merchant for resizing a rug. I had a good initial conversation with Chris about a rug I wanted to order that was too big for our living room in our house. I felt comfortable he would be able to resize the rug to the dimensions I wanted, and his quoted pricing was fair for the work to be done, so I ordered the rug. We set up a date and time for him to come pick up the rug once it arrived at my house. He was so late for this first appointment that I had to reschedule my morning and miss a meeting to meet with him. When he did make it to pick up my rug we unrolled a portion of it and decided on measurements for the new size that worked with the pattern on the rug. These measurements differed from the hand-drawn diagram I had texted him earlier before I purchased the rug. I asked him twice if he needed to write down the new measurements and he took a couple of pictures with his phone and said he didn’t need to write anything down. He told me the rug would be ready in about a week; in one week I had not heard from him so I contacted him. He did not even have the surging/stitching yet that he needed to do the work. I was going to be out of town so we set a new delivery date for the rug 3 weeks later. I texted the morning before that date and we set up an agreed upon delivery time for the following morning. Around 5:30 that evening he called to say he had just cut a hole in my brand new rug while cutting plastic wrap off of the rug. After much discussion he agreed to buy a replacement, which took almost 4 weeks to arrive. In the meantime we talked on the phone and he told me the measurements on my hand-drawn diagram were not going to work with the design of the rug. It was clear he didn't remember (& had not written down) what we had discussed together in my home about the new measurements we had chosen. At that point I had no confidence that he was going to complete this job correctly. As soon as the new rug arrived, I told him I did not want to continue with this transaction. I asked him to return some of the $350 deposit (50% of the total cost) that I had voluntarily given him when he picked up the rug; there was no contract or form I had signed and he did not require this deposit. I suggested he could keep a portion of the money for the surging/thread he had ordered for my project. Both this thread and the padding he had ordered for my project could be used for other clients. This discussion was over the phone and Chris’ response was to continually yell at me and not allow me to talk. He hung up on me, called me a terrible customer, said I was making up stories about his descriptions of the work he was planning to do, and made many other rude and unprofessional comments. The only way I could say what I needed to say was to leave a voicemail explaining my need to end this transaction because I could not have any more problems and delays and I had no confidence that I was going to get the rug correctly completed in the size that I had asked for. In this last phone conversation Chris refused to give me any of my deposit back, yelling that he had no money because he had just replaced my damaged rug. It’s been more than 2 weeks since then and I still have received no money or any further contact from him. I had the misfortune of paying $350 for a stressful mess of a transaction filled with delays, excuses, mistakes, and unprofessional behavior. I cannot imagine trusting him with any rug you care anything about.