Complaint Review: Chris Christopher Andino CJS Cj's Handyman Services Inc.

My wife and I were moving into a new home on December 10th, 2007. My wife has asthma and I am highly allergic to cats which was a problem because the previous owner owned four cats and two dogs. Much of the interior(flooring, paint) absolutely had to be replaced before we could move into the home. We had already committed financially to paying a moving company and allowing the new renters of our then current residence to move in on Sunday, December 16th. We had agreed to have Chris Andino replace all of the carpet throughout the house, remove the popcorn from the ceilings, paint the interior of the house completely, and do tile on the floors and walls. There were a few other things included on the original contract. He said, in front of my wife and I, my realtor, and the current owner of the house we were buying, that doing that work by the end of the day on Friday, December 14th wouldn't be a problem at all. Because it was Christmas, he said had a "present" for my wife and I, but would not tell either of us what it was. He said that he had a full crew and everyone would be assigned different projects that they specialized in. We even met some of those guys, but we only saw one of them again. He also knew work could not commence until Tuesday at 12 noon because that is when the woman would be completely moved out. We went with him to purchase all of the materials and I gave him $3,000 up-front just for labor because he said that "all of his clients do it that way". There was another $4,150 to be paid when everything was completed for a total of $7,150 just for labor. We were paying for all supplies, fixtures and materials.

We closed on the home on Monday, December 10th and already at 10am he called and said he and his brother were on their way to the house to begin work. While I would have loved to get the work done sooner, he knew the current owner would not be out yet. He was agitated, but did not go to the house. I told him I would call him the next day to let him know when she was completely moved out. Around 10am on Tuesday(the next day), the woman who sold me the house said she was almost gone, but wanted to verify that I wanted to give my workers the key. I was surprised to find out they had just gone over and started working against my wishes and contrary to our arrangement.

From Tuesday until Wednesday afternoon he was working. It was him, his neighbor and his brother. According to him, his brother got into an argument with him and just walked out, so he was short handed. There were only two to three total people working at this point. On Wednesday, even though it appeared he was very behind schedule, he tried to act as though we were best friends and assured me everything would be finished. He made jokes about us going to play golf after he was finished and that he was like Allstate because we were in "good hands".

I had to leave town on business. Because I was on the other coast, my wife was left to go pick up supplies with him so that he would not have to incur costs and so that we could put the costs on a Lowe's card which was interest free financing. I found out from her that he had made numerous highly inappropriate comments including saying that he "wished he if came back in a next life as someone else he wanted it to be our dog so that my wife would carry him around all day long" and also that he could understand why I am so protective of my wife because he would be too if he was married to someone that looked like her. This made her feel very uncomfortable but we just wanted to get the job done. While he did stay there long hours, we found that they were smoking and drinking all throughout our house while we were gone. There were cigarette butts and beer bottles left throughout the house. When I asked him about it, he said that everyone in construction does it and if I had a problem I should have told him! I also found out that our "surprise" was that he was going to put texture on all our walls because he thought it looked nicer. It was a "gift" because he was not charging us for the labor. However, we did pay for materials and tons of extra paint because the texture just soaked up the paint. There was no way for him to go back and undo what he had done already. I found out later that the reason he did it was so that he didn't have to spend time putting plastic up and protecting the walls while he was doing the ceilings. Basically his "gift" costs us hundreds of dollars, days of time, was due to his laziness and ABSOLUTELY not something we asked for. He ruined a lot of the surfaces of our house that are now covered in texture lilked doors.

Needless to say, work was not completed by Friday evening per our original agreement. I gave him another day to finish the work(Saturday) because we didn't have to move in until Sunday morning. Out of nowhere he told me he had until Sunday at 12 noon because he had heard me say something about that being the time that I was tentatively moving in he just took it upon himself to alot more time. Either way, the work was not even close to finished by Sunday. I had NO idea what to do. We had invested to much money and time with him, especially right before Christmas, we were completely stuck. No one else could come in on such a short time frame. We moved all of our personal belongings into one room of the house, covered it up with plastic and my wife and I had to live at a friend's house. He gave me every excuse in the book and said "he never walks away from a job" but really it was because he told me he had already used to my first $3,000 to pay his mortgage and he had not paid any of the guys working on the house so he had to get more money.

While I didn't want to, I agreed to let him finish if we could add more work for the money. I didn't want to do it, but he would get almost belligerent when I said that some of his money would not be paid for work not completed so I just figured it would be easier to add more work for the money. It sounded good in theory.

I had together a contract that said he agreed to, but just wanted it to be on his "official paperwork". he would never do anything without looking it over over-night. I signed another agreement that he put together and added to the bottom he wrote that we was taking $1,150 off of the extra work and so I would only have to pay $1,000 extra beyond the $7,150 agree upon. He swore again that EVERYTHING, from the original agreement and this one would be completed by Wednesday, December 19th. Originally I had trusted his word and didn't want to add a clause to the contract because I didn't want the work to be completed in a hurried fashion just so that he would be paid. However, this time I added something that said I would not pay the extra $1,000 if the work is not completed by Friday December 21st. 2007. By this point, his "crew" was pretty much his neighbor, his parents, and two guys in his own words had "no skill, he had to go behind and clean all of their mistakes".. They even painted two of the rooms completely the wrong color so that we had to pay for at least two extra gallons of paint which cost us over $50. He said he had never used them before and would never use them again they were so terribly at what they did.

About this same time, he also came to me and said he had receipts that he needed me to pay him for. I told him that our policy had been to let me know about any other expenses because both my wife and I had always made ourselves available to meet him at Lowe's to buy things we had already been on over 10 trips with or for him. The total of the receipts was over $500 and he could not tell me what ANYTHING was on the receipts because of the way that the home improvement stores truncate their receipts. In fact one of the things didn't even have a receipt for, but said that I would have to trust him. He accused me of not trusting him and that he done me such a favor by going and picking everything up. I was already so angry, so manipulated and mistreated, but I couldn't think of anything else to do and I needed the job done. I paid him $475 cash because that is what he preferred. He told me he would give me a receipt for it the next day because he wanted it to be on his "official" invoice documents like usual. He gave it to me the next day as he said he would.

This is when things really started to get terrible. On Friday December 21st, he was still not even close to being finished. He gave every excuse in the book again, but more importantly he started to accuse me of "stealing" from him by not wanting to pay the $1,000 per our clause. He said that If tried to not pay the full $5,100 I owed him that he would sue me and that I had "better pay him every penny". I even had his guys come to me and say they had not been paid anything and they really needed the money. Chris completely put me in the middle of things with guys that I didn't even hire. I had four guys, including Chris, that were angry, frustrated, tired and said they wanted their money because it was three days before Christmas. I wanted so badly to call the police, but I really needed the job done and I didn't want to not pay all of the guys for their work so far. I just felt like that would make things worse and Chris promised that all he needed was one more day. I told him that I would still pay the full amount if he would just get it all done by Saturday, December 22nd because I was so invested in every way and didn't want them to walk. I felt manipulated, threatened and completed lied to, but I just thinking that maybe they would finish the job and I would never see any of them again. Being that they all knew where I lived and all of the contents of my house, I was very scared to anger them and especially get the police involved. When Saturday came around, I told Chris that I was going to pay him when all of the work was done that evening. Around 2pm when he knew that he would not have time to cash my check and pay his guys, he asked me to get cash and that he would give me a receipt. He had given me a receipt in the past and so at this point I didn't feel like it would matter by check or cash and if I could help them, especially two days before Christmas, I really wanted to. As long as I had the receipt it wouldn't matter. Once again, around 7pm said they were all too tired and could not go any further. Like everyday since meeting him, he gave me a list of excuses, guilt-trips and reasons why I should pay him every penny without the work being even close to finished. Truly at that point, they done a great deal of work, but nothing was completed and since I wasn't there most of the time, I could not verify quality. I was once again stuck, but felt like it was finally truly close to being finished and that is all I wanted. The paint job was HORRIBLE and they had wasted hundreds of dollars of our paint, but there was very little I could do. I kept thinking about the stories of how angry and irrational people get around the holidays when they are not paid the money they feel they are owed Chris was definitely demonstrating that to me. He kept telling me how his son kept calling him crying and asking when he was coming home and that he had not been able to buy a single present for anyone in his family. Feeling uncomfortable with any choice, I gave him $4,100 of the money and told him I would pay the other $1,000 after the work was completed the next day on Sunday. After I gave him the cash and assuming he would give me a receipt right then, he said he would bring me an official receipt in the morning because he would not give me just something on paper that I could manipulate.

He showed up on Sunday, with his two parents and one other guy someone I had never even seen before. The other three guys had their money and he said they wouldn't work for him any longer.. he even mentioned his neighbor after getting him money went out to the "club" and would not come back. I saw him pay them cash, so I would assume they received what he promised them, but I have never made any arrangements with anyone else besides him. On Sunday morning when I asked him for a receipt, he said he would just put it all on one receipt at the end of the day to make it easier.

I was supposed to have left town on Thursday, so come Sunday I was beyond stressed out, scared and generally sick. My wife had been physically sick for over a week and could not stop crying. He said he only had a few hours of work left, but around 5pm I told him that I could not wait any longer and today would have to be the last day because I absolutely had to leave town.. we had people waiting on us in South Florida. Around 5pm, knowing that he was not close to being finished, he called me, screaming at me and told me to get to the house. When I got there, he made up some story that I had been asking the neighbors what work had been completed and he felt that was so wrong of me. I was beyond words because I had never even spoken to the neighbors about him and even if I did ask them what he had been doing, I had every right to do so. Why was he even talking to the neighbors? The whole time he was working in my neighborhood, he was trying to get business from my neighbors so maybe that was how the conversation started, but either way we still have not spoken to them and are fearful he may have caused a real problem with them for no reason.

When he calmed down and apologized because he knew he was wrong, he said he still was finished and wanted to be paid for everything. I told him there was SO much more work to be finished that I couldn't do that. He then said that he was going to sue me for the money and that he would say I had never pay him the other $4,100. I was completely trapped and wanted to call the police again, but he had put me in a situation where I had no solid proof because he had tricked me, I was scared of how he might react and I still just needed my job done.

I agreed to pay him $500. He promised that he could come back on Wednesday and finished up everything. While he was not happy with that, at least he got some cash and I felt as though I could rest easy. He took the key to my house and I assumed that he would be there on Wednesday. He had been there every single day since the work started on December 11th.

He never showed on Wednesday, December 26th as he promised. I have called him over 20 times and left messages that I was going to the authorities because he has essentially stolen supplies of mine that I paid for, has a key to my house which has not been returned and will not give me a receipt for the other $4,600 that I paid him. There are so many other terrible things that I have left out because this is getting too long. The tile work in both bathrooms is leaking so much that while my wife took a shower, about 10 gallons came through the roof of my ceilings, all of the toilets he "insalled" are leaking and all of his work was amateur at best. The toilets were even bolted to the ground and half of the bolts were missing. I have been told the carpet will need to be completely replaced and all of the walls completely repainted. I will have to pay again, and probably even more to finish and correct his mistakes.

What he did was a criminal and civil matter. I have over 50 pictures of his "work", I have two contracts that he signed for work which was never even close to completed and I have numerous people that will back up my story, probably even his own guys because there were there for most of the conversations. When we first started the process and I asked him to do electric work as well as putting in a new tub, he said he would not need a permit and also that he was a licensed contractor. I found out that both of those were lies.

I know most people would say "why would you pay someone cash and not get a receipt immediately", but it all happened so fast and I was so trapped that I felt as though my only choice was to play by his rules. I just wanted the whole situation over and he kept showing up so I figured at least with the progress that he really was committed to the job and cared. I kept going further into a hole and just wanted to get out.

I was wrong about everything.

Drew
Orlando, Florida
U.S.A.