Elite Construction

While Jason and his crew showed up to the job promptly and completely the work quickly, there were some egregious issues with the quality of the construction.  He did not screw down the planks with double sets of screws at each joint (e.g. normally you see two screws next to each other at each point where the plank meets the underlying beam).  He did not do this, and a family member pointed it out to us later, so we informed Jason and he did fix it.  Other issues included water seeping into the doorway beneath the deck, which was never addressed (this was not an issue with the previous deck).  Also, he did not use new concrete footings for the porch/deck on the first level.  
By far the biggest problem-- he never bothered to get a permit from the city.    Because of the size of the deck, a permit was required.  He repeatedly promised to furnish the permit to us, but never delivered.  We asked him several times over the course of six months, and each time he had some excuse, like he accidentally entered the wrong address on the permit, or he had some issue with city hall.  In the end, he was lying and never bothered to actually get permit at all.  We had to take him to small claims court, in which he never bothered to show up.  He later called the court magistrate, but he obviously lost.  
In the end, his estimate for this project was the cheapest one we received--and it was the cheapest for a reason.  I would not do business with him again.  It would've been better to pay a little more and get someone who did a quality job and took the nominal amount of time to get a city permit.