United Painting And Decorating Jose Ponce Painter took funds, started work, disappeared without finishing job, without leaving paint we paid for Toronto Ontario

It will be hard to summarize the shoddy and unprofessional work that Jose Ponce did for us, but I will try my best:

- Jose Ponce was recommended by several family memebers who had work done by him

- Jose Ponce came to give us a quote to paint our house - very low quote. This should have been the first sign.

- Jose Ponce was going to buy paint for us and we paid him in cash to purchase all the supplies and Benjamin Moore paints for our house. We never saw any of these supplies.

- Jose Ponce was very flaky the whole time - "forgetting his phone at the paint store", showing up late, having a booked vacation so he couldn't come, troubles with his kid at school etc.

- Jose Ponce came to start work and was at our house for three days "patching" cracks in walls and sanding some of the holes etc. This work has been looked at by other reputiable painters and deemed to be done incorreclty.

- Jose Ponce began and finished painting one room out of an entire house that needed to be painted

- Jose Ponce was in our house for a total of 5 days, never for more than a few hours at a time

- The last time was saw Jose Ponce was on Tuesday March 28, 2017

- We attempted to contact Jose Ponce several times over the next days and weeks via text, voice mail and email and no calls, texts or emails were ever returned

- Jose Ponce left a lot of equipment at our house including but not limited to: 1 ladder, 2 paint trays, 4 brushes, 5 rollers, 2 cans of putty, 1 extention handle, 1 18v DeWalt drill, 1 tape measure, 2 exacto knives, 5 scrapers, 1 bucket, 7 sanding blocks, 1 wrench, 1 set of pliers, 2 screwdrivers

- Jose Ponce also left three cans of paint. We requested Benjamin Moore (Aura) paint and we found that he was using Para Paint, lowest quaility. One of the three cans had the label ripped off to hide the brand.

- We were initially concerned for his well-being however we then found a similar review online from 2013 that sounds VERY familiar to the situation we encountered with Jose Ponce

https://trustedpros.ca/company/united-painting-and-decorating

- He also tells many stories of his commercial business (he works for Starbucks, apparently) and when another painter came in to quote on the work, he noted the shoddy work that Jose Ponce had actually done. This is when we figured most of his stories had been false as well.

- Lesson learned. I want to ensure that no one else falls prey to this scam by Jose Ponce. We are out several hundred dollars and do not have the paint that Jose Ponce allegedly purcahsed for us.