Chief Wood Finishing

After receiving a kitchen cabinet refacing quote from Chief Wood Finishing in Feb 2022, my wife and I hired the company, which included a payment of 50% up front. After a little work was done, and claims that materials were in the shop, I paid another 25%. The owner claimed he had a cabinet shop with equipment valued at over $1 million. We later found out that his was likely not true, as the owner was subcontracting all work. The owner was responsive to texts, phone calls, and emails immediately prior to receiving a payment. However after receiving payment, the owner was extremely slow at responding to texts, phone calls, and emails, sometimes taking up to a week or more. The owner made many commitments to have subcontractors do work on certain days, and almost all commitments were not kept. Subcontractors told us that the owner did not pay them, and some were owed a lot of money. We also know of other customers from whom the owner took money, and apparently did not complete the work. The owner said he was going bankrupt, but verbally agreed to pay us back what we paid him less the very little amount of work that was done. A day later his phone and email were out of service. The owner never paid us back, and we had to hire another company to do almost all the work. Although the owner said he was going bankrupt, the Bankruptcy Trustee does not have record of him filing for bankruptcy. Service Alberta said the owner should have had a prepaid contractor license, but he did not.