Contractor woes: Upstate couple warns don't fall victim

Yahoo

3 days ago

(WSPA) – We get a lot of complaints from homeowners who hire contractors and pay thousands upfront only to have the job go unfinished.
One Anderson County couple said they didn't realize the contractor they hired had a lengthy history of issues until it was too late, and they are sharing their story so you don't fall into the same situation, with him, or anyone doing work on your home.
For the last two years, Jeremy Bass has been consumed by a desire to save others from the financial and emotional hardship he says he's come to know.
'What we want is for other folks to be warned and for this to stop,' Bass said.
In 2022, Bass signed a contract with 180 Handyman Solutions in Pickens County to do a 3-part renovation to their home.
He and his wife, Ginger, said they felt comfortable paying thousands upfront to owner Timothy Porter because he talked about being a minister at a church nearby.
'He presented himself as a man of faith, and just instantly had a great rapport with him,' Jeremy said.
Porter had, in fact, completed an $8,000 job in their crawl space with no issues, so when it came time to work on the kitchen, the Basses paid Porter $13,500 as a down payment.
But months before any work began, Ginger lost her job, and they had to scale back the $32,500 kitchen renovation budget.
Bass showed 7NEWS the interior wall still standing, though the written contract included its removal.
Unfortunately, though Jeremy said he asked for it, he never got a revised contract with the much lower price. He said they took it on faith when Porter agreed verbally to a much smaller job for the original down payment and brushed off the need for a full contract revision, an oversight Bass strongly regrets.
'I wish I had never talked to him ever in my life,' Jeremy said.
When the kitchen was done, Jeremy said Porter told him he had gone over by $4,000 and they agreed to pay the extra cost.
But here's where things get tricky. At the same time, they paid upfront for the final project, a bathroom renovation for $16,000. So, the total in one check was $20,000 (for the kitchen overage plus the down payment on the next project). Jeremy showed us Porter's new estimate, plus the cancelled check.
'Foolishly, I paid him in advance for that. And on here I even put in the memo line, bath, bed remodel,' Jeremy said.
The '180' for Bass came when Porter sent a receipt claiming that the check was for the kitchen only.
'I was appalled and shocked and felt duped,' Ginger said.
After two years in the court system, a judge ruled last month that Porter owes Bass the $16,000.
But Bass is skeptical he'll get that money back after doing a Public Index search and discovering a history of cases against Porter.
7NEWS reached out to South Carolina Labor Licensing and Regulation and learned Porter's residential contractor license was revoked in 2011 after many of those judgments found him guilty of taking money and not completing the job.
Porter declined an on-camera interview, but in a brief phone call where we explained we were recording, we asked him about the license number that appears atop all 4 of the documents he gave to Bass with his letterhead.
At first, he said, 'I don't know what you're talking about.'
We read out the number of the license to him, '8723744,' to which he replied, 'I had a stroke 6 years ago and it affected my memory and I really, honestly, Diane I don't know what you're talking about.'
We asked him if he was deliberately trying to mislead his clients and he said, 'I would have not put nothing on the document to make my customers believe I had a license. If my customers asked me am I licensed, I would tell them no I'm not.'
He then declined to answer any further questions.
His attorney, Monte Chasteen, did not respond to our questions about the license, but said the Basses won by default because his client had failed to respond to a court summons before hiring him.
He called the case 'a misunderstanding between the parties as to what the terms of an agreement were,' and stressed that the judge did not award further damages.
Attorney Jay Anthony, who represents Bass, said while most of the cases on Public Index against the contractor date back a decade, he has spoken to more current clients of Porter who have similar stories but can't afford a lawyer.
'We did feel there was a pattern there not only in terms of not doing work that he was paid to do, but also in terms of doing work that he wasn't licensed to do,' Anthony said.
To verify a contractor in S.C. has a license, click here.
The Public Index also showed another pattern of note. Porter appears to have changed company names over time from 'Priority Services,' to 'Horizon Mechanical,' to 'Timsco' to '180 Handyman Solutions.' And now, 7NEWS has learned, his latest company, Fieldstone Solutions, which retrofits sheds into tiny homes, has run into its own issues.
An attorney with Kentucky-based Stor-Mor told 7NEWS it terminated Fieldstone as a dealer last year because, quote, 'we received customer complaints that Fieldstone Solutions was taking deposits to convert our sheds into a 'tiny home' and then failing to promptly perform that work.'
Pickens County Building and Codes confirmed he does not have the license needed from the state to do the tiny home work as required by law.
The Basses urge you to do the homework before hiring a contractor.
Verify their license with LLR
Check to see they're bonded and insured
Keep an updated contract
And in the least, read Google reviews
'I don't want anybody else to go through this,' Mrs. Bass said.
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