Charlie Brown Independent Contractor

After obtaining several estimates, we chose to go with Charlie Brown because his quote was the lowest. He seemed like a young guy trying to start a business, he had some experience behind him, and we wanted to give him a shot. In the end, we have a decent deck. It is large, sturdy, and safe. However, we have been told by people with experience that the quality, at least in terms of appearance, is sub-standard. Some of what was pointed out to us we already had concerns about and we had tried during the building process to address those concerns. Some things he was willing to fix after some prodding. Other times he was not receptive. We've been told that he should have redone all the railings, especially when we pointed out that they were done wrong, when instead he made minor adjustments to a few (which amounted to nothing) and ignored the rest. I had been trying to maintain a cordial relationship, so I felt bad about asking him to redo such a substantial piece of the project. He gets a B for price only because the cost went up more than we had discussed, but it was not a huge deal in the end. He gets a B for quality, because even though he failed to pass two inspections and there are problems with the deck, we finally did pass in the end, and as I've mentioned, we are relatively happy with the final product and were never expecting perfection from someone clearly so new at this. He gets a C for responsiveness because during a recent conversation when I dared to question his lack of process and his inattention to the project while I was not there to oversee his work, he yelled at me, hung up the phone, and did not return calls for several days, even though the job was not finished. I would have given him a B prior to that. He gets a C for punctuality because most days he would show up late, although he would sometimes stay late to get the job done in the first two weeks. (I should mention that while I appreciated his commitment when he worked in the rain during the first two weeks to rush the job through, I would have preferred him to wait for the rain to pass for safety reasons... and I would have preferred for him not to yell at me for his choice of working in the rain when I had discussed with him just the opposite.) He probably could have gotten a higher grade, however, if he hadn't been working so many jobs at once, which was something I hadn't been aware of when we signed with him. He would often show up after working another job, or have to leave early for the same reason. I would have preferred to hire someone dedicated to one job at a time. Finally, he gets an F for professionalism, and this is the main reason I would not recommend him to anyone else. There are many, many contractors out there with the skill to build a deck as nice as (or better than) ours. What sets the best apart from the rest is good customer service, and he has yet to learn that. He was pleasant enough until he received his final payment, which I gave him in good faith even though the job was not technically done. After that he was rude and unresponsive. He failed to schedule a final inspection, so I had it completed. We failed inspection. To his credit, he came and fixed what needed to be done, but left a mess of sawdust, screws, nails, and cigarette butts, and did not glue back the post caps that were removed when he completed the fixes. While he was working at my house during this time, he went out of his way to be rude to me and my visiting family.