Manatee Aluminum

I was originally scheduled to have a screen room put on the rear patio of our house. I was told it would take about a month to get the permit and they were a few weeks beyond that for starting the project. They didn't start the digging for the footer until 3 months after we had the agreement drawn up and signed. The hole was dug on a Tuesday, inspector was supposed to come Wednesday, and they would pour on Thursday. No one came by for the inspection and pouring the footer was delayed for a few days due to rain. If they had been here in the morning they would have had no problems, it only rained for 10 minutes that afternoon. Instead they show up around 2pm, when it always looks like rain in the afternoon in Florida. So they didn't come back until two days later (Saturday on Labor day weekend.)
Anyways, after I had seen that they poured the concrete about 4" below where it should have come up to, and noticed they didn't put down any re-bar before pouring, I decided to check if they had actually pulled a permit. Turns out you can look up building permits in Manatee county online and I found that they in fact, did not pull the permit for this project. The following Tuesday I went to the office to cancel the project and get my deposit (50% of the $4700 project) refunded to me. After speaking with the owner who said they would put the permit in on Thursday of that week, I decided to go through with cancelling the project because I do not have people do work that I cannot trust. I was blatently lied to numerous times by Ruben, who seems to run things over there and had enough of it at this point. I had to wait a week and a half to get my deposit back (less $350 for the sloppy/incorrect footer work) because they 'had Canadian checks that needed to clear in order to get me my money back.'
After receiving a few estimates from other aluminum contractors, I was informed by one of the contractors that they have heard Manatee Aluminum has working without permits for over a year on their projects, ever since they had a new owner. I don't know if this is true or not, but it would not surprise me. I would caution anyone thinking about saving a few bucks with Manatee Aluminum's lower estimate price to think twice and go with someone with a better track record for a little more money.
I feel bad for all of the people getting work done by them without permits. Hopefully they are happy with the quality of work done, however I read other reviews about installs that leaked and they would not fix them.