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Home>Levelset Community>Legal Help>I paid a contractor $10,000 and he lied about the progress and did not complete the work. How do I collect from him?

I paid a contractor $10,000 and he lied about the progress and did not complete the work. How do I collect from him?

ArizonaCollections

I hired a contractor to re-frame a roof and then do extensive renovations on a house in Arizona. This individual completed about 85% of the roof and then provided inaccurate updates as to the progress of the roof being finished and the renovations on the house. I live out of state and was unable to check on the status and ended up paying a little too far ahead of the actual work being done. In the end, I visited the property and learned that the roof wasn't completed and, despite his inaccurate updates, he wasn't doing any of the renovations he was being paid for. I parted ways with this contractor and he now needs to pay me back the $10,000 dollars I paid him for work he never did. He has promised to pay me back the $10,000 dollars he owes me and insists he will send the money but it has already been a couple weeks and I still have not received any funds from him. I would like to begin sending him weekly notices for the next three weeks before I send him a final notice after a month that I will be taking the matter to court. Is this something you can assist me with to send these formal notices? If possible, I would like assistance in collecting the money from this contractor. To complicate matters, the house is in Arizona but he is from St. Louis, Missouri. I have his cell phone number, email, and addresses for him in St Louis. I am not exactly sure where he is staying in Arizona. I would appreciate some assistance from your company in getting these outstanding funds collected. Look forward to hearing from you.

1 reply

Apr 13, 2022
First, you need to see if he is a licensed contractor. Depending on what is going on with that, you may want to file a complaint with the Registrar of Contractors. Second, do you have a written contract? If so, you need to look at that contract to see if there are any provisions in there that would affect how you proceed and if there are limitations on damages. Finally, rather than sending notices, perhaps a more effective approach would be to tell him he has X days to complete the job or you are going to hire another contractor to complete and sue him for the cost to complete his work. Whether this is an option depends a great deal on what the contract says, if there is a written contract. Please feel free to contact me if you are interested in retaining my firm to help with this.
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