I am writing this to hopefully prevent someone else from learning the hard way like we did.
My husband bought a boat to start a charter business. We needed fiberglass work done on the floors and cuddy. My husband found this guy Jim Richardson on craigslist. My husband and Jim settled on a "worst case scenario" of 900$. Jim asked for more and more money for supplies until my husband had already paid him 850$. At that point our floor was only half done, if that, Jim had cracked the case of one of our engines and had poorly installed a head in our cuddy ( he promised to repair the case and fix the bad installation job).
After a few weeks of sporadic work Jim began to make excuses and suddenly dropped a bombshell on my husband stating that he would need another 300$ for supplies and 300$ for labor to finish the job. I knew at this point if we didn't pay, Jim was had no intention of finishing the job. After a phone call Jim said he would finish the work if my husband purchased the materials (still going to end up being more than the 900$) but at that point what could we do? My husband agreed to this and then Jim told us he was going out of town and could not do the work (he never intended to)
My husband is a Marine Combat Veteran so you can imagine how I had to convince him to handle this by posting bad reviews and filing a case against Jim in Small Claims court....
So, all this being said, please know that after paying Jim 850$ for a job he quoted at $900 we have a cracked engine case, a shaky toilet, and a half done boat flooring.....It's unfortunate that he couldn't just get it done, but perhaps he has problems or issues that prevent him from being a stand up man with pride and integrity in is word and work.