Complaint Review: Poor Pauls Paving

Expect you job to come in very low and end up unbelievably high.  I thought I was making a good decision choosing this company to construct an asphalt parking lot for a small office property...I should have known better.  They were by far the lowest bidder for the project out of 4 bids I got. To make a long story short, the project ended up costing nearly double what they quoted me....they quoted me a rate and made a show of measuring the space to be paved.  Then, the day before construction they re-measured and the price of the parking lot suddenly jumped from $18,000 to $34,000....it was about 10-15% less square footage total than the original but about 20% of the parking lot needed to be concrete instead of asphalt.  The bottom line was that the job was grossly mismeasured or misestimated and I was grossly overcharged for this concrete work.  It was a total mess...when I found out what they were wanting to charge me for I tried to cancel the job.  I didn't have the budget for this kind of overrun.   The manager of the company cried that the subcontractor that he hired would "cut his throat" if he cancelled at that late stage.  I was so late in the process and I was on a schedule... I was caught unaware by this huge increase in cost....I told him that I wanted to get more bids for the project and that I would pay him an average of the bids.  He wouldn't consider this.  It was so late that I very reluctantly agreed to let them complete the work for a small reduction in price.  In the end about 80% of the parking lot was completed.  I ended up paying these people about $28,000.  Much of what I had originally planned to have done by this company I told them not to do...because of the huge cost overrun I couldn't afford it.  I ended up having to get another company come later and pave this portion..at like 40% less than "poor pauls paving"  This company left many other things undone and caused other damage to the property such as: leaving large piles of dirt and rocks at the front of the property which I later had to have removed; breaking the sprinker/irrigation system in many places and burying the pipes and sprinkler heads in the piles of dirt aforementioned, etc.  In all the job, which was supposed to cost $18,000 ended up costing probably $40,000 to finish.  The quality of the paving and work on the parking lot is horrible...4 months after having the work done the paving is starting to crack in numerous places.  Who knows how long it will last and if I will have to have it redone in the future.  I found out after the fact that they ended up not paying their concrete subcontractor...who tried to have the City Of Austin fail the final inspection...the city ended up passing it because, I think, they felt sorry for me. 

Please learn from my mistake: These guys are very persuasive and good salespeople.  Their quote will be much lower than the rest...beware.  I was a construction/contractor newbie who really learned some expensive and painful lessons through this experience.  Do not make the same mistakes I did.