JT's Handyman Services

*** THIS REVIEW IS NOT TO BE CONFUSED WITH JT'S HANDYMAN SERVICES IN MESA, THIS PERTAINS TO THE OPERATION RUN BY JAMES THOMAS OF EL MIRAGE *** We hired JT to install doors we had ordered from Home Depot after he did a good job with a water damage repair at our rental property, consisting of replacing subfloor, stripping and retiling, installing a toilet, and drywalling/texturing/painting a room. He had a slight mishap there, failing to tighten the inlet to the toilet correctly, which caused more water damage 4 days later. He said he would correct this free of charge (more on that later), so I figured he would take care of his own mistakes (bad assumption). At this time, JT was pleasant to deal with, until things went poorly at the end of the door project. He spray painted 20 slab doors that I provided. The doors were dropped twice by JT, and fell over again later (he told my wife it was OK to close the garage door, but he assembled his door frames right underneath the garage door arm), causing scrapes and dings on the flat finish. Charged extra for second coat of paint required (which he rolled instead of sprayed) after dropping doors 3 times and needing to fill dings in the doors. 7 doors were pre-painted by the customer using an incorrect spray, JT said he could sand the doors for $35. He failed to do so, saying the latex paint wouldn't sand correctly after already spending 3-4 hours doing so. He told me to go to Home Depot and ask what kind of stripper to use. I did so, brought it back, and he didn't like the results and said it would take a lot of labor to fix them. So I just had him paint over those doors anyway. The doors that were dropped no longer have the smooth, sprayed finish as he rolled the second coat on them. Many doors did not have the tops, bottom, or sides painted. He hung 4 doors by the time he said he would finish the entire house (at the end of every day after the original completion date, he said something to effect of, "They should all be finished tomorrow." Of the 4 doors, 2 were a pre-hung double-door unit instead of slabs, so those went on OK. Of the other doors, one had a poor reveal, leaving a half inch gap between the door and the jamb at the top (hung crooked) . The other door got cracked as JT failed to drill pilot holes. He painted 4 trims, though not entirely. The trims he painted were the downstairs doors which were already painted by the homeowner, so he only touched up instead of putting on a full new coat as evidenced by the slightly different shade of white paint. After he overran his target date by 3 days, and hanging the 4 doors shoddily, I fired him and paid him for the work he did but withheld what he did not do. When I did so, he upcharged by $8 per door for the second coat of paint (which was caused by him dropping all the doors 3 times). I ended up paying $565 out of the original $785 quoted. I ended up hanging the remaining 16 doors myself, with much better results (no crooked doors). We did not paint any more of the trims because the colors were close enough (trims a slightly yellower white). During this time, he was supposed to finish up the drywall for the second leak at our rental property (again, caused by not tightening the inlet valve to the toilet properly). After firing him, he never showed up for the other job, and did not respond to phone calls or messages left by me or my tenants. Today (almost 3 weeks later), I finally left a message threatening to report him to the BBB if he didn't finish the job that he said was already paid for at the other house, or at least give me the materials I provided back. This finally elicited a response within 30 minutes via text message, in which he claimed I still owed him $75 in repairs at the rental property, as well as $125 at my home and said he would file liens on the properties. These extra charges were never communicated, and I'm not sure what they are for considering I even paid him $240 for the extra painting and sanding he had to do because of the shoddy work (I just wanted to get him out of my house without any drama). I'm assuming this is for the work he never performed because I fired him. He also said that any further contact would constitute harrassment -- I only sent 5 text messages during a conversation we had, plus the unreturned phone calls over 3 weeks from myself and my tenants. I looked him up in the AZ Registrar of Contractors and found he's not in their database, and doesn't have an ROC# on his business card, so I submitted a complaint of contractor operating without a license. I'm sure anyone reading this is *completely* surprised... yeah right. Word of warning to other Angie's List users -- I'm sure the rest of you are smarter than I am. Always check Angie's List for reviews before dealing with someone first. If there are no reviews, check your local ROC database. If they're not there, do not hire them!