ROMA MARBLE POMPEI

You can see this video from ABC 7 On Your Side: http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=news/7_on_your_side&id=7403760 It was HORRIBLE. Giuseppe, the "craftsman" -- and I think the husband of the owner -- talked a great game about how beautiful his work is, how he could get it done in a timely fashion, etc. He showed us samples in the showroom of gorgeous installations he had supposedly done. Once he took our deposit, things went downhill fast. First, he did not live up to his promises about installation date, which caused us endless headache, since we were leaving on a long-planned vacation and he had promised to have it done before we left. Second, when he finally did send his guys (he was not present at installation) to bring the granite, it was clear that it had been cut improperly. The main piece -- from sink to cooktop -- had curves in the wrong places, overhangs that were so inconsistent that they varied from less than 1/2 inch in some areas to more than 2 inches in others, and gaps between the countertop and the wall (which they tried to remedy by pushing it in further in some spots, thereby having to cut the wall and further reducing the overhang in some areas.) As a result, it took them four hours, with a crew of three men, and they barely finished one of the three pieces they were supposed to install. There were two other pieces as well -- a long, narrow countertop, which was cut too short and needed to be completely replaced, and a piece for a bow windowsill, which was not finished. We were leaving on vacation the next day, and were livid that we would now have to wait until after we returned to repair the counters, thus also causing a delay of several more weeks in the completion of our kitchen. (Hooking up faucets, dishwasher, etc.) When we tried to call, Giuseppe disappeared. He refused to answer the phone, and the one time we did reach him, he denied that there was anything wrong. As it turned out, Giuseppe, supposedly a great professional, had not even taken a template of the cabinets and countertops. He simply measured with a tape measure. We know now that the professional standard is to make such a template, to make sure that the granite is cut correctly. We complained to our county's Division of Consumer Affairs, and found out that he wasn't even licensed. (This was our fault, that we should have checked, but we never even conceived that a business with a huge store, right on a main road, in plain sight, advertising their services in the open, would be operating without a license.) Consumer Affairs fined the business for operating without a license, and tried to broker an agreement between us. But the agreement was that they would return only 1/2 of our deposit, IF we returned the faulty granite. However, this case was not heard until months later, and we had already had the work re-done by a competent professional. And while we had left messages with Giuseppe that he could come and retrieve his granite before we had it re-done, otherwise we would throw it out, he never responded. Thus, by the time he made that disingenuous offer to Consumer Affairs, he knew that the granite was long gone. (We were not going to live for months without a kitchen.) Because of this, we never got our deposit back. We took the company to small claims court, and won a judgement against them for the entire amount of our deposit. They never paid. When we tried to institute collection procedures, we found that they had folded under their original name, Pompeii, and re-incorporated under the name Roma Pompeii, in an attempt to claim that the business that had the judgement was no longer operating. When we got a local TV news operation's consumer-protection unit on the case, they talked to Consumer Affairs, who said that they will continue to go after this business until they get a license, and they will not issue them a license until they pay all back judgements. They continue to operate. They are scofflaws, nasty, and unresponsive to complaints. Addendum:: We recently received a phone call from another customer, who had an absolutely disgusting and degrading experience with this company, during which Giuseppe even sexually harassed her. (She had found our name online with the reviews we had published back when this first happened.) I would be just "letting it go," except that this phone call disgusted me so, that I want to make sure people are still warned about this horrible business and their equally horrible owner.