Antonelli Environments

We asked for his contractor license & insurance info. He went to his truck & we pointed out the ins. was expired. He said he grabbed the wrong one. He said he'd come back later after he got his guys started for the day & going to the township. It was already almost 11:30AM! We foolishly gave him the check believing we were protected by the 3 day right of recission clause under the PA Home Contractor Act. The Act also specifies the contractor must have his contractor license on all advertising & written materials, including proposals. His does not. His address must also be accurate. His is not. When we discovered his ins. was not valid & the writing agent had not written a new contract nor did the Office of the Attorney General where contractors must register have a different policy listed for him, we called him immediately. He did not call back until the next morning. We called to stop payment, but he already cashed the check. My husband asked him to return the money when they spoke the following day. Mr. Antonelli DID NOT return the money. We sent him a Certified Letter also stating that we were cancelling the project, although there NEVER was a valid signed proposal, just a receipt for a "retainer." He never picked up the letter because he is now using a PO Box which is not permitted under the Act. We filed in Small Claims Court, but when the Constable tried to serve him with the papers, he was told by whoever answered the door that Mr. Antonelli had moved in Jan. 2013. We obtained his new address of the PO Box after the failure to serve the papers & were informed by the Court that papers can't be served @ a PO Box & we can't serve them because we aren't authorized reps. of the Court. So he STOLE our money & we had no recourse until we went to our Police Dept. We filed an incident report & then a detective followed up requesting documentation plus a complete statement from us as to what occurred. They arrested him on 3 counts. Of course he immediately retained an attorney. He was able to do that very quickly. We were prepared with all of our documentation along with every section of the PA Contractor Act that he violated. However, he made a deal to give us all of our money back including the court filing fees, and the charges were withdrawn. The detective & ADA wanted to spare us testifying. They wanted us to be made whole as easily as possible. This contractor does not belong in the same class as other reputable contractors. Please let this be a warning to anyone who might be thinking of utilizing his services.

He required that we give him a 50% down payment to start the job. In the state of Pennsylvania the law is that the max they can asked for as a down payment is just 30%. This is information that I found out about later. We had a drainage job that we were wanting to get done at the same time and we were getting other estimates to have that job completed. Ron Antonelli got upset because we didn't hire him to complete that job and he told us that because of this that he now wasn't going to complete the driveway and and hasn't given our money back. I have sent him emails, letters, contacted Better Business Bureau, etc. He said that he was only going to give us back $1300 of the $2000 that we gave him and he is keeping the other $700 for an estimate that we got from him. His character on the outside is that he appears to be very professional and says that he is the best. He is not a trustworthy person and will steal from you as he smiles at you.

He is a great designer. He really knows how to put a landscaping that looks beautiful. He is very involved with the scrubs he plants. If one of them dies he will go and replace it. He does have a very strong personality. He is a terrific landscape architect. He provides beautiful work. The only reason we won't use him in the future is because of the price.