Carpet Service

We hired Richard in the beginning of July to tear out and replace the carpeting in my house after a tenant destroyed the property. We were given a quote of $1425 for the upstairs and downstairs, and were told he was giving us a really good price because he felt so bad that we were in the position we were in (with the previous tenant having destroyed the house). After tearing out the carpet the house needed to be exterminated. We asked Richard if he could hold off on the installation until after the house was fumigated, and he said that was no problem. Up to this point he had been paid $875 which he said would be labor for tearing out the carpet and to put a deposit on the carpet order. When we called Richard to say we were ready to have the carpet installed, he said he need $500 more to get the rest of the supplies. After he was paid he stopped answering our phone calls. He started making up excuses and postponing the day he would start the installation. Firs excuse was a family emergency, two days after that it was a personal emergency, four days after that it was that he hurt his knee and needed to stay off it for "a couple of days". The lies and excuses kept going. Finally we told him he obviously is not going to do the job, so he needed to refund us our money back. That's when his story changed, and he said he had to put a cancellation with his "distributor" which would take 24 hrs. When the 24 hrs were up, he said it would take two days to get the money back. After the two days he was again ignoring our phone calls. When we finally threatened to call the cops on him he called back and said the refund would take longer because it was "a large sum of money", yet he refused to give us the contact information for his so called "distributor". To date all we have gotten back from him is $200!!! The last thing he told my husband is that he would be taking out a loan to pay us back, basically admitting that he stole our money!!!!!!! We will be filing charges against him and taking him to court. This man is a thief and should not be trusted!!!