As far as I can tell Affordable Concrete out of Lancaster does not advertise on the web. Maybe that's for good reason. Martin Pleydle, the owner, was referred to us by a person we had contacted out of Green Valley to install a wrought-iron fence. We went under contract with Martin last fall to have our driveway extended for a shed as a temporary storage solution given that we needed foundation work. The second part of our contract was to return after those repairs and a door had been installed and complete the sidewalk from the front of our house to the back, with the final step being a gate at the top of our driveway to allow us to have a fully fenced in yard for our dog (first time since the house was built). Martin "forgot" that he was still under signed contract. Citing higher concrete prices, he revised our cost up significantly. He asked for more money, which my spouse interpreted as paying the difference, not a new deposit. Martin proceeded to arrive one time by permission to lay wood forms and two times without any permission in preparation for pouring the concrete. Proper cement work requires excavating and laying half of what is poured beneath ground level on top of base material, followed by soil compaction. Martin and skipped the contracted steps and tried to "float" the sidewalk at grade. When we we asked him to respect our concern that if the sidewalk sat too far above ground level, it would be covered under snow and cause a tripping hazard -- if not also crack! -- he refused to make adjustments. Meanwhile, we were trying to figure out how to keep a 12" strip of soil parallel to our fence from washing out over the future sidewalk. Rather than shave down the high side (remove ~6" of dirt) he proposed a raised curb as a mini retaining wall. This "solution" created new questions about how our future gate would clear this curb, where to mark for post holes, etc. We explained we would need to check with our fence guy before making a final decision. Since both men knew each other, we tried over a period of two weeks to set up a same-time meeting so as not to screw anything up, but it proved impossible because Martin said he wasn't available. Meanwhile, without permission, Martin returned one Sunday when we were not home, and trespassed to add wood forms for the curb even though we had not given him the green light to do so. When we explained we couldn't make the gate jump the curb (would sit too high to clear it) and didn't want to take yet another four-figure cost increase, he tried to argue that my spouse's text messages asking for an ESTIMATE -- before our gate guy weighed in -- constituted an agreement to proceed. (All that was in the texts was Martin's own quote for adding a curb followed by our questions about costs involving a totally separate question on an unrelated area.) Unrelated to the curb, we had also inquired about building an extension on a planter up against one edge of the future sidewalk. Instead of building the planter first he wanted to put the sidewalk in place and then set the block wall on top, which was not consistent with one nearby that was already completed (this would have allowed him to skip digging a footing). He then insisted on pocketing the "deposit" stating we changed our minds. (None of this was about changing minds as much as responding to costly new problems created by refusing to do the proper prep.) No concrete had yet been poured. None of his crew had shown up or been sent home. These were just the preliminary stages of working out what would have become a change order if an agreement had been reached. Ultimately, Martin claimed his time and travel were worth the nearly $1,000 paid toward concrete cost increases and stole our money. We tried to propose a compromise -- a partial refund and the balance applied toward the lower cost planter (not already in the contract). But technically he should not have classified it as a "deposit" given that he was still under contract, with a deposit paid the previous fall. Martin was inflexible, insisted on cutting corners despite a contract agreement and (appeared) to be using undocumented people to perform much of his work, presumably paying a fraction of what he's paid. (In that case, might as well skip the middleman and go to Home Depot to hire!) The nightmare forced us to hire someone else to get our project done. We ended up going with a handyman who built a nice fence for us and the neighbors but he turned out to be a lousy concrete installer who, despite promising to correct the issues caused by Martin's poor site prep, did not. As a result we are stuck with the very outcome we bent over backward to avoid. (No remedy from "licensed" concrete pros, either. They either don't show up or do but never email the estimate back to us so we can determine our costs to redo the work.) They say a sucker is born every minute. Perhaps so. But these days we "suckers" have internet connections and we name names. read more