JALILVAND & ASSOCIATES

It began with a casual comment to my mother-in-law that she could sell her house in Wisconsin and use the proceeds to pay for a remodel/addition on our house. We got several bids, but Mr. Jalilvand's was the only one that came in below the amount we believed we could afford. Mr. J told us in Dec. '05 that the entire project could be completed by Sept '06, with 4 months total construction time. Naturally we didn't think costs would stay at the initial $190K in our contract, but neither did we think things would go as horribly wrong as they did. It started off with the designer/architect assigned to us by Mr. J, Hector disappeared several times during the design phase, excusing himself after the fact on medical grounds. At first we gave Mr. D benefit of the doubt, but after a couple of months we asked Mr. J to step in. Mr. J failed to keep Mr. D in line, he complained to us of Mr D's performance, yet insisted that it was best if we didn't change architects. That decision cost us innumerable delays with the City of Berkeley as Mr. D's work turned out to be so error-ridden that in the end we only got through planning after I sat down with Mr. D in his office and watched as he made the final corrections. Oh, and I ended up having to do the shadow study myself as the City twice rejected Mr. D's. The issue with subs continued throughout the project, and included the engineer (who barely gave our contractor the time of day, though Mr. J also advised against finding a new engineer), a plumber, several foreman (for most of the project, we simply had no foreman), and Mr. J's own employees. When corrections were required (blamed on the workers, of course), the corrections tended to require further correction, and some issues we simply let slide in the end. Mr. Jalilvand, Lic# 749638, is listed by the Contractors State License Board as having no employees, yet he consistently used unlicensed workers. Only after Mr. J abandoned the project did I realize the problem with this. Everything mentioned here is but the tip of the iceberg. While on site, Mr. J has called me a racist in the same breath as, "you Americans are all alike." He misspent project funds, was frequently out of touch for days and weeks at a time, his frequent absences from the job site led to tools and materials (including our own property) being stolen; he blamed his employee. He failed to pay subcontractors, his accounting is incomplete and error-ridden, as far off as $10,000 at one point. He requested payments in advance, even after I drew the line and said we would no longer take that risk. I've run out of space for details: After we refused to make further advance payments, Mr. J eventually abandoned the site. After my voice mails, emails and post being stonewalled, I left messages taped to his door. He finally wrote an email saying that he'd "beat the crap out of [me] if I came to his door again." The saga isn't over, but we believe he owes us 10's of $1000's.