Ron responds. An Exercise in Cluelessness

Yesterday Ron made another post to his Facebook page about how cold it is. A picture of one of his tractors and a comment of  "Six below zero...no problem!!! Try to stay indoors today if you can!!!"

This is where it gets fun.  I commented:

Interesting.  It was warmer than this last year when you stopped showing up in the middle of our job, claiming it was too cold.  Coincidentally that was right after we paid you.  Still waiting on that refund.  Are you going to steal these people's money too?

That's right.   A little less than a year ago and almost as soon as we had paid them, the Private Sewer and Water Corporation stopped showing up at our house.  After  a week of no shows we finally got a hold of Ron.  He told us that it was too cold and that since they had already finished the major work, they would wait until it was warmer to finish.

At the time it didn't seem like a big deal  Ron seemed trustworthy and the remaining items weren't critical.  We made the mistake at taking Ron Janis at his word. Something I would never ever recommend to anyone else.  11 months later and we've heard every excuse in the book as to why he can't finish the job.  But he can advertise on Facebook that he works in the cold.

This morning I got a notice that Ron had responded to my post:

 At least acknowledge we solved your sewer problem!!!

This would be funny if he hadn't stolen my money.  One of the other customers he's screwed over, and I think I saw it on the BBB site complained about this same thing.  The Private Sewer and Water Corp finished half of the job that they had been paid for and when the customer complained their response as "At least we fixed part of the problem"

That's not the point, and the fact than Ron doesn't understand that is astounding.  Its like going to McDonalds and ordering a burger and fries.  If they only give you the burger I'm pretty sure you're going to pissed off that you didn't get the fries you paid for.  Imagine going back to the counter to inquire about where your fries are and having the cashier tell you "At least you got your burger"


My response:

You sort of solved it.  We still flooded last summer despite your guarantees that we wouldn't.  That's not the point though.  If you had only taken money for the sewer repair we'd be done and we wouldn't have a problem.  I probably would have even referred you to a number of friends.  But no, you gave us the hard sell for additional work that we didn't want in the first place.  You took money for that additional work and have not performed the services promised.  In addition to the money you've stolen from me you've wasted my time for a year by continually scheduling times to complete the work and then not bothering to showing up.  Give me my money back for the work you failed to deliver on and we can go our separate ways. 

He did sort of solve the sewer problem.  Originally we hired him because we got a sewage smell throughout the house whenever we ran the washing machine.  He solved that problem.  Congratulations.  Have a cookie.  Solving one problem doesn't mean you get to charge for others and not attempt to solve them.  Originally I didn't want to remove the catch basin or install the ejector pump.  Ron talked us into it.  And then after we paid him, he never did the work.

Ron responds:

You didn't flood again c'mon now

Notice how he ignores that part about him stealing my money. There is really nothing he can do to defend himself against that.

Me:

Actually we did.  We got a couple inches of water in our basement the week prior to our block party on 8/23

Ron

No way. You would have been all over us and blowing up every phone imaginable.

Again Ron demonstrates how incredibly clueless he is.  He seems to think that if he solves the flooding issue then he can do whatever he wants.  Here's the thing:  I didn't hire him to solve the flooding issue.   I hired him to solve the sewer stench issue.  He took it upon himself to claim that we wouldn't flood anymore.  I didn't believe him when he said we would never flood again and I was right. So when we did flood I wasn't surprised.  My whole neighborhood flooded. I didn't consider that a failure on his part.  The fact that when the flooding occurred he had been in possession of my  money for over six months without moving  to finish the job, that is what angered me.

My response to Ron:

Problem with that is you never answer your phone.  I'd been calling you for six months at that point and gotten no where so why would this have been different?  I'll send you a picture next time.  Honestly I never thought you would be able to completely solve the flooding issue and that wasn't really why we hired you in the first place.  I'll give you that we probably flood less than we would have but that doesn't give you the right to skip out on other parts of the project unless you want to refund my money.  I'm not pissed about the flooding, I'm pissed about the theft.

Again, why would I call him then?  He already demonstrated his dishonesty by failing to complete the work that he had been paid for.  Why would I call him back?  If he won't refund money for work he didn't do, why would he refund money for shoddy work that he did actually do? And again, I didn't think his solution would solve the flooding issue.  It did help, but I think there are city wide improvements that need to be made before the issue can be fully resolved.

Ron's response:

I'm pissed that you keep motherf*****g us on the internet. If you removed every bulls**t stalker post you put on yelp, citysearch, web, etc. I'd gladly remedy the entire situation.

Uh Oh.  Someone's mad.  I don't know what to do about this other than laugh.  Its not like I posted bad reviews about him for fun. I'm way too lazy for that.  I posted bad reviews because he took my money and repeatedly lied to me.  That is something that is 100% under his control.  If he didn't want bad reviews he shouldn't steal from his customers.  He should also have the decency to show up for scheduled appointments.  Its not rocket science.  The fact that Ron is mad about this is  pathetic. I don't know what he expects.   Maybe he is used to scamming people before the internet when they couldn't fight back.

Also I don't know what he means by citysearch, web, etc.  I haven't put a review on Citysearch yet.  the top one about him hitting on the dudes' mom is to funny for me to replace.  Maybe he found this page and that is what he means by web.  I doubt it.  I have done nothing to promote this site yet.  If he found it he would have to be going way out of his way to search for himself.  Not that I rule that out.  Although if he did find it already then that means I don't have to put as much effort into publicizing the site as I thought I would.  But I digress.

My response:

You've offered that before and failed to follow through.  Why should I expect this to be different?  All the reviews I've put up are an accurate representation of my experience dealing with you. If/When my experience is improved I'll update my review. If you find an inaccuracy you let me know and I'll correct it.  If you don't want bad reviews then you should treat your customers better.  You give bad service, you get bad reviews.  That's how it works.  Stealing my money and wasting my time is bad service.  If you had done your job in the first place we wouldn't be here. Give me money back and I will never visit your FB page again.

The funny thing is that he has offered this before. When I submitted a BBB complaint and called him to see if he was going to respond before they closed it he said the same thing.  Then ignored me for a month.  When I posted a negative review to Yelp he told me he would be at my house promptly at 11:30 the next day and if when I removed the review he would finish the job. As usual, he didn't show up.

Again, I don't know what he expects.  If he think's I'm going to let him just take close to $2000 and not do everything in my power to get it back then he has surely underestimated me.

At this point Ron deletes the comment thread from his page and responds with

We'll be in touch

He may have commented something before than.  I got a FB notification that he did, but by the time I got out of my meetings all that was left was the above comment.

Over/Under on when he gets in touch?   It will be Tuesday or Wednesday because that is when I'm going to remind him.  I would be astounded if anything happens before that.