Complaint Review: Venator Contracting Group - Clinton Township Michigan

Venator - specifically John Brochou sat down with us before we signed them on and walked through our building and told us they would do the job for $180k.  We told them this was too high for us.  They came back with $147k and they told us on both walk throughs that this was turnkey.  They would hand us a fully functioning restaurant.  On day of signing they bumped the price up to $152k and said it would be cheaper (cheaper than 180k) to do this on a contract basis and just add on the extra cost.  Total Cost turned out to be $237k.

We assumed they were telling us the truth.

We explained our situation with John and he stated Venator worked with people in our situation and would allow us to make payments and they would work with us to get us opened.

During one of the walkthroughs John told us that you can always tell a good company because they will not ask for money up front.  They will do the job, pay the subs and hand you over the key to a brand new restaurant.

We gave them the deposit which was not ever discussed until we started to sign on and then they said they want to get the TI money from our landlord.  We agreed.  Landlord would not give it to us directly but decided to pay it out in matching 20k payments.  Venator then told us we had to make matching 20k payments.  So we made 2 20k payments and ran out of money.  Venator stopped paying for anything once they found out we had been turned down for an sba loan which was known from the beginning that we probably would not get it.  They did get the restaurant to the point of open.  Though they stopped paying the last few weeks for construction items and we were out over 10k to pay for what they would not in order to get opened.

Then they got greedy.  Knowing we were broke, about to open.  The day before we were to open they sat down in the store and forced me to sign an agreement to pay them 10k a week or they were going to shut us down.  We agreed unwillingly so we could get opened.  We made 2 weeks of payments.  After that we were broke and could no longer make payments.

I tried to get them to let us make reasonable payments and even tried to get our franchisor to help.  No response, no help.  Then they got really greedy and did not pay any of the sub contractors after that point.  Out of the subs that they owed only about half were paid and I am not sure they actually got paid but Venator says they are.  They said they would work with us too.  I guess we just have a different opinion on what working with you means.

Then they got greedier and had an attorney threaten us.  We made a high interest loan in order to help get them paid. After a few weeks we realized we could not pay 350 a day / 7000 a month.  So we had to stop paying.  Then they got greedier and filed a law suit against us.

Now we are closed, Venator has lost 77k out of the total 237k.  It seems to me that they should not have been so greedy and they could have gotten the rest over a period of time.

Now we are filing bankruptcy.  My heart goes out to all the subs.  I hope each of you sue Venator and put them out of business.

I would not in good faith recommend Venator.

After several back and forth emails with Venators attorney we have received an updated list of contractors and the payments that have been made to each of them with proof of payment and lein waivers.  This was a lot of work for Venator and we do appreciate receiving the information.  

Venator has made reasonable payments to most of their sub contractors that they owe.  Venator has stated that each of the outstanding invoices due to each sub contractor will be paid when we pay them our part.  This is not unreasonable but it may not be what was expected.  However, to be fair to Venator our payments to them have been slow due to lack of funding in which we were mislead by our Franchisor.  We are still suffering from this though we have made some progress. 

We are happy to have received the information from Venator and have our trust restored in them.  I feel that they are doing the best they can under these circumstances.  We hope to have this remedied in the very near future and have everyone paid in full.