Complaint Review: Mark Faelber - F & L Painting - Wichita, KS Kansas

In December we hired Mark Faelber and his crew (two guys and a woman) to begin work on remodeling our home. I'd known Mark for a year and trusted him explicitely. He seems like a big ol' likeable bear and my husband felt the same way.

Obviously, if he looked on the outside like he was on the inside, he wouldn't have been nearly so successful.

To keep it brief. We overpaid - WAY overpaid. WE paid him $6K out of an $11K job and our stupidity doesn't stop there. The job absolutely HAD to be finished NO LATER than March 15 so we could have our home ready for Parade of Homes in early April.

If I had a dime for every time Mark said, "No Problem! What are you worryin' about, girl?" I could have bought a mansion." One day in early Feb., I come home from work and Mark and his son have cleaned out my entire upstairs - EVERYTHING couches, chairs, lamps, dining table, anything not nailed down - even the CARPET was out in the garage. I was stunned. It seems that his previous job ended early!

Ya-h*o! Isn't that great, Gina!? And my guys will be able to finish up your house...are you ready for this...THIS WEEK, GINA! Isn't that exciting!? A whole month and a half early??!" I actually thought he was going to start dancing in the garage. I was pretty happy.

But - oh no - here's the bad part - and with a tear in his eye, he pulls me aside and tells me the dire news. He doesn't want his son's tender ears to hear this. One of his clients has refused to pay $8,000. His business account is drained and he's facing ruin. He doesn't know what he's going to do. He rubs his eyes and squares his back and says something about pulling through, perhaps borrowing money from his mom, but she's recovering from surgery (and I am not making up any of this) and finally when he's winding down, he tosses the pitch - asks if I can front him another $2K - he HAS to get it in his business account tonight or check's will bounce. Without it, he can't pay his crew - with it, our job will be done in a week.

I smell the malodorous scent of fecal matter, but 1) he's a friend and 2) if he's truly a con artist, we're already in for $9K and we won't see a dime. I feel like I'm going to throw up and, hoping beyond all reason I'm wrong, I write him a check.

But WAIT A MINUTE!!!! Certainly, this isn't the kind of guy who would pull everything out of a woman's house - a woman who has to use that house to prepare to teach middle school children, just so he can con her out of another couple of thousand by making her think he's ready to REALLY work on her house. I mean, NO ONE'S that much of a jerk. I was feeling guilty for even thinking such thoughts when I went to bed that night. I always give people the benefit of the doubt and here I was already convicting this guy of scamming me. I should be ashamed.

You that possess more than two kernels of candy corn for a brain can guess what happens the next morning. He does NOT deposit it into his account - Oh No - that puppy's CASHED while my signature is still warm. WE also don't see him for nearly 3 weeks, while he goes and messes around on another job that's (now) in the process of taking action against him (a business, I might add, that we have the half-used paint from - seems Mark doesn't believe in actually going out an buying supplies from one job to the next. It's better to just "borrow" them and use them over and over, so our house is painted like the local motorcycle shop). And the bike shop - like quite a few of Mark's former clients, isn't happy. And, needless to say, our due date, to him, was more like a due "suggestion." We lost Parade of Homes, we lost any chance of selling our hom and he lost any chance of getting more clients from us when they saw the poor craftsmanship in the home (we made sure his business cards were prominently displayed throughout the house with arrows pointing to his "special" areas of craftsmanship.

(Here's a good one - what do you do when you run out of money and don't have enough to buy the granite veneer you promised to put over the counters? You knock out the entire countertops, replace them with cheap plywood and hand paint the plywood attempting to give it an old-world feel (right down to the nicks and bonks from a hatchet) and the job really looks like what would happen if you turned a group of 8-year-old ADD boy scouts loose on cheap wood and ugly paint. It did, however, get a lot of amusement from our friends when they saw it, followed with, "No, now really, what is it going to look like when you're REALLY done....?" THe cheap wood couldn't hold up the weight of the sink, so when that started cracking through the counter, the Old-World feel became rather authentic.

My husband's favorite was Mark scraping all the textured paint off the cracked bedroom ceiling - WAITING FOR TWO MONTHS FOR HIM TO CARPET THE ROOM - and then watching him respraying (sloppily) right over the same crack in the ceiling so that nothing...had...changed. Sometimes, in spite of our stress, things became funny. LIke when the 14-year-old neighbor boys brought their dad's over to see what "this guy had done next" and they all had a good laugh over it. Some weren't - We were tipped off in the nick of time that he was going to put ugly grey carpeting down in our house rather than the warm brown we'd picked out (again, out of money and he got a larger "incentive" payment back from the grey - from a carpet outlet we NEVER agreed to use in the first place I might add). Mark never gave us a contract (no wonder, there), so I finally had to type one up. He was pretty careful about showing us samples and then taking them with him when he left, so we'd have no proof. I got it stopped (the grey carpet) with my dad's help and 5 minutes to spare.

Going back a bit - we were told during the first month that the initial $6K went to pay his workers (no) and all our supplies (no). His workers hadn't gotten a dime and they eventually quit, leaving Mark to "work" by himself. Mark kept telling them the reason they weren't seeing a paycheck was that HE wasn't seeing one - I hadn't paid him a dime since the job started. I was a FRIEND and wasn't going to ask for money until the job was COMPLETELY OVER. When I got wind of the double-dealing, I gave his employees copies of the $8,500 in paid checks - they weren't happy. Neither were we. He left a message on my cell phone (I still have it - so does my attorney) stating all our suppliers have been paid and everything's running on time (not true and NOT TRUE). Who knows where the money was REALLY going - but it wasn't finding it's way to my house. He wasn't being honest with me, with his employees, with the suppliers - good thing I saved phone messages from the start.

Right now, we're in negotiations with attorneys and the district attorneys office about shutting him down. I'm care less about getting our money back than I do making sure this guy doesn't con anyone else. His buddies call him Smokey - because he's so good at blowing it up people's backsides - And I guarantee you, as I write this, he's either got some one or is already picking his teeth on them. He's REALLY good at inspiring confidence and before they know what hit them, their house will most likely be trashed or half finished and he'll be gone. And if they're like most people, they'll feel like an idiot for letting that blustering fool into their house and will feel too embarassed to pursue him in court.

If he know him and know he's around someone you love - STOP HIM & REPORT HIM TO THE DISTRICT ATTORNEY'S OFFICE. Don't let this guy ruin someone you care about!

If you've been hurt by him, please contact me! A class action suit carries more weight - and you're not alone. He's good at this - he's much better at scamming than actually working - he knows what he's doing. Honest people don't see people like him coming. Please contact me - even if you just need someone to talk to.

Gina

Wichita, Kansas

U.S.A.