L E FURNITURE REPAIR SVC

We had a fire in our home and wanted to repair some of our wooden pieces -- chairs and tables -- as opposed to buying new ones. Barry, the repair guy, came to our home, gave us a reasonable estimate, and scheduled a two-day (back-to-back) job. He showed up on time on the first day, did some work, requested payment in full, then didn't appear the following morning. Instead, he called me from his truck that morning claiming that he was unable to find parking in our neighborhood after driving around for an hour. This was hard to believe because we had a number of people working on our home at the time and no one else had any unusual difficulty (we live in Manhattan) in finding parking. He claimed he'd return within a few weeks on the one day of the week when parking is easier ("alternate side parking"). And indeed, he did come back within a few weeks on that particular weekday. But he then left again without finishing the job. When we quizzed him about why he didn't work on all the pieces we paid him to work on, he claimed it was because they were inaccessible -- piled up behind other furniture. But our home was full of workmen at the time and we had told him to simply ask one of them to help him access the furniture we needed to have repaired. We also had told our contractor that Barry would be making such a request. Clearly, he didn't ask for that help, or didn't want to ask. He stripped the top of our dining table but left it unfinished. After we called to nag him, he said he would return to finish the work today, but he didn't show up as scheduled and when we called, he didn't answer his phone. He seemed like a guy who might take pride in doing good work, but clearly he sleeps just fine taking people?s money for leaving work unfinished. You?d like to think that someone who says he?s a homeless Sandy victim and wears a Yankees jacket would be a straight shooter, not a scam artist!