so some of you might recall my (well my wife but I'll take blame too) big mistake purchasing "The Big Deal" through Angie's List! Basically, paid Angie's List to use a contractor to finish our basement, contractor screwed the whole deal and Angie's List was basically saying "Tough luck" with our money.

Well, the story got more interesting and bad before it got better. during our gathering of evidence to take him to court and really push Angie's List to do something (and I will say again, Angie's List is a good source to find good contractors. Just use them as a yellow pages to find quality help, don't buy any deals through Angie's List if you expect protection from Angie's List. They are only an intermediary for service), we found out a lot of shit this guy did. He not only screwed us but 2 other customers the same exact way, he stopped working after the studs went up. He was fined by the county for not permitting his work, he let his contractor's license expire....before he started our job and when Angie's List tried to get him to do his job he basically told them (and I quote) "Suck a big dick and leave him alone"! We also became aware that some electrical work he "attempted" to do, he left a wire off the breaker and half our kitchen outlets stopped working.

So we brought all this info to Angie's List and they finally offered to try to get another contractor to do the work we wanted. Then their local contractor source (I assume it is someone who helps find them good contractors in the area) they tried to contact wouldn't respond to them after 2 weeks.

So finally Angie's List said "do you want a full refund". UH.....HELL YES!!!

so we got our money back and are going to use local referrals of people we know and probably piece work the job ourselves to some subcontractors. I can do a lot of the work myself, we were just hoping to have it done quickly by an expert. I tend to take a while on my do-it-yourself projects, although I do finish them!!

so after a full year of this, we have a partially roughed in basement and it cost us very little. P.S. we are also taking him to small claims court for the cost to fix our electrical problem he caused.