AJ CONSTRUCTION INC

I had a really bad experience with them.  I actually had to go to court and at the end I basically had to pay him for the work that he did but it was really horrible.  The only reason I paid him for the work was because he basically wouldn't leave me alone until I paid him.  That was the only way to get him off my back.  I don't know if he is doing some kind of illegal thing.  The company name is J & J Construction and it is out of North Wales.  He is also using a second company name called AJ Construction.  I don't know if he had some of the complaints against him under J & J and therefore started using AJ Construction.  Those are both his companies.  The invoices were showing both names.  They came out.  They had given us a quote lower than all the other contractors to do the deck, but at the end they kept adding saying that that it would be an additional cost to do the job.  There were some basic things with the installation of the deck that needed to be done but they kept on saying that it was additional work.  It would have been included in the normal building of a deck.  When they were installing the deck itself, they didn't know how to install the truck decking.  We had negotiated the price.  They were fully aware that this was the kind of decking that they were going to be installing.  Once they started installing it, you could just tell by the way they did the job that they didn't know how to install it.  They said that it was a different kind of truck decking and that they had not installed before.  I told them that was how truck decking was installed.  They were insisting that there were different ways to install it and they hadn't installed it that way.  The tools that they had for the truck decking weren't the proper tools.  A couple of times when they actually came to do the job they didn't have the tools that they needed and they asked me if they could use my tools which are not tools for doing decking.  They are tools for trimming trees and branches so it destroyed the decking itself.  I told them that I wouldn't pay them for the work that they did.  I gave them what I thought was fair for the work.  I actually had to hire somebody to come out and redo the work that they did.  I had quite a few different people come out and do the work and each one of them said that the person who had done the work for me was not a professional decker.  It was like a person that was installing it for their own home.  It wasn't at all somebody that did it for a profession.  I had to have 3 contractors come out and basically redo all the work.  In addition, when I explained to J & J Construction the mistake that they had made and how much money I had to spend to redo the deck, they insisted that I still pay them for the work they did so they took me to small claims court.  They kept insisting that I had to pay them and they were not willing to take responsibility for their work.  I myself could not keep on going to court and arguing the whole issue with them because of the mistake that they made.  I went ahead and unwillingly paid them so that basically they couldn't do anything legally.  It wasn't because I thought that they did the job.  I did it basically because it was becoming harassing.  I was losing sleep and I was stressed because I didn't know at the end if I was going to end up paying triple of what they were owed.  They were just acting crazy.  Even after I paid them what they wanted, they were extremely abusive and they wouldn't give me the receipt that I paid them so I had to go to the court to have the court get me the receipt from them.  It's all settled now but it was the worst experience.  I have been using Angie's List for 6 years now.  I have had some not great experiences with contractors but not one where they came and they did such a horrible job and then at the end basically strong-armed me or threatened me into paying them what they thought they were owed, and they did such a horrible job.  The year before was the year that they did the work.  Last year was when all the issues happened, when we went to court and I paid them for the work that I thought that they really were not supposed to be paid for but I just paid them because they were harassing me and the receipt and so on.  They forced me to pay between $5000.00 and $6000.00 but with all the damage that they caused and all the additional work that I had to pay for to repair the work that they did, I ended up paying close to $12000.00.  That is not even including the material.  The material itself was about $6000.00 or $7000.00 so at the end I paid approximately for the material and work around $20000.00 for a deck that should have been only $5000.00.  My overall experience with the company was horrible.  I wouldn't use them again in the future unless I want another $20000.00 deck.  I don't know how many people they have done this to.  I can't be the only person that this has happened to.  They actually come on the job site and then once they start doing the work they keep on saying that each work is additional work.  They were using both names, J & J and AJ.  When I first hired them, their name was J & J and then at the end a year later I started seeing invoices from AJ so I don't know if they had some problem.  The owner's name is John Yuan.  The guy was so shifty that he not only used the name John Yuan, and I don't even think that's his name, he had a Chinese name that he also used.  It was just a really bad situation.  Even after they got their money which I gave unwillingly and all I wanted was a receipt to show that I had paid them, when I called him he would start yelling at me at the top of his lungs and say that he was busy and hang up.  I actually had to go to court to get a receipt.  If it was any other situation, I wouldn't have gone to court just to get a receipt.  I didn't know what dishonest thing he was going to do next.  He could have easily said that I had not paid him the money that was owed.  He did the work between August and September of 2010.  I had other contractors come in to give me quotes and they were a little more.  If I had known this information that they were doing something like that or there was something suspicious going on I don't think I would have hired them.  The other thing I realized that was very suspicious is that they never wrote anything down formally.  They never wrote down formally what they would do for work.  They didn't give a formal estimate.  Everybody else that I had come out gave a formal estimate.  I thought naively that they would still do the work without the formal estimate.  When we went to court they said that they were promised $10000.00.  It was a huge expense to me.  I spent about $20000.00 just to get the deck done and I had to spend money on the lawyers as well.