Chicagos Finest Handymen & Contractors

So Ted and I did business for about 3 months after he tiled my office. He was great - he would often be late to appointments but when he did show up he did good work and charged fairly.

Then, around December he says he's at ClimateGuard's store, and he's got a great deal on windows. He's letting me know this because he took one of my front windows out a week back to bring to ClimateGuard to get it measured so I can eventually replace them in Spring. I still have the wooden board in my window-hole today. Anyways, he says if I send him $1200 right now he can put it on his corporate card, order the windows, and they should be done in a week or two.

Fast-forward 2 weeks, I call Ted out and while he's cutting a hole in my ceiling to check on it I ask about the windows. He tells me a story about how ClimateGuard screwed up my order, and he's going to get a refund from them and go down the street to get new windows. I'm thinking that with this new water damage, we could really use that $1200 elsewhere. I tell him I'd like the refund back directly. He tells me it'll clear once New Years Eve passes.

New Years Eve comes and goes, nothing. I throw a fit and he says guaranteed it'll come on the 10th. I call ClimateGuard, they've never heard of him. I get scared. On the 8th he's supposed to come and install a chandelier and finish fixing my water issues - he doesn't show up.

I text him and he is unavailable for personal reasons on that day, and it turns out he'll be indisposed indefinitely. This is conveniently just before my refund hits, and I tell him this. He pretty much ducks and dodges requests both for the refund and finishing the jobs he had committed to for the entire next week.

So I go along with the charade, listening to his excuses. Remember, this guy still has one of my windows in his truck and owes me $1200. He probably also owes me $600 for a sump pump I never got and that $435 he charged me to take apart the very same windows and replace the rubber seals in them in October to ready them for winter? I have a feeling that didn't happen either now.

Finally on Monday(the 14th), he says he's stopping by with cash and the window.

I tell him that's fine, he can drop off the window at his convenience into my backyard even if I'm not home, but he has Chase Quickpay since I pay him via that and if the refund exists, please have him send it. He comes up with another excuse, and sends nothing.

And that's where our story ends. I still have a giant hole in my house where my window was, a hole in my ceiling where he started a job, an unhung chandelier and I've probably overpaid by thousands on unnecessary work that he conned me into.

This is definitely going to be a story I tell my kids someday. Avoid this guy like the plague.

I love my new kitchen remodel :) I was looking for someone to remodel my kitchen before I went on vacation, and it took the team only 10 days. I asked for a tile backsplash, new marble countertop, retouch the paint on my cabinets and installed new hardwood floors. They stayed well in my budget and finished faster than I expected.