Peter in Toronto

At first, I was very happy to have Gaetano do our kitchen tile renovation. His was the highest of three quotes I received but I liked that he would do the job quickly. He seemed very professional and passionate about his job and was very responsive to my calls/texts. However, the job took 7 days (vs promised 3) and the quality of the work was sub-par, so much so that I had to call them back out to redo sections. Other parts I had to fix myself including broken kickboards and nails sticking out of the new grout. When I called Gaetano about how the tile was being laid and my concerns, he lashed out at me and my father-in-law over the phone and told me to take it up with his sub-contractors, not him. Gaetano and I later negotiated the fee from $3,000 down to $2,500 to make up for the concerns I had, however he asked that I give him a 10/10 star rating on HomeStars and in return he would buy my backspash from Olympia (see attached invoice for written agreement). He subsequently was noticeably slow in returning my calls or texts and later stopped responding when I gave him the tile selection, although he did say at one point that my tile would be ordered the next day. After receiving no reply for several days, I called Olympia tile myself saying I was a customer of ABJM and wanted to see if they had placed an order yet for my tile - I was told they received no such order but that they had plenty of my backsplash in stock for me. At that I left Guatano a voicemail with a follow up text informing him of what Olympia said and telling him our deal was off. Only then did he reply to me, via long, rambling text messages, refusing to speak on the phone. In the texts he lashes out yet again with legal threats and told me he had called the police on me for harassing him. He threatened to make cassettes of my voicemail and distribute them around my office. He also told me he got a letter from the "Olympia boss" stating that I impersonated him, he also threatened to come to my work and post something (not legible) in the foyer about me. Out of respect for Gaetano I am not posting the disturbing text message exchange but will attach the written agreement we had. After I told him I would be updating my HomeStar review he offered me a 45% discount to not change it, to which I declined and reiterated that I did not want the deal anymore, wished him well and asked him not contact me again. Gaetano was a good salesman and did a very good job up front, however he did not oversee the team and the result was an unsatisfactory job. In my view he handled criticism or customer complaints poorly and did not follow through on his commitment regarding the backsplash. I have tried to share the facts here and stay as objective as possible given the situation.