continued:
Maurice said he didn't know I wanted sod but that seed was better. Carlos came over to complain, bringing the drawing I gave him. I pointed out everywhere on the paper that said SOD and nowhere did it say grass seed. Maurice complained that he could not make any money if he gave me sod. He wanted to make a deal. I was getting very upset and he said someone needed to take the shaft. I asked Maurice who gets the shaft. He looked me in the eyes and said, "not me". I lost it. I said, "these guys have busted their buts in 95 degree heat and you say they are not getting paid because of your mistake"? He was very uncomfortable, as he should have been. He wanted to work a deal out. I said I was confused because that means he wasn't going to do the work he agreed to. I said he needed to take $1000 off and then said that I was going to take the weekend to think about it. He also said the workers were not going to get paid unless we paid them. We gave him $1500 (a check made out personally to him again, avoiding pay roll taxes maybe?) because my wife is a good person and felt guilty. He threatened us to pay his workers because of his mistake. We emailed him the following Monday and said the work needed to be finished with sod.
After they left the unfinished job, I spent quite a bit of time picking up trash that they left. My yard was a mess. Bottles, materials, and cigarette butts were all over my yard. It rained hard that Friday night so the seed had all washed away and my yard was a muddy pit.
We tried to work with him. He kept making excuses of why he couldn't complete the work for a while. On 8/26/21 (almost 3 weeks later) he finally said he would come with sod the next day but would need money to pay for the sod. We explained to him that we already gave him money for material and would not be forwarding him any more money for that. We told him we did not trust him to do the work or do it to our satisfaction. He refused to come back unless we gave him money upfront for the sod (again, we paid him $2900 up front for material and by our calculations he had only spent about $500 in material). We paid him $2900 for material, $500 for the added stump removal, and $1500 even though the work was not done and he would not come back unless we paid him more upfront. We are now going through the process of filing a small courts claim against him. Maurice also threatened my wife by saying he would take legal action against her if she wrote a bad review (we have this in writing). This shows what kind of character he has and how you should not trust him.
I cannot stress enough that no one should do business with Maurice. He did horrible work, wanted more money than what was agreed to, left our yard a mess, didn't finish the job, and refused to honor what he said he would do. We gave him every opportunity to make things right but he made the choice not to. read more
