Larry Hotchkiss

They are outstanding at collecting their money but fall to the bottom of the scale when it comes to the work that they perform. We originally contacted with Larry Hotchkiss to do the work. However, though we did not know it at the time, he was not likely properly licensed, so he brought in another contractor to help get the permit. I was told that the work would take between two and three weeks to complete. They started the work on April 9, 2010, and finally completed the job on June 2, 2010, for a total time of fifty-five days. The main reason that it took so long for the work to be done was that they would show up for work between 10:00 and 10:30 in the morning, work until 12:00 PM, take a 2 hour lunch break and work until 4:00 pm and leave for the day. Another thing that slowed up the job was they would disappear for days and go and work another job and not even lets us know that they were doing the side jobs. When we found out that they were working other jobs we were told that they needed the money. We gave them $5660.00 as a deposit before they started the work and agreed to pay them the balance when the work was completed. On April 30th, they went to my wife without my knowledge and told her that they need more money in order to be able to buy gas and pay some employees. She felt that she had to give them some more money in order to keep the job going and she gave them another $2000.00. On May 20, they went to her again and she gave them another $1000.00. By now, they had received a total of $8660.00 and the total for the full job was $11000.00, which means that the balance that we paid on June 2, 2010, when the job was finally only $2340.00. While the work was being done at our house one of the people doing the job named Bret Hotchkiss, Larry's son, went to the home of one of my neighbors -- who had never spoken to Bret -- knocked on her door and tried to make a date with her. As anyone can imagine this was quite a shock to her as it was to me when she told me about it. Also, on the last day, that Larry Hotchkiss was working on our house one of his workers damaged a wall that had just had stucco applied to by shoving a plank into it and Larry Hotchkiss told us that he would return and repair the damage. We believed him and paid the balance for the job and of course, we have never seen or heard from him again.