A Contractor I Would Not Recommend
As RE developers we all know how important it is to hire good, reliable residential contractors. Because we are dependant, for the most part, on word of mouth recommendations it is vital that our recommendations are valid. This is true for me anyway. I am still living in the past, where your word is your reputation and your reputation is your character. Therefore, I want to let the community here know about a residential contractor I would never recommend.
Let me start by saying I did my homework...checked him out thoroughly. Handy Pro Connection, LLC (Cyrus Gordon) came to me via a recommendation. The company is based out of Sicklerville, NJ but also works in Philadelphia, where he was born and raised. I checked the Better Business Bureau for complaints, I checked the NJ State Attorney General consumer division to ensure he was licensed, I checked every reference he gave by visiting sites and speaking with the homeowners. All good, he got the job and started on May, 10, 2018.
To make a long story short. On Thursday, July 12 my contractor stopped communicating with me. Now, we are 11 weeks into an 8 week job and he has abandoned the job with 75% of the money and only 50% of the work done. HOW Did That Happen? A week into the job he was still demoing an 1100 square foot row home in Philly. This was not a complete rehab, we were keeping the main bath, moulding, and original dooors. New windows, kitchen, basement bath and adding a storage room/pantry in the basement. At that point my project manager (and partner) started pushing him. He made promises and progress, albeit, slowly. June rolls in and the work was still not where we needed it to be. At that time we started looking for a new contractor. But this is Philly and contractors are hard to come by. We found two contractors and the bid we received to finish the work were higher than the bid we contracted to complete the entire rehab! So, we felt we had no choice but to stick with this guy.
Move on to the end of June. Progress is still not acceptable. I had a heart-to-heart with the contractor and made it clear what our expectations were and no more money (he was asking for a second payment of a three payment contract) would come his way. He claimed if he didn't get the money he could not buy supplies to complete the job, which would be done in a week(I knew this wasn't true). I was going on vacation, so I arranged for my partner to give him half the second payment for supplies only. When I returned from vacation I learned my partner gave him the full second payment! I immediately went to the project and took the contractor to the store to buy all of our supplies. Two days later my partner went to the house, no supplies, no workers. Our countertop people are there looking for their payment.
Cyrus Gordon, made promises he did not keep. He took money and spent it on God knows what. He abandoned the job. Most of the work he has done so far needs to be redone. Some of the materials we choose and asked him to pick up (such as flooring) he replaced with low quality materials, I assume to keep more of our money for himself. I have filled a complaint against him with the Better Business Bureau and the NJ State Attorney General. I have also filed a claim against his insurance company with hope of getting at least our monies from the contract back.
Please beware if you run into Handy Pro Connection, LLC. This guy is a liar, a cheat...very untrustworthy.