Benjamin R. May

The tile was never installed or delivered. I also never received a refund. Benjamin R. May has recently changed his phone number, but his company remains registered on the Mississippi Secretary of State web.

On May 10 2008, I received an estimate from Improving Concepts (Ben May) to install a wood and tile floor in my home. Ben's estimate was the best we had received so I paid him approx $8000 for materials and a start date was set for 10 June 2008. The remainder of the estimate ($2800) was to be paid for the labor after completion of the job. I then contracted a POD for storage of my furniture during the job. I was assured by Ben that they would be in and out of the house no later than 10 days after start of job. The POD arrived on 9 June 2008. I loaded the POD with my furniture to coincide with the start of the job the next day. On 11 June 2008 (day after job was to start), I finally got in touch with Ben after numerous calls on 10 June 2008. He said it would be 17 June 2008 before they could start. On 17 June 2008, Ben showed up and installed the tile portion of the floor. The tile portion of the job was the start of bad things to come. First off, Ben used the wrong color of grout and also laid the tile in the wrong pattern that had been agreed upon by himself and my girlfriend Renee. I took part blame for this since I was present for the start of the job even though Ben and Renee had spoke of these matters extensively during the estimate the previous month. I chalked it up as my mistake and let it go. After the completion of the tile portion of the floor, Ben was to return the week of 17 June 2008 to start the wood portion of the job. After numerous calls, cancellations, backorder of the wood etc etc, Ben finally sent one of his workers to my house the week of 10 July 2008 to float out the uneven areas of the floor prior to the wood installation. We were canceled another 2 weeks until the last week of July 2008 in which they finally started to install the wood floor. In the meanwhile, I was till paying approx $134 a month on the POD for furniture storage. It took them approx 3 days to approach the finish of the wood portion of the floor. When they got to the last area in the house to lay the wood, it was discovered that the last box of wood was the wrong pattern. It took another 2 weeks for this box of wood to arrive. By this time we are in the middle of August 2008. Numerous calls to Ben were unanswered and ignored. I had to go to the wood distributer myself to pick up the last box of wood. I also had to hire another contractor to lay the last box of wood, install the T molds and threshold at my own expense. Not to mention, I had to buy the stain, one T mold and all thresholds myself at my own expense. Keep in mind that all was covered by the estimate from Ben. When my new contractor had finished with the job, we were now in the first week of September 2008. It is now 26 December 2008 and Ben is still not complete with the touch up parts of the job such as re-glue of the spots where they didn't float the floor out properly on the uneven spots in the slab. I shouldn't have ever paid him any money until the job was 100%, my bad.