artistic hardscape inc artistic hardscape Failure to finish job after getting money charlotte North Carolina

Joe Kushner owner of this company built a patio for me and agreed to come back and finish the steps. Unfortunately I paid for all of the work upfront. I trusted Joe at this time. While building the patio he asked if I would call the neighborhood builder to see about us staging his material on the undeveloped lot across the street. Builder agreed and patio was build in about a week. We agreed to delay the stairs while additional work (tree clearing) was being done in my back yard by another contractor. Joe told me the small amount of gravel that was left on the builders lot could be used by the other contractor working on my neighbor's yard. Joe said he would bring more back when he came back to do the stairs in 6 weeks. This helped Joe with shoveling the small amount of gravel into my back yard. It also avoided him having to clean up the area on the builders lot. Everything was fine at this point. I even had Joe submit a bid for more work I wanted in my back yard (bringing in dirt, seed, and mulch). Joe's bid suspiciously included stairs for my patio. Why would I need to pay for stairs if I already paid for them and I was bringing in dirt to raise the elevation around the patio. Joe said I would get "more stairs". That really didn't make sense to me so I told him I was not going with his proposal and to just finish the original stairs. When Joe finally came back about a month after his bid was rejected. He saw I had the other contractor working on the bid for grading, mulch and seed. Joe texted me that he would not do the stair because his gravel was gone. This is the same gravel that he told me I could let the contractor use. And it was such a small amount of gravel it could have easily been replaced. But he used that as an excuse to not do the work. And then offered a pathetic refund that was far less than the stair cost. Avoid this contractor and certainly do NOT pay for anything upfront.