We went with Eric for a whole-home remodel. It was an unpleasant experience from the beginning and…read moreit turned into a nightmare by the time we were able to end things. If you don't want to read the full review, consider this advice:
1. His real name is Eric Fiore
2. Run a multi-state background check
3. L&I does not have all of his lawsuits listed, do a Washington court search in all the court systems under Polson General Contractors, Eric Fiore and Whatcom Remodelers (https://odysseyportal.courts.wa.gov/odyportal lists the case events and hearings for Superior Court cases; https://dw.courts.wa.gov includes District Court cases but with less info on the proceedings).
4. Look at the history of complaints against his bond on the WA L&I site https://secure.lni.wa.gov/verify
5. Get a second opinion on the bid Eric provides to help assess if it is realistic
6. If you decide to go with him, make sure you have an attorney review the contract to protect yourself.
There is not enough room in the review to explain all of the ways we were misled. Eric had us move out of our house for over 9 months and only made meaningful progress after we threatened to sue him. He replaced the roof, but left a portion uncompleted and leaking water into the house for over a month before we finally ended things. He demanded additional payment before he would even finish the roof. In the end, he refused to return the remainder of our down payment, which we believe is over 20 thousand dollars, and he left us with a completely non-functioning house (his crews completely demolished the interior of the house, except for one toilet).
Here is the summary- We gave Eric $40K for a deposit in June 2021, for a $100k whole-home remodel. In March 2023 he told us we were permitted and we should move out of house because he was prepared to begin work within the next few weeks. We were not actually permitted. It took months for him to properly respond to county permitting, even though we told him there were still tests he did not complete. The permit was approved in early July but he did not pay the permit fees until September of 2023. During that time we had been out of our home for 6 months with the only progress being near complete demolition of the interior of our house. After repeated inquiries from us, he had trusses delivered in late August, which then sat outside for a month growing mold, with no building started. At that point in late September we tried to end our agreement with him. He showed up at our house unannounced the following morning, saying he would start work. We were done and asked for the remainder of our down payment back, which we believe was over $35K...and he said he did not have our money, that he "invested" it and left saying we would "work it out in court."
After talking to an attorney who ran a background check, we were sick with what we found. He had so many unpaid tax liens and lawsuit judgments from vendors and homeowners, it was suggested we would never get our money back. He was described as "judgement proof" by the attorney. There are a host of felony charges, including being extradited from WA to Arkansas for check fraud.The attorney advised us to work it out with Eric, and he agreed to a new contract with a new payment schedule. We felt we had no choice other than to try to get as much work done as possible. The revised agreement would require him to complete the roof and foundation repair before receiving another payment. He did most of the roof, but because of poor planning he did not complete the masonry work necessary to do the porch extension, which left improperly flashed seems and water pooling in the house. We did not hear from him again for a month, all the while the roof was leaking during heavy November/December rains.
After we contacted him to express our frustration over his lack of progress, he again showed up to our house unannounced, apparently having forgotten about our revised agreement. He demanded additional payment before completing any more work and could not tell us when our roof would be completed and the leaks addressed. He asked us to give him $10-20K more to order supplies, and pushed back when we told him we wanted the work done in accordance to our amended agreement. He sent us a long email afterward, including a list of costs that was way beyond our budget and the original $100k we agreed to, and he demanded we give him $20k more, even though he still had over $20K from our down payment.
We offered a solution where he would have supplies delivered to our house and we would pay him upon receipt, then he could use the remaining money he already had from us for labor. He refused and we mutually agreed to end working together. In an attempt to settle, he gave us an obviously inflated cost of his expenses and offered to return less than $6k. For instance he said trusses were $2400, but when we called the truss company they told us the cost was $1200. We have other inflated cost
