JMD Contracting

Description of Work: We are planning to sell a house on Locust St. in Philadelphia (used by our daughter when she was attending university there). We had used JMD Contracting (John Daniels) previously for some repair work, and asked him to paint, repair and do other work to prepare the house for sale. We met with John Daniels on April 7 to review the work and told him that a real estate agent (Michael Cohen of ReMax) would be representing us since we live in Alabama. John Daniels promised to work up a detailed estimate of costs for each task so we could review and amend depending on cost and priority considerations. He said the estimate/invoice would be sent on April 8, then 9 and then 10. We never received it. (Based on our walk-through with Daniels and the real estate agent on April 7, I subsequently drew up a list, which we provided to a different contractor who performed the work in a timely and satisfactory manner.) At Daniels' request and since we were departing Philly, we provided him on April 7 a check for $1500 as a deposit so he could begin work on certain agreed tasks on April 11 while we reviewed other tasks and negotiated a contract. He cashed the check on April 8. We needed to have the work proceed quickly in order to have the house on the market by May 1in order to have a better chance to sell it. On April 11 (before any work was begun) at the advice of the real estate agent, we told Daniels not to include the sanding and refinishing of the hardwood floors as there are specialty firms that do that better and cheaper. In response John Daniels said that he was no longer interested in doing any of the work, and that he would refund our deposit in full.