If you've been trying to get a home project completed, you know contractors are in high demand. You should also know some are demanding a lot of money upfront and not doing the work.
Tony Harrison says it happened to him.
Harrison wanted a bathtub ripped out and a new shower put in.
He hired Az Windows, Doors and Baths to do it.
Harrison says the salesman wanted him to pay cash. Instead, he financed the $7,800 cost through a company called Mosaic.
But he says as time went by, excuses grew, and no work was done.
"I saw your report and said, 'oh my god, what did we get ourselves into?'" Harrison says.
Jeff also says his salesperson wanted cash and gave him a half-price incentive to do it.
He says he then wrote a check for nearly $8,000.
Jeff says he never got his windows.
"Every time they called, they had a different excuse," he says.
Through emails, RemodAZ owner Tammy Denise Robinson told me it was a "manufacturer" issue.
She said, "I'll be refunding him ... $5,000 that I will be mailing."
Robinson said if we aired a story it "would be against Jeff's wishes and also mine."
We aired the story and more than 20 homeowners let me know they had the same problem.
Together, they gave Robinson's businesses big deposits and signed contracts of more than $125,000 for work they say was not completed or never started.
We couldn't find Tammy Denise Robinson at her Phoenix business address or at a Gilbert house linked to her.
So how was Robinson able to take in so much money from so many? Good question.
Before our first story aired, the Arizona Registrar of Contractors (ROC) told us they were "actively investigating six complaints" but had taken no action against Robinson.
That was Oct. 20. Two days later, on Oct. 22, the ROC suspended the contractor's license.
And it was the next day, Oct. 23, when Harrison signed the financing contract for his project, having no idea of the license suspension.
"I found out that the finance company advanced them over $2,000 to get started and they hadn't started anything," Harrison says.
The financier, Mosaic, did not return our calls or email.
The suspension didn't last long.
In December, we found the RemodAZ license listed as active again. The ROC told me they entered into a consent order with the contractor.
They said RemodAZ was "required to remedy the outstanding complaints or face the revocation of their license."
And owner Tammy Denise Robinson did live up to her promise concerning Jeff.
She sent him a check for $5,000.
Jeff says it bounced.
In January, the ROC revoked the license for Az Windows, Doors and Baths LLC/RemodAZ.
They say Robinson had also partly owned an unlicensed contracting business, Bath Logic.
We could not get hold of Tammy Denise Robinson for comment about this story.
If you know where she is, please email me at joe@abc15.com.
