Complaint Review: Green Thumb Landscapes Inc. - Lawrenceville Georgia

We should have done our research to learn that this business has an F rating with the Better Business Bureau and that they have been administratively dissolved with the Georgia Secretary of State Corporations Division. They haven't been in compliance since 2016. But, that said, we hired Green Thumb Landscaping (GTL) to install a 50 x 100 ft. RV pad suitable for parking a 13,000 lb RV and also function as a patio for lawn furniture, potted plants, etc. when the RV was not parked or if the property were to be sold. GTL was to also to remove a small old wood retraining wall and grade, plant and landscape the adjacent hillside. We signed 4 different contracts that night; 2 of them were rewritten 3 times. We wrote a check for 1/2 the total. 17 days later, work started. Day 3, before the job was completed, the owner requested payment in-full including unauthorized extras and we paid him because he had a family emergency. Next day, we texted to see when the hard surface was going to be added - the pad had large, loose river rock as the surface and was not level. He said that the river rock was what we were going to get.... not the exposed aggregate surface we expected. We were upset and stopped payment because river rock was never discussed or in the contract. He refused to finish the job, his refusal to return phone calls, or discuss the job. Finally, 4 days later (after he realized we had stopped payment) we met and came to an agreement; we paid the contract in-full & shook hands. The agreement was that we would not to pay for the bogus extras but we would pay $1000 toward the cost to replace the river rock with exposed aggregate (the contract actually only said aggregate, not exposed, not concrete, not gravel, not rock, just aggregate; that was the main dispute) We thought we were on the same page since we had lengthy discussions of the exposed aggregate process. It was our huge oversight for not combing over the contract or having a lawyer review it. The next day his men gathered up their things; never finished planting the plants, left the hillside in rough grade, never rolling the sod, never providing a number of other items/services in the contract and never finishing the pad. They hastily threw pine straw over everything and left. We had paid $21,750 for an incomplete job! Several weeks later, another contractor finished the job for $8,400. We sued GTL and lost the case with a judgment totaling $6,046 because the handwritten contract said "aggregate" not "exposed aggregate" (if the contract saying 1200 sq.ft. not 600 sq.ft. was an error, was it not possible that forgetting to put the work exposed before aggregate also an error?) My husband and I filed suit, we had to go to court twice because the first judge recused herself having know the defendant's attorney (he happened to have been a judge in that same court and has worked with all the judges) When we took our seats at the second hearing, the judge would only let one of us present the case and cautioned us on what was proper. We did not have a lawyer and that was a huge mistake. When the judge learned that I was hard of hearing he asked me to stand in front of him at the bench so I could hear him. I told him that I had new hearing aids and could hear, but he wanted to make sure I heard him. I was mortified and embarrassed; I felt like a 72 year old, shamed child standing there, my notes and evidence were all back at the table with my husband; with the eyes on my back, I was unable to present our case, I was almost paralyzed. Instead of presenting our case, I was asked a series of questions by the judge and the lawyer. The lawyer called 3 witnesses (the owner and two of his employees) to the stand. The counter claim presented was totally different than the one we received prior to the court appearance and when we wanted to dispute them the judge said that we had run out of time after 2 grueling hours and we could not dispute them. As an aside, we also paid $200 for the first month of lawn maintenance under one of those 4 contracts. GTL never started lawn maintenance and after 8 months we have not received a refund. I have pictures, documents and text messages verifying all my claims and more. Quite a bit of trouble uploading and some failed to upload and result is quite out of order..  will keep working on that