JAMES STRAUGHN

Mr. Straughn was recommended to me by a friend who had hired him to build a storage building. My friend did not initially say that he had ever had any problems with him. Mr. Straughn and his crew began tearing down the old decking in mid-May and worked fairly consistently for the first week or so. Then they began not showing up for a day or two or three, then would work for a half a day or a day and not return for a few days. At one point they didn't show up for a week. During all this time I could not use our back door because there was no deck and no steps. After I phoned and complained he came by and explained that he had taken another job with a deadline, etc, and would be back to finish our deck in a couple days. About a week later they finally returned. On at last three occasions he said "we'll be finished with your deck and completely out of here by Friday." He didn't indicate which Friday. The last time I spoke with him he said he was nearly bankrupt and asked that I go to the hardware store and pay for the material he needed to finish our deck. At this point I still owed him $1500. In the course of our conversation I learned that the only way our deck would be finished was if I did as he asked because he had no money to pay for the material. So I went to the hardware store where he had a list of material already in the computer which I paid for. He and his crew returned to work for a day or so then left never to return. They left the deck about 90 percent finished. Calls to his cell phone were met with a recording that he could not accept calls. They left a large trailer full of trash in our side yard which killed the grass. My husband hauled it away. They left lumber scraps, their fast-food trash and other debris all over the backyard which we had to clean up. It cost over $1000 to have another carpenter come and finish the deck. Mr. Straughn initially appears to be an honest, charming, good-old-boy family man. The quality of his work is about average but his trustworthiness is sorely lacking.