KITCHENS BY FARINA

We contacted Mr. Farina for an estimate on a kitchen remodel. On June 2 he arrived 20 minutes late for the appointment (His business is less than 10 minutes from our home. He said he wrote the incorrect house number down, and had spent 10 minutes driving up and down the street looking for the address. (He did work at this house a number of years ago when my mother in law owned it. When I called to make the initial appointment, he had remembered coming here.) About 3 weeks later Mr. Farina called to say he had our drawings ready and wanted to come by to go over everything. We made an appointment for late afternoon, when I got home from work, around the middle of the 3rd week in June (I didn't keep a note of the date). When he arrived he took a yellow pad of paper with some figures on it and a stack of papers out of his briefcase. He pulled a drawing from the stack and gave it to us to look at. The rest of the drawings remained under the yellow pad. The drawing was of the section of the kitchen that was behind where we were sitting. As we discussed that drawing, we mentioned the peninsula that we wanted to add the the room. Mr. Farina became startled, said he had forgotten about the peninsula, and hadn't figured that into any of the designs. We said that was ok, he could come back, and I asked him what else he had for us to look at. We still wanted to see his ideas. He put the rest of the papers in his brief case, along with the yellow pad. He told us he didn't have any additional drawings because his computer cord had broken that morning and he couldn't print anything. He said that the cord had been taped together and he had been needing to replace it for a long time and never got around to it. So, lo and behold, the cord that's been held together by tape for months finally breaks in the morning while he's printing our drawings, and he never manages to get it fixed in time for a 4:30 appointment. Mr. Farina said he would come by on Saturday with all the drawings, but we weren't able to meet on Saturday. We were able to see him again any evening the following week. He said he'd call to set something up, reminding us as he left that the cabinets we were looking at were on sale until July 1, so we had to order by then. We never heard from Mr. Farina again, at least regarding the kitchen design. On July 30, I mailed Mr. Farina's business card and the one drawing he left with us, back to him. Our name was on the drawing, so I didn't include a note. He called me on August 2, apologetic, but with another story. I told him we'd contracted with someone else and he said he didn't blame us. The guy is shameless, and I have no idea how he stays in business. Other issues: Mr. Farina recommended Hancock Appliance in Quincy, and we did go there in early June, but didn't see anything we were interested in. When we met with Mr. Farina to view the drawings (that ultimately we never saw). he asked if we'd gone to look at appliances. We said we'd been to Hancock, but had found some appliances we liked better at Yale Appliance. He then proceeded to knock Yale, saying they had "just that week, delivered a damaged stove to the house where he was installing a kitchen", and that "the stove had black marks all over it", and "he and his daughter tried to get them off, and couldn't, but that he managed to catch the delivery truck before it left the street". (Good Lord - where does he come up with this stuff???)