Complaint Review: Robert Callender

In late 2009 we located a landscape business for sale by Robert Callender.  Our son-in-law was interested in purchasing this business with financial help from us (his in-laws).  We have many years of experience in this field in another state.

Meetings were held with Robert and a representative from Murphy's Business Brokers and our son-in-law and a decision to purchase was made based upon the information given regards customers, tools, machinery, a pick-up truck, income,etc.  We applied for an additional amount of money on our mortgage to fund a deposit for Mr. Callender which was to be followed by monthly payments from our son-in-law when he began operation of this business.

Operations began in early Spring of 2010 and it soon became obvious that we had been duped by Robert Callender.  Some customers on his "list" had passed away, others were dissatisfied and some were no longer active customers and the ones he introduced to our son-in-law were the few that existed without problems.  In addition, most of his tools, mowers, etc. were not maintained (which was confirmed by the local repair shop which we continued using) and soon needed to be replaced.

Our son-in-law paid Mr. Callender overe $1,700 month for 4 or 5 months and soon realized he had hardly any money coming in to cover business and/or personal expenses in addition to covering monies loaned from us (retired) to purchase this business.  Monies have continually been loaned to him to help which have made our life extremely stressful for nearly two years.  Mr. Callender was contacted to inform him of the situation, payments to him stopped and this business, after being built up somewhat is still causing financial difficulty.

Besides locating Robert Callender on this website, we discovered other reports of his extortion, indictments and criminal activities.  For a period of time our son-in-law used Robert's cell phone # and continued using RC Enterprises as the company name until customers, etc. got used to the new owner.  During that time, numerous phone calls were received regards monies owed by Mr. Callender to others.  These calls were responded to informing the callers that he was no longer at this cell #.  Soon after the business name was changed.

Our son-in-law and his family have had much suffering and financial burden from becoming involved in a business which was misrepresented at the start, not to mention the stress of not being able to pay us back which affects us also.  It was nearly impossible to learn the impact of things until working the business, using the eqiupment, and learning the truth.  Our son-in-law has worked hard to build the business and has incurred additional debt for new equipment needed to perform an efficient operation.

Thank you Robert Callender for making misery in the lives of several more people.  Search your soul.  Our next step is to check into legal action toward you and the broker who represented you.