PAUL'S LANDSCAPING

After calling Paul's references, we decided to hire him for the job.  His estimate was for $8,500 without sod and $9,500 with sod and approximately 3 months to complete.  We gave him a deposit up front in March of 2010 to begin work in April 2010.  It started off great: He studied the rainfall and flooding over the course of a couple of weeks.  He had a plan.  He immediately began work taking down our 6 foot privacy fence in order for his equipment to gain access to the back yard.  He excavated approxiamtely 60 cubic yards and scraped the dirt and clay layers off of the property.  After hauling off the topsoil, sandy fill dirt, and clay, Paul left the job for several months.  He said he had other jobs on-going, that it was too hot to work in the summer months, and that he was still studying and surveying the property for a better plan.  Our project was abandoned from May through August 2010.  He came back to work in late August with a plan to run the French drain through our neighbors yard to the lower road behind us.  We followed up with easement permits, but were unsuccessful with getting approval from the neighbors to complete the work.  Paul had no "Plan B" to fall back on.  After numerous requests to grade  the property away from the house and install a sump pump, he finally moved forward with this plan.  He underestimated the timeline of the project by 9 months.  It took a year to complete.  While working on our project he managed to damage our neighbor's driveway, burst the our neighbor's water main, ruin our fence, ruin our neighbor's back yard, and leave us with a sandpit for a back yard.  Paul became extremely irritable when we asked questions about how much longer the job would take.  He constantly asked for more money in order to continue working on the job.  We told him our agreement was to pay the balance when the work was completed.  He was unprofessional and raised his voice on several occasions.  We were already half way through the project and had paid him half of the balance.  We looked into other contractors to finish the job, but no one would take it because it was worse than when the project was originally started.  Finally, his father and another landscaping business friend completed the job without him.