Please do Rochester NY and their local suburb and rural areas a Christmas favor, stop this contractor before he takes more deposits without ever doing the work. Google JA Stanwix for just a few reviews from people you'd be helping.
We hired JA Stanwix (Jim the owner) to redo the roof and blow in insulation on our house in August 2009. He was personable, said all the things the other contractors didn't and said he'd be able to do the job in mid Sept. And we never saw him again. We'd call, leave a message and he'd call back giving an excuse for a delay and tell us to stop worrying. Other jobs delayed him, out of town funeral and forgot his phone, sick, car accident, hospitalized, even said his daughter died in Boston but we can't find an obituary. Always gave us a date for completion, not call to confirm and after we called he change the date. Finally we had enough and asked for our money, that's when he told us his daughter died. He wanted to send us a letter and have us think about it. We said we didn't want to read anything but a refund check, he agreed, waited a week and then sent us a letter offering to take $1000 off the roof and assume damages but wouldn't give us a date. Told us there were two sides to every story and that he had to stop three projects from non payment so needed our money. However, he needed to wait until his wife was home on Dec 10th so she could sign a refund check. We already know from the routing numbers on our cancelled check that he didn't put our money in escrow per our contract. We sent a letter on Dec 7th giving all the reasons for why we were justified in our refund and please just send it like he said he would with a deadline of Dec 17th. No response, called a week later, no response, wrote an email, he responded today, the deadline day. Wouldn't you know it? His wife was in an accident, a bad one, on the way home from Boston, he was going to get her tomorrow and he'd call on Monday (he can't call today?). Sound plausible? to the gullible sure, that's us, except we're fed up.
Try googling him - second link are recent reviews on Merchant's circle all three of them are from people he took deposits from and refuses to contact. Check on BBB, his rating is now an F. He has a new website - flashy but it no longer says he is licensed. We've already talked to a lawyer. Either small claims or county court will cost us in fees, whether lawyer or enforcement to get our money back. But he at least agrees that in upstate NY not completing a roof repair contract before winter is unreasonable and the contract should be voided.
It sounds like he is still out there taking money from innocent people, he needs to be stopped. Wouldn't it be a great Christmas service for a news crew to make it public and save someone else? As it is we no longer have money for our repairs (and now we have water coming in our chimney due to lose asphalt and flashing). I spent the entire summer and fall scraping and painting the house for 2 hours a day, every time the baby took a nap, I was up on a ladder so we could save money to do this roof repair. I'll now be spending my winter learning about how to do our own re-roofing of a Mansard Roof.
Read Next Complaint >>
