Mr Ramroop Bhagwandin, the owner of Elite General Contracting and Maintanence entered into a contract with us to do an addition and renovation. He had been endeavoring to get our business for three years. In July 2012, Ramroop Bhagwadin and Elite General Contracting and Maintenance finally convinced us to sign a contract with him with great promises of the work that he would deliver to us. The total cost of the contract $680,000 and that was broken up into two phases. Phase 1 included full completion of the exterior addition, roofing, siding, grading, deck and other items listed very specifically in the contract. It was clearly stated that upon successful completion of phase 1, Elite General Contracting would be granted phase 2 of the job. Further, we along with Elite General Contracting and Maintenance developed an agreed upon payment schedule which we had been paying based on very specific milestones that had to be completed. Elite General contracting said in the contract that all of phase 1 would be complete within four months. Four months later, Elite General Contracting was paid out 65% of phase 1 with only 30% of the work completed. During the week of Hurricane Sandy, Ramroop Bhagwandin/Elite General Contracting demanded payment for 10 days of work where there was no power and none of his staff came to do work. We reminded him that when we have power back and when he resumes work along with getting the other milestones completed, he will get paid. We had pre-paid Ramroop/Elite General Contracting for additional work that had not been completed the week before Hurricane Sandy struck. However, he demanded a full change in the payment schedule which we did not agree to and he suspended the job by putting a stop work order from the village on our construction. This delayed us by two weeks. Further, because Mr. Ramroop Bhagwandin/Elite General Contracting had forced our hand by closing down the job and delaying the project, he demanded that he gets paid $40K payment above and beyond what we had agreed to in order to start the project again. We paid him and succumbed to his request for revising the payment schedule to suit his needs. He told us that he needed the additional payment to pay the plumber and electrician on the job so that they could come back immediately. We learned from his foreman that he used the funds to settle his prior debts that had nothing to do with the job. We also learned that he never paid his plumber or electrician as he said he would. His plumber and electrician were critical to the job in getting certain tasks done that had dependencies and they did not return. His carpenters did return to slowly work on the job and leave us with an uncompleted house on the exterior. Many days were left cold inside of our house (and we live in it) where the plumbing was not properly connected and the lights and electricals were not properly working. We approached Ramroop/Elite General Contracting about this issue and, he again, tried to shut the job down again after being paid up to 85% of the Phase 1 project and only completing 50% of the work. We had our architect involved to moderate discussions between Ramroop/Elite General Contracting with what we believed was agreed upon progress in discussions only for Ramroop/Elite General Contracting to walk off the job completely. For two weeks, Ramroop/Elite General Contracting have failed to return to the job site to complete the work despite repeated requests to do so.