Tl, Dr, version: Alec has a history of scamming people for a $1000 deposit and also trying to get insurance companies to pay out an obscene amount of money for low-cost repairs. First I will say that Alec may or may not have the ability to do good work, but actually seeing his work...it'll probably never happen. Alec came recommended by another company (who has since told us they have completely severed their relationship with him) after a pipe leak. We had a fairly small job, a few drywall patches needed to be done, putting baseboards back into place, some paint, not a big deal. Because it was a small job, we opted to go with the recommendation rather than call our usual contractor who has done much larger jobs for us in the past. Alec came, assessed the damage and immediately requested $1000 to secure the job and get us on his schedule. This seemed unusual and not how other people have worked in the past, but my wife wasn't terribly troubled by the request as he came recommended and figured she would deal with the insurance stuff later. Alec never showed up for the subsequent appointment for repair and when called made up a ridiculous excuse about not being able to get in touch with our insurance. A week goes by and Alec still can't get in touch with our insurance, so he won't start the work. Of course when my wife checked with our insurance company, Alec had never sent in an estimate. After 2 more weeks our insurance finally got an estimate for $6400 which seemed completely over the top. Two more days go by and my wife calls and asked Alec to just refund our deposit and we'd go elsewhere or rehire him once we figured out the insurance side of things. He said he could not do so because he already bought the materials. The following day our insurance actually approved the $6400. We decided anyway to just end the relationship but Alec called and apologized, was professional and agreed to do the work in 5 days time. Another appointment was set. The day of the work Alec was late, no contact from him so we reached out. Again with the excuses. He had an emergency inspection to do and would be 4 hours later than he said. At that point we were done and told him not to come, the relationship is over. He then proceeds to call and leave long, rambling voicemails about us being unreasonable and hostile clients, he didn't understand our problem, he had invested so much money into the job, etc. I called him back and said that we were definitely not going to allow him to do the work and we want the deposit back. Alec became hostile at that point and started with the yelling and that he had already canceled the "emergency inspection" and was on his way. That we would not get our deposit back. I told him we would file a claim in small claims court and leave appropriate reviews online. He didn't care and said he would win in court. I told him all further communication needed to be in writing, do not call back and if he came we would call the police. We received text messages a few minutes later stating that Alec had spoken to his legal team and he'd be suing us for $5000 and putting a lien on our house if we did not allow him to do the work. He then said he was 10 minutes away and offered to still do the work for a $500 discount. We didn't respond. A week later and my wife gets another text from him saying he is ready to come and do the work today. Again, no response from us. Our usual contractor has now assessed the work and called it a $1600 job (and that includes a few extra things we asked him to do that added a few hundred dollars to the total). The day he gave the estimate he started the work. How nice to work with professionals again! So on top of the just not doing work or bothering to show up, Alec appears to be grossly overcharging for his work by a factor of four times. My wife called our insurance company to report it too and return the overage. Hopefully they'll be able to pursue action against Alec. Bottom line, I wouldn't let Alec do work for me at any price. He isn't worth the headache and not worth the potential of getting involved in insurance fraud.