Concrete Specialist

At first we selected the contractor because he beat all the other bids we had. He initially quoted us $2,600 labor and supplies/concrete?total price. Before any ground was broken, he promised to check for cables/lines and said if he cuts any, he would take responsibility for their repair. Once he started to pull up our sod he immediately cut our phone line in numerous places as well as cut our cable line. He did not take the initiative to get them repaired. I was making the calls to the utilities to have them come to fix our lines. This delayed our job four days. Then, once all the lines were repaired, he and his workers would show up for two hours at a time to do a little bit of work removing the excess dirt and framing out the area to be cemented. Once the area was "ready" I asked him why the depth only goes down 3 inches (concrete should be at least 4inches) and he became irritated with me and told my husband and I the price would go up. When the contractor came back with the new price the price went from $2,600 to $4,200! When I heard that, I went out and figured out the square footage for our area and found out he was gouging the price for over $1,000! After discussing this with him, my husband and the contractor agreed we would only pay $1,000 over the cost of the cement due to the "discrepancy" in the contractor's price. The day the cement arrived, my husband and the contractor agreed that we were to only pay the contractor $500 dollars. The contractor told me I needed to pay him $3,000 because that is how much the cement would cost. I told him no, and gave him only the $500. After doing so, the contractor repeatedly asked me how much money I had on hand to pay the cement company. When he called to order the cement, he told the company that I had ?plenty of money to pay with.? Once the truck arrived, the cost of the cement came to $1,119. That means that the contractor was going to keep the remainder of the money plus the money we owed him. Furthermore, the day the cement arrived, the contractor tried to tell me we did not need expansion joints alongside our existing driveway and foundation and that it would rot leaving room for weeds to grow. After speaking with the concrete expert at the cement plant, the expert said it is a MUST. When I spoke to my contractor about this, he became angry with me and raised his voice and yelled at me telling me he is the one with experience. In addition to treating me poorly, he treated his workers poorly. He would drop them off in the dead heat of July/August and not leave them any water nor would he come back to let them get food for lunch. In the end, the concrete addition came out nice, but if you want a contractor you need to babysit, do research for, fight for what is right, and pay a fair price, do not go with this company!!!!